He didn't talk much about flying but had a few stories.....once was that they flew boring mission after boring mission, out, over, back in a grid, looking for Japanese vessels. Hours of boredom he'd say, punctuated by minutes of sheer panic under attack by the Zeroes.
Talked about how their feet dangled. There were no floors in the plane. Once in a while, when flying in formation, he'd see a guy flying upside down.....the guy would then motion to him with a cigarette pack or lighter in his hand. He'd dropped it on the floor of the place, flipped it over and picked the lighter/cigarette pack off the canopy and righted the place. I was stunned to learn they'd smoke in the cockpit.
He won a DFC at Peleliu for bombing runs he and a few others (not many apparently) made on Bloody Nose Ridge. The US controlled half the runway and at the far end of the runway, the Japanese had a big gun that was hidden in a cave with a steel door. The pilots would load one bomb under their plane and make a bombing run at the end of the runway trying to knock out that cannon. They never even raised their wheels he said. But the Japanese would wait after the run, open the steel door and blow the shit out of the runway. Then the Seabees would get out there in a caterpillar and smooth it out so the F4Us could land, reload a bomb and do it all over again. Pretty scary stuff.
He also talked about landing those suckers on a carrier and said because you had a tail wheel and when level, the prop would dig into the deck, you had to land with canopy open and look out the side in order to find the deck at the end. Pretty interesting man....cool as ice. Nothing ever rattled the guy. I guess that's because for three years he took off in a plane and never knew whether he'd be coming back.
We lived in Wisconsin and I asked him whether he'd ever want to go to Oshkosh and he said not really.....he'd flown enough in his day and didn't need to see what he already had lived. But when I asked him whether he thought he'd have any trouble flying a plane, he just laughed and said, ' not on your life.....I could fly a Corsair today without any lessons or refreshers. Hell, I lived in that damn thing for a few years. Flying it even in my 70s would be easy.'
He was a real gentleman.
“I was stunned to learn they’d smoke in the cockpit.”
Real warriors don’t sweat the petty crap. That’s why the perfumed princes go after them when peace breaks out.
My first trip overseas, back when Travis was packed 24 hours a day and you slept on your sea bag, there was an old, retiring Chief Petty Officer with two stars on his National Defense Service Medal ribbon. First I ever saw with two stars.
He was holding court for the boots, on his way into retirement, and I have never forgotten one thing he said. When peace breaks out, he told us, the military gets taken over by shiny-loafered REMFs. Then when war breaks out the military discovers that these guys are not warriors and must be replaced.
When peace breaks out once more, the political animals get rid of the warriors and start promoting each other again.
Your mileage may vary, but it’s always rung true to me.