1969

Prepare for take off

  One of the "thrills" I had in VR-30 was the chance to fly on and off the USS Hornet, it was a routine delivery of something they needed badly.  The Hornet was steaming somewhere off the coast of California.  We left Alameda and followed directions, the Hornet was right where we were told.  Landing aboard a carrier for the first time is a little scary.  Up where we were, about eight thousand feet, it looked like a postage stamp, we did the "D" approach, that the plane losing altitude while flying a pattern the resembles the letter D, and the ship gained size.  We landed, tail hook down, caught the arresting gear and it seemed to run for a mile; then whap, slam, bam you stop.  Before landing we are told to remove eye glasses, or anything lose we don't want to have flying off.  The take off is sort of a reverse of landing, tied to the catapult, engines revved up and you're shot off into the air, hopefully there's enough power in the engines to gain altitude.
  One of the "thrills (that wasn't) also was in 1969.  The Maintenance Officer called me in.  He was a crusty old guy, a "mustang" (enlisted turned officer) who specialized in Aircraft Maintenance, he knew what he was doing.
 "The Admiral needs a study to compare our costs to Southwest Airlines costs, our C131's against Southwests' DC9's, he needs it Thursday"
  "But...sir..today is Monday, it will take longer than that"
  "Just get it done!"
So I worked 48 hours, after a seven hour flight.  Betty was in the hospital again, and Jeff was with Mike and Mary.  Mike was one of my men, his wife Mary had been baby sitting while I wasn't home.  Now, if I'd had a PC with MS Office it would have taken maybe 16 hours, but those thing were ahead in the future.  I had accounting ledgers, paper and a typewriter.  The amounts for dollars for us to do things were based on hours worked on various repair jobs, and payrolls and weren't hard to put together.  Southwests' costs were written up in one of the aviation magazines.  All I had to do was find a repair or task we had done that matched was they had done, hand write the ledger, type a narrative and hand it in. That report got the ball rolling for the Navy to purchase C9B aircraft, a military version of the DC9.  My name was not on the report, but the Admiral said thanks in a short letter.
  And so, that's how it went in 1969.

The C9B Nightingale

An example of a hand written ledger

The way it would have looked (now), oh well.