(“First Flight” Painting by artist Bill Northup courtesy the F8 Crusader Association.)

I am waking this Cinco de Mayo at the Farm. I was scanning slides last night, half watching the television and half lost in a reverie. I like the soft pace of a Sunday night here, and the human-scale problems of attempting to hold back the forces of entropy on the little and well-defined property for which I am responsible.

There is so much out there that is beyond any influence we can exert, and the loss of our pal Mr. Sluggo puts that front and center.

Kenneth Scott Bates, CAPT, USN-Ret, aka Scotty, aka Mr. Sluggo, was a buddy for the ages. A tough guy, F-8 pilot originally, F-4s when I met him in VF-151. He was the Squadron Maintenance Officer, and Fleeted Up to be acting XO as the senior LCDR Department Head when the Skipper detached and the XO relieved him with a gap in the pipeline.

That was, of course, while our little crew of pirates was embarked in the tumultuous and turbulent segment of the long life of the Midway Maru.

There was a cast of characters in that outfit. The call-signs still resonate down the years. Rocket, Splash, Snidely Whiplash, Space, Hooch, Barnyard Big Bucks and Bronco. We were lead by our fearless leader, Rattler the MiG killer. Our dauntless Maintenance Officer, the individual responsible for keeping the ancient jets flying was Mr. Sluggo. We were in the Indian Ocean on our way to trouble or boredom and we didn’t know which.

It happened during one of the afternoon flight events. Big Bucks and Chief launched and had a hydraulic problem almost right off the cat. Bucks did the right thing and tried to blow everything down, landing gear, flaps and hook. Problem was that only one of the main mounts came down. This was not good.

Resolving the problem took another five hours of intense conversation. Mr Sluggo was in the middle of it all. The rest of the airplanes were recovered to let the Boss figure out how to get Bucks back home. There was some touchy refueling and a lot of looks at the back of the boat to see if they could get the jet back aboard. Bucks and Chief, his RIO, went round and round the boat trying to get the right main-mount to come down and not making it happen.

They talked about erecting the barricade, the big nylon mesh net that stretches across the flight deck. The object was to crash the jet onto the deck and capture it as it slid out, even if the hook did not engage one of the wires.

But the big Phantom was just too fast and the emergency blow-down of the flaps didn’t lock them down in the lowered position and they crept back up and the airplane just kept getting faster and faster. Despite the jerking and jinking, Bucks could not get the stuck wheel to come down. Lack of hydraulics meant he couldn’t raise the other one. So he was stuck. A pancake landing on the belly tank like Old Mean Bud did at the field at Misawa was out of the question, too.

Scotty conferred with the other senior aviators on what to recommend. There was another problem with the barricade. If the airplane hit it too fast it would rip it off the stanchions and out of the deck and then wrap itself around the cockpit and the airplane would keep going and dribble off the angle deck and into the water with the guys unable to eject.

They tried everything as afternoon turned to evening and then to black night. They put max power on the ship and we raced along as fast as we could go into the strongest wind we could find. Bucks lined it up for multiple passes to see how slow they could get the Phantom to come over the round-down and into the landing zone. They just couldn’t get it anywhere near slow enough.

The CAG couldn’t send the guys ashore since there was no shore. We were truly Blue Water, a term by which we meant that there was no home but the ship, no alternative except the pitching deck in the black-ass night.

We were somewhere near the Four Degree Channel in the Maldives. There was an old Brit field at Gan, but we were not exactly friendly with the locals and giving them a perfectly good fighter was not something the grownups wanted to do. So they decided to throw the airplane away and save the crew, if we could.

Bucks put the airplane in a big race track and they positioned the helos. We all were out on deck or in the catwalk watching. Chief pulled the handle and ejected on command abeam the ship, about a half-mile out. The swimmers from the helo squadron got him almost before he got wet. Then it was Bucks’ turn, driving a big convertible jet with the top gone. He got abeam the ship and then pointed it directly away. He clicked in five degrees nose-down and then pulled his handle and left the jet.

Bucks had a good seat and a good chute and that part of things were going very well. We watched the jet as the pressure of the wind on the left landing gear made it turn around in flight, almost coming back toward the ship. For a moment it looked like we might have an unmanned kamikaze and our guided missile cruiser USS Worden (CG-18) thought she might have to engage the airplane, which would have been pretty spectacular. But the nose-down attitude did the trick and the F-4 went into the drink well off the stern.

They had a little problem finding Bucks, but he was OK and walked into Ready Room Two about twenty minutes later. The Flight Surgeon gave him one of those little bottles of whiskey they maintain as medical supplies. Not that there wasn’t plenty more where that came from, locked away in the little safes in the officers staterooms. As Mr. Sluggo said, “If they expect me to fly at night, I expect to have a glass of scotch when I get back.”

Thereafter, Scotty did the paperwork required when you misplace a major item on the Squadron property book, and we did our part in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, among other things, and stayed in touch thereafter, and socializing regularly once we eventually fetched up in the DC area. By that time, Sluggo had bailed for the path of Acquisition Professional, made 0-6, and retired to ply his arts in the Defense Contracting world, supporting Army aviation.

He was an avid golfer, and a member of the Fun Bunch at Army-Navy Country Club, immersed in the complex (if Byzantine) world of the Golf and Green Committee.

I had lunch with him in mid-March. He was in between chemo cocktails and able to sit up and take nourishment, and we chattered on about the significance of the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner and laughed about times old and new.

He was a little gray, but still larger than life. We agreed to get together again in May.

I was doing something unimportant on Friday when I got a note from a pal who informed Scotty’s extended network of pals that he was on life support, and the family was gathering to make some big decisions.

I was stunned. He had seemed completely phlegmatic about the course of the cancer. Apparently the cocktail did not work, he went swiftly downhill, and while in hospital fell out of his bed and struck his head, apparently seriously.

They tell me he departed just after midnight, Sunday morning. His last pass was peaceful.

I talked with his lovely daughter Kimberly late yesterday. Scotty was a West Coast Fighter Guy, so there will be a lot of folks coming this way for what I have come to know as the two-part Arlington drill: a memorial service while the memory is still fresh and raw and sometime later, when the Old Guard at Arlington has the resources- perhaps a couple months- the formal service at the National Cemetery.

I completely realize that the survival rate for this life experience is exactly 0%, but I am still taken aback and sobered. We have lost a Great American, and I am going to miss him a lot. The world is a little smaller this morning, and I think you can understand why.

Fair Winds, and following seas, Mr. Sluggo. We will see you on the other side.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303