We named ourselves Black Cloud Flight. Minor setbacks messed with our minds. Replacement Air Group Class 10-64 had been plagued with delays for the past two months. What should have taken a couple days, seemed to drag on forever due to maintenance and weather delays.
I wound my way through the labyrinth below the flight deck of the twenty-year old aircraft carrier rumbling through the waves off the California coast as it tried to maintain 33 knots into the wind. Blackness lurked in the corners of the narrow passageway lighted with red night lanterns sparingly placed low on the grey metal wall. Though not mood lighting, it exaggerated my irritated mood — frustration from anticipation repeatedly thwarted by delay. The deafening screech of the arresting gear just above my head followed by a thunderous two-second roar signified another A-4 coming onboard. Then, as it taxied forward to launch, the sound returned to the monotonous rumble of the ship. Finally, I thought, on board the USS Bon Homme Richard, carrier quals had begun.
I pushed through the curtain into the cubical they called a stateroom. The screech boom of another landing, 40 seconds after the last, blasted off the metal walls. Mike, one of my roommates for the past week sat hunched over the metal pull down desk squinting through the blinking fluorescent lamp at a letter he was composing to his girlfriend. Without looking up he grunted, “Hey.”
“Jeez! How can you concentrate in all this racket?”
He shot me a forced smile. “Love conquers all.”
I started to climb into the upper bunk when the next plane hit the deck. The screech and boom were the same, the aircraft caught a wire, but instead of throttling back to taxi forward the engine went back to full bore for few seconds and then abruptly went silent as if snuffed out by some mysterious force. Mike looked back at me. “What the hell? That was different.”
I shrugged. “Beats me.”
A click of a mike button came over the 1MC, the speaker system that goes to every space on the ship. There was static and the voice of the Air Boss bellowed, “Aircraft in the water, aircraft in the water, port side. I repeat, we have an aircraft in the water.”
I looked at Mike. He looked at me. No need to say anything; we were thinking the same thing.
In the ready room the duty officer, slumped at his desk, said the words we feared. “It’s Huntley, he taxied over the side.”
Huntley? Don Huntley, the guy I went camping with two weeks ago? My throat seemed to swell. I found it hard to speak.
The words came out a shaky rasp. “What happened?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Runaway throttle, something got caught, panic, whatever. Coming out of the wire he went to full power and skidded off the end of the angle.”
We climbed out onto the catwalk off the flight deck, the cool night breeze brushing across our face – salt sea air mixed with jet fumes. The ship, slowed to a crawl, arced in a port turn smoothing the surface of the ocean like a gigantic trowel leaving swirling currents and eddies in its wake. Lights from the carrier and searchlights from the destroyer created a fluorescent dome in the soft haze under an overcast sky. I held onto the damp steel rail of the catwalk scanning the impenetrable water 65 feet below, hoping, silently praying to see a sign, any sign. He should be floating there, his life vest inflated, a fleck on the surface – nothing. I stayed for thirty minutes milling and mingling with yellow shirted aircraft handlers, brown shirted plane captains and pilots in flight suits all quiet, subdued, wondering how could there not be something on the surface, an oil slick, a drop tank or a panel torn from the aircraft to mark the aberrant event – nothing, no sign of a life swallowed by an impersonal sea.
Back in the ready room I walked over to where the duty officer, the LSO and the safety officer huddled around a clipboard trying to draft an accident report message. “Mike said you and Huntley were friends.”
“Good friends,” I said, “Since we got to Lemoore we’ve spent a fair amount of time together.”
“We’re trying to find out where he’s from. You know?”
“U-mm, yeah, we talked about that.” I tried to think, but couldn’t remember the name of the town. I had a picture in my mind, someplace north of Lemoore toward the foothills. “I could probably find it on a map.”
They moved over to the desk and spread out an aeronautical chart. My finger moved north to the place that Don had pointed out in one of our discussions. I felt guilty for not remembering the name. The place where he had grown up and where his family lived and where a Navy Chaplain would soon come knocking at his parent’s door, Auburn, California.
I went back to our stateroom and pulled open Don’s drawer, the one below where I kept my stuff. Six pairs of black socks rolled with matching rubber bands, stacked in a row; shorts and tee shirts folded in perfect square towers, a web belt tightly rolled and clamped by a mirror-polished brass buckle. A ray of light reflected from his Navy gold wings, so recently acquired.
It was Huntley’s idea. “Pinnacles campground,” he said, “about a two-hour drive. We’ll get the gear from special services.”I lowered my newspaper and looked past him through the window of the BOQ lounge at a single puffy white cloud in a cobalt blue sky, exceptional for Lemoore in January. “I guess that means my plans to read a book, watch TV, wash the car and be the only guy eating in the wardroom on Saturday night will have to be scrubbed. Okay, let’s do it.”
After the past two weeks of night carrier landing practice at two in the morning we escaped the precision piloting pyramid that evening by poking a campfire under a canopy of stars and swapping stories late into the night. It didn’t matter that our tent was covered with snow when we crawled out of our sub-zero sleeping bags the next morning awakened by raccoons banging trash can lids on the other side of the campground. The snow shower had given way to a crisp, cold but clear morning, perfect for a hike through the hills covered with twisted oaks and scraggly rock formations.
The path narrowed and passed between two gigantic rocks pushed upward by tectonic plates a few million years ago. When we looked back, the rock that reached thirty feet above the path became a challenge too inviting to resist. “I could climb that,” I said.
“Bullshit, it’s straight up.”
“That’s the beauty of it, from this side it’s impossible, but the other side, not so much.”
Challenges and dares were exchanged. It wasn’t easy, but in the end I reached the top, assumed the conquering emperor pose while Don captured the feat on film. Then it was his turn. When I looked through the viewfinder at his “king of the world” stance the drama exceeded my imagination.
I looked at the picture again and watched it fade to a blank piece of paper. I looked back up at the rock, it stood alone. A chill came over me. I ran between the rocks and began clawing my way up. I slipped and was falling. Crashing down I collapsed in the dark.
I heard Mike say, “Hey man, you okay?” Where was he? As my eyes began to focus he was standing in his skivvies looking down at me crumpled against the cabinet of the metal desk in the dim light of the stateroom. “You came off that bunk like a demon, he said. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
I sat there remembering the events of the night before, feeling again the steady rumble of the carrier through the cold steel deck. Reality pierced my brain, but miraculously I escaped injury from the six-foot descent with a bounce off the desk top on the way down. I got up to climb back to the upper bunk. “I guess I was sleep crawling. I’m fine.”
You don’t think of Naval Aviators as somber and subdued. Yet an aura of tight lipped introspection crammed into the Pontiac GTO for the two hour plus drive to Don’s memorial service in Auburn. In the refinement of the First Congregational Church we sat as stiff as a regiment of the royal guard in our dress blue uniforms staring ahead feeling the questioning glances from the community as they filed into their places. We had no answers.Rays of morning sunshine streamed through vertical ribbons of stained glass flanking each side of the flower laden mahogany altar. From the organ pipes above came the soothing but mournful melody Eventide sweeping me back to Baptist roots. Abide with me. Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away. How betrayed must they feel, Don’s parents alone with their daughter on the front row. I fidgeted my way through the prayers and message from the pastor trying to tie this ritual to my friend as I had known him until the organist began to play The Navy Hymn. A flood of anguish took control and I was left with images seen through tear filled blurry eyes.
As we filed out, word was passed that there would be a fly-by, a missing man formation of A-4s from the squadron. I couldn’t envision conditions more suitable. The contemporary church dominated the crest of a sprawling hill-site, with its pointed spire perched at the edge of the bluff to the east. A few scattered clouds floated on a breeze unnoticed unless you caught the slight waving of the taller trees. The assemblage formed in small shifting groups. A few locals greeted our cohesive legation by nodding or reaching out for an occasional handshake. The Huntleys, the epitome of the perfect 1960s family, minus one, were surrounded by friends offering heartfelt condolences. After a while they broke away to approach where we were gathered. Don’s mother led the way. “Thank you so much for coming. It means the world to us.” Don’s father shook hands with each of us. “You must stay for lunch. Everyone has brought in so much food.”
When Mrs. Huntley came to me, she paused and smiled. “Don spoke of his friend at Lemoore. You’re the one he went camping with.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“This is our daughter, Cheryl.” Cheryl’s gaze met mine. She smiled with a sadness in her dark eyes. She reached out her hand. I held it for a few seconds knowing that her life would be forever changed, more so than mine but still a connection between us would endure.
The eyes of the crowd lifted toward an increasing growl in the distance. It rose to a roar as a tight formation of four A-4s emerged from the tree lined horizon. At three hundred feet above the ground, four hundred knots and a quarter mile away you could see a slight trail of vapor flow from their wing tips. Flight lead nodded his head to signal to number three who began his pull up directly overhead symbolically departing the formation reaching for the heavens.
The image of Don standing tall on that ancient rock came to mind. I would see it each time I thought of him for the rest of my life. What images will abide with the Huntleys? No stone will mark his grave. His name will not be etched into a polished granite wall. Memories of the memorial service and fly-over will fade, but the scar of the life of a loved one cut short will forever remain.
