Catching Up

102513-1
I had a chance to make a new friend yesterday, and things being the way they are, that is a good thing. There were some challenges getting together- the town does not look the way it did when Jinny and Jack lived here years ago, but we managed to locate one another and I drove them in the Panzer over to Willow for an elegant lunch.

I introduced them to Tracy O’Grady, who was at the matre d’ station and we were shown directly to a nice table by the window. I was seated next to Jinny, since she is a little hard of hearing these days, and much more frail than when I saw her last at Admiral Rex’s funeral.

She is still a looker, though, and elegantly turned out. She was with her new boyfriend, with whom she has been spending time since early this year. They laugh and say they have known each other for 60 years- Jack flew with Barney, Jinny’s late husband, in VQ-1. Jack was married to one of the ladies who contributed a chapter of the book I edited about life in the Phillipines in the early 1950s. He was among those who greeted the vivacious former American Airlines stewardess at NS Sangley Point, R.P.

Jack is a grand guy- a retired Naval Aviator, who had WESTPAC combat tours in Sherman-class DD’s. He volunteered for Aviation training, and he was at Pensacola when Raven was getting his wings there in late 1945.

The reason they were back here from California was the occasion of the 70th reunion of his Naval Academy Class of ’44 (actually graduated in ’43 due to the exigencies of the War) is why they are back here from California. Jack joked that there were not enough of them left to have a proper crowd, so they were joining the Class of 1953 in the celebration.

It was a kick to get to know him. He was a Navy CAPT who got crosswise with SECDEF Robert Strange McNamara in 1966. He did thirteen cases in the Strategic Studies Group before he decided that it just wasn’t fun any more and retired.

He is a smart guy, and still quick as a whip. He flew AJ Savages in the Fleet, plus the first VQ SIGINT bird, the P-4M-1Q and several other aviation types. He had 200 carrier landings and 3,000 hours total flight time- or the equivalent of 125 continuous 24 hour days aloft.

102513-2
(North American AJ Savage heavy bomber on USS Oriskany, the famous “O-Boat.”)

He is 90 this year- thin, wiry, tall. Watery blue eyes that have seen a lot. Upon commissioning, he participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima, Guam and Okinawa.

Perhaps seeing the dauntless birdmen high above the surface gunfire support seemed romantic. After getting picked up for Aviation, he was back in Pensacola for VJ day. They really put one on that night, since it looked like they were all going to live.

Early post war was nuclear weapons and guided missile development- Sparrow for one, Sidewinder for another.

He was the only regular officer at Pt. Mugu when this was all going on. Knew the guy who pulled the trigger on the Nagasaki bomb- and has the oral history “someplace” in his stuff. Not a widely known story.

We talked about Major Sweeny’s mission, the second one after Col. Tibbet made history and devastated Hiroshima. Sweeny was supposed to take out Kure, but weather caused a diver to the secondary target of Nagasaki. That was the one that almost screwed the pooch as all engines on Sweeny’s B-29 ran out of fuel on final at the emergency field at Iwo Jima. Avoided a crash landing by about five or six seconds.

Jack went to Stanford for his masters to get caught up on the technical stuff.

He did Korea and Vietnam, with his last Fleet tour was as the XO of a carrier XO. I regret that I forget which one.

Then the curse of the Washington tour. He reported to the Pentagon for duty with the Strategic Studies Group under McNamara in the mid-sixties. His group did 13 studies- got the LHA class amphibious ship concept approved and had some victories, other failures, including the one that said we could take out the Soviet Boomer subs.

Also had a plan for total warfare in Vietnam that “would have brought victory in six months.” He is actually sort of convincing about that, since it included everything that we wound up doing under Nixon (bomb the dykes, cut the bridges and end the Ho Chi Minh Trail by invading Cambodia) anyway just to lose. Troubling. McNamara wanted to follow “gradual escalation” and that was a loser as we all know.

After all that, Jack broke his neck two years ago falling off a stool trying to put Christmas Decorations up in the garage. He lived, though a buddy who did the same thing was dead in two days.

“Avoid ladders and stools,” he said wisely.

Witty, articulate, soft-spoken nice guy. It was almost like talking to Mac again, a thought that send a pang of regret through me.

102513-3