Ted Hartley - Good to Go

 

I remember that Sunday. It was bright, cloudless day, warm spring was in the air in April. And my father, he was going to read the Sunday funnies to me. I was four years old. It was joy. He would read Li'l Abner and Popeye, and we would laugh. When I would laugh uproariously, he'd pick me up and throw me up in the air, and I felt as if I was going to go to heaven. There were those strong arms to catch me as I came back down. He was clearly the greatest man in the world, and the strongest, the biggest and the best. The best there was. 

 

It was a Sunday later, exactly. They came down my house, and down the stairs in my jammies. And in our living room, it was filled with women in black veiled black gloves, shoes shiny black. They were whispering to each other. I think one of them put her hand on my head and said, “Teddy, your father would have been so proud.” My father would have been so proud of me. That meant he was gone. He was gone, instantly. Disappeared. It was that fear of disappearing him, me next. It carried me all the way through grade school and high school.

 

The thing I loved most of all that I would do after school was watch documentaries or old newsreels of World War II and the way the fighter planes came in on the carriers. I thought maybe if I could do something brave and strong and glorious and something for my country, maybe then I wouldn't disappear. And so, I applied for Annapolis, the Naval Academy, and got in, and I got graduated and got my bars and went through flight training and got my wings. And now, I was going to fly in the Navy's hottest new aircraft called the F9F. 

 

It was the first plane the Navy had really that would go supersonic right after takeoff. And you can get that thrill of not only lifting off, but then getting the extra boost when your wheels disappeared and your flaps came up and off you went into space and you were climbing it faster than the speed of sound. I was in great shape, and I hit all the gun retargets. Now, there's one thing left to do before we could join as a squadron and go out and find the big carrier someplace in the Pacific and be ready for what was going to develop into the Vietnamese War. But I had to get qualified for the carrier. 

 

In order to do that, they do something called a field landing carrier practice, which was an aircraft carrier drawn on the ground in an old field someplace. And you would have the LSO, the landing signal officer, in a box at one end of it and he would have his flags that he would wave across his throat if you were making good landing and allowed to land, and waving off as though you were batting away bumblebees, waving his flags violently in the air to mean you're not going to land. Get going, buster. So, you couldn't land and you'd have to go around again. 

 

We needed 100 of those in this new supersonic jet to qualify. It was challenging. And even the old veterans in the squadron, the 27-, 28-, and 29-year-old guys, they were pretty impressed by this. And most of them came in getting eight or nine passes. So, they were getting 100 and 109, 108. I came in someplace in there. But McDonald's had just come aboard. McDonald was impish, blond, compact, a lot of fun, laughed a lot, and a perfect aviator. He went around that pattern in those two weeks, and got 100 landings in 101 passes. 

 

I was sitting at the bar with him that night after we'd all qualified and we were getting ready to go out to the practice carrier, the Tarawa, which I'd seen in the newsreels about World War II. And now, it was just used for practicing for jet landings. We had three to make. And if we did that and they were smooth enough, we got our cuts. Then we come back, and we would pack our gear, and the whole squadron would fly off, and we'd join our big super carrier, and someplace out in the eastern world, and we would be representing the country in the world's strongest, most impressive weapon and aircraft carrier. 

 

So, it was very exciting. We were having drinks the night before at the bar just a little bit, because we got to go to the carrier the next day. [audience chuckles] I was sitting next to McDonald, whom I really loved, always fun, and I said to him, “McDonald, you aced it. Man, you got 100 for 101. That's perfect. Nobody came close to that.” And his face, which had been jolly and smiling, turned dark, and the corners of his mouth turned down. He turned at me and snarled, threw his glass down on the counter, broke into a thousand pieces, scattered around the Officers Club, and he pointed his finger at me and he said, “No, damn it, I did 100 for 100. The damn LSO was just jealous. He waved me off. I should have had a perfect score.” [audience chuckles] Something new about McDonald. He had a temper and he was a perfectionist, but he was great. 

 

We took off the next day, all lined up, and off we went from Quonset Point, going to fly out over Block Island in formation, and you come down the other side of the carrier. So, if you can imagine a racetrack, and you're coming down the far side of the racetrack, and you're coming around the bend, and you're coming into the home stretch. That home stretch is the carrier. So, you're 50ft over the water. As you come around, you begin to see the LSO. And the skipper, I could see now was already aboard and his wingman, and I was up next. By that time, I was lining up on the ship. I came in, and I heard the LSO talking in, and his very calm voice about, “Yup, looking okay.” 

 

I didn't make world's best landing, but I was there. McDonald was coming behind me, and I had to see McDonald. Wanted to see his first landing in an F9F on an aircraft carrier. And so, I stood there as I watched McDonald coming in. He was lined up, his wings didn't wobble, this guy can fly. But somehow, just as he got over the cut point at the end of the carrier, his nose came up a little bit. I'm not sure what he's thinking, but just came up enough. And just that little bit will attract the LSO's attention, because if you come in too high, you'll miss the wires. You're going to go steaming on across the deck and do damage to yourself or to somebody, and you can't land. 

 

When he waved it off, and its flags, and the cannon went off, and the siren sounded, and everybody knew that he'd been waved off. And so far, he was the first wave off. Now, he had to go way upwind, get behind everybody. But he came around again, lined up again, and he came in, and he still kept his nose high. I don't know what he was thinking, and it got waved off again. Everybody waiting for McDonald, the perfect aviator, to get aboard the carrier. I was back now on the LSO platform, and enlisted gunners mate standing there. Didn't know me, didn't know McDonald. He turned to his buddy and he said, “I don't know who that jerk is, but we're going to have to shoot him down.” [audience chuckles] 

 

McDonald came on in. If you were going to do three landings and you missed all three cuts, they would send you back to the beach while you still had enough gas to make it, and you probably would not go with that squadron any place again. So, McDonald came over the cut. LSO gave him the cut. He was lined up. And then, as though McDonald was saying, “Screw you think my nose is high, watch this,” and he dropped his nose violently. Nose wheel first, bounced off the main landing gear, up into the air 50ft above the carrier deck. Not flying anymore, just hanging there in the air. Seemed a long time, but it was less than three seconds, and then he toppled off and fell over the port side of the ship. And by the time I rushed over, it was bubbles. 

 

Supersonic jet is designed to fly, cut through like a knife, the air. And you point it straight down into the ocean, it'll do the same thing that way. All I ever saw McDonald after that was a little bit of his tail disappearing down. The choppers would stay there as long as they could till dusk, hoping something would come up, some clue, maybe somehow, we would survive. The destroyers weren't going to go anyplace. It's their job to stay there and look for the survivor. But the carrier had a job to do. You've got 5,000 people dedicated to getting these aviators on a landing, getting them qualified, sending them out to defend the country. 

 

So, they were going to call the next flight. I hoped they didn't. They can't call me, because I am shaky. I am so shaky. My voice, I couldn't have talked. And they did call me. Now, I'm getting up on the escalator, and I start across the carrier deck toward my plane on the port side. As I was going across the carrier deck, I was thinking, which one of these am I going to lie about? I knew that I couldn't fly that airplane. I knew it'd be dangerous to myself and maybe other people, and I couldn't fly it. On the other hand, if I said I couldn't fly it, they'd pull my wings. I certainly wouldn't-- That whole part of my life would deteriorate. 

 

Got in the cockpit, got adjusted. Williston, the plane captain, he climbed up on the wing beside me, helped me adjust the shoulder braces. He was watching me as I went over. Each of the nine checks, the air pressure, the oxygen supply one by one. He was watching me as I was touching the gauges, which you do to be sure you're looking at the right gauge. I had to figure out some way to keep him going. If you're going to be catapulted off as I was off the front of the carrier, you have to have full throttle on all the time. When you're catapulted off, you're going to go from 0 to 130 miles an hour, the length of a basketball field. 

 

Your cheeks are going to feel as though they're behind your ears, but you've got your full throttle on. You better keep that full, otherwise you're going to go in the water ahead of the ship, you're going to get run over. So, the way you avoid that is there's a little spring-loaded finger that comes up. It's called the holdback rod or the holdback. You hold it and you put 100% power on, you check your gauges once again. If it's there, you call into air control and say, “I'm ready to go, I'm good to go,” and they taxi you off and off you go. I was not good to go. No doubt about that. I was not good to go. 

 

Between the throttle and the holdback rod, I was able to get my finger, my index finger, in so that I wasn't going to get to 100%, because I couldn't get the throttle all the way forward. I was going to be all right, I was going to safe, I was going to go home again, I wouldn't disappear. I held it there long enough to decide, okay, I'm going to report this. I'm not lying. I'm not getting 100% power. I'm not doing anything really terribly wrong. I pulled my finger out. It now lost circulation and it was very stiff. I pulled it out, and had my hand on the throttle at 96%, getting ready to hit the mic button to call Air Control. 

 

Williston, standing on my wing, reaching through the cockpit, just put his hand on mine. As he did, my hand, as though it had been pulled by an invisible wire, just gently went that last half inch, and I went to full power. Williston turned around and looked at me and he said, “You're 100% lieutenant. You're good to go. Have a great flight.” And they taxied me out. They strapped me into the catapult. I ran the throttle all the way up and wrapped it around the rod and prayed a little bit as well as I knew how. 

 

The catapult officer saluted and he was ready to fire me. Right hand saluted back that I was ready to go. I was launched into the air. Immediately, I was 130 miles an hour, climbing to supersonic speeds. I went around, and I got in the line, and I came back, and I made another landing. I went on, and I made dozens more landings night and day, heavy fog, rain, midnight, sun in your eyes. I thought about McDonald every once in a while, and I thought about my father and how they disappeared. I knew there was a little fear down there someplace that was crying. But I never thought about not being ready to go again, and it carried me on through my whole life.