Squadron life revolves around the ready room, ashore or afloat. Since the A-6 squadrons always had the most flight crewmen, they always got the biggest ready room, in most ships Ready Five, but in Columbia, Ready Four. The ready room was never big enough. It was filled with comfortable, padded chairs that you could sink into and really relax, even sleep in, but there weren’t enough of them for all the officers.
In some squadrons when all the officers assembled for a meeting — an AOM — chairs were assigned by strict seniority. In other outfits the rule was first come, first served. How it was done depended on the skipper, who always got a chair up front by the duty desk, the best seat in the house. Lieutenant Colonel Haldane believed that rank had its privileges — at least when not airborne — so seniority reigned here. Jake Grafton ended up with a seat four rows back. The nuggets, first lieutenants on their first cruise, stood around the back of the room or sat on metal folding chairs.
AOMs were social and business events. Squadron business was thrashed out in these meetings, administrative matters dealing with the ship and the demands of the amorphous bureaucracies of the Navy and the Marine Corps were considered, lectures delivered on NATOPs and flying procedures, the “word” passed, all manner of things.
At these soirees all the officers in the squadron got to know each other well. Here one got a close look at the department heads — the “heavies”—watched junior officers in action, here the commanding officer exerted his leadership and molded the flight crews into a military unit.
In addition to the legal authority with which he was cloaked, the commanding officer was always the most experienced flyer there and the most senior. How he used these assets was the measure of the man, for truly, his responsibility was very great. In addition to the aircraft entrusted to him, he was responsible for about 350 enlisted men and three dozen officers. He was legally and morally responsible for every facet of their lives, from the adequacy of their living quarters to their health, professional development and performance. And he was responsible for the squadron as a military unit in combat, which meant the lives of his men were in his hands.
The responsibility crushed some men, but most commanding officers flourished under it. This was the professional zenith that they had spent their careers working to attain. By the time they reached it they had served under many commanding officers. The wise ones adopted the best of the leadership styles of their own former skippers and adapted it as necessary to suit their personalities. Leadership could not be learned from a book: it was the most intangible and the most human of the military skills.
In American naval aviation the best skippers led primarily by example and the force of their personalities — they intentionally kept the mood light as they gave orders, praised, cajoled, hinted, encouraged, scolded, ridiculed, laughed at and commented upon whatever and whomever they wished. The ideal that they seemed to instinctively strive for was a position as first among equals. Consequently AOMs were normally spirited affairs, occasionally raucous, full of good humor and camaraderie, with every speaker working hard to gain his audience’s attention and cope with catcalls and advice — good, bad, indifferent and obscene. In this environment intelligence and good sense could flourish, here experience could be shared and everyone could learn from everyone else, here the bonds necessary to sustain fighting men could be forged.
This evening Rory Smith’s death hung like a gloomy pall in the air.
Colonel Haldane spoke first. He told them what he knew of the accident, what Hank Davis had said. Then he got down to it:
“The war is over and still we have planes crashing and people dying. Hard to figure, isn’t it? This time it wasn’t the bad guys. The gomers didn’t get Rory Smith in three hundred and twenty combat missions, although they tried and they tried damned hard. He had planes shot up so badly on three occasions that he was decorated for getting the planes back. What got him was a VDI that slid out of its tray in the instrument panel and jammed the stick.
“Did he think about ejecting? I don’t know. I wish he had ejected. I wish to God we still had Rory Smith with us. Maybe he was worried about getting his legs cut off if he pulled the handle. Maybe he didn’t have time to punch. Maybe he thought he could save it. Maybe he didn’t realize how quickly the plane was getting into extremis. Lots of maybes. We’ll never know.”
He picked up the blue NATOPs manual lying on the podium and held it up. “This book is the Bible. The engineers that built this plane and the test pilots that wrung it out put their hearts and souls into this book — for you. Telling you everything they knew. And the process didn’t stop there — as new things are learned about the plane the book is continually updated. It’s a living document. You should know every word in it. That is the best insurance you can get on this side of hell.
“But the book doesn’t cover everything. Sooner or later you are going to run into something that isn’t covered in the book. Whether you survive the experience will be determined by your skill, your experience, and your luck.
“There’s been a lot of mumbling around here the last twenty-four hours about luck. Well, there is no such thing. You can’t feel it, taste it, smell it, touch it, wear it, fuck it, or eat it. It doesn’t exist!
“This thing we call luck is merely professionalism and attention to detail, it’s your awareness of everything that is going on around you, it’s how well you know and understand your airplane and your own limitations. We make our own luck. Each of us. None of us is Superman. Luck is the sum total of your abilities as an aviator. If you think your luck is running low, you’d better get busy and make some more. Work harder. Pay more attention. Study your NATOPs more. Do better preflights.
“A wise man once said, ‘Fortune favors the well prepared.’ He was right.
“Rory Smith is not with us here tonight because he didn’t eject when he should have. Hank Davis is alive because he did.
“We’re going to miss Rory. But every man here had better resolve to learn something from his death. If we do, he didn’t die for nothing. Think about it.”
The best way to see Hawaii is the way the ancient Polynesians first saw it, the way it was revealed to whalers and missionaries, the way sailors have always seen it.
The islands first appear on the horizon like clouds, exactly the same as the other clouds. Only as the hours pass and your vessel gets closer does it become apparent that there is something different about these clouds. The first hints of green below the churning clouds imply mass, earth, land, an island, where at first there appeared to be only sea and sky.
Finally you see for sure — tawny green slopes, soon a surf line, definition and a crest for that ridge, that draw, that promontory.
Hawaii.
Jake Grafton stood amid the throng of off-duty sailors on the bow watching the island of Oahu draw closer and closer. She looked emerald green this morning under her cloud-wreath. The hotels and office buildings of Honolulu were quite plain there on the right. Farther right Diamond Head jutted from the sea haze, also wearing a cumulus buildup.
The sailors pointed out the landmarks to one another and talked excitedly. They were jovial, happy. To see Hawaii for the first time is one of life’s great milestones, like your first kiss.
Jake had been here before — twice. On each of his first two cruises the ship had stopped in Pearl on its way to Vietnam. As he watched the carrier close the harbor channel, he thought again of those times, and of the men now dead whom he had shared them with. Little fish. Sharks.