"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. . ."[From High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. - killed at age 19, 1941, during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick, Lincolnshire.]
Initial Flight Training
In the late 1960's, there were a number of different paths toward becoming a naval officer and then entering U.S. Navy Flight School at NAS Pensacola – among them, the U.S. Naval Academy, NROTC, the NavCad and AVROC programs. My vehicle to Pensacola (aside from an old and ugly, green Rambler college car) was the Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate (AVROC) program.
As an AVROC, I attended Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola (the "Annapolis of the Air") during each of the summers following my sophomore and junior years in college. Then, upon college graduation, I was commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy, and returned once again to the "Cradle of Naval Aviation," NAS Pensacola, to commence naval flight school.
My aviation journey got off to an inauspicious start when, traveling in the summer of 1968 from my Iowa home to initial flight training in Pensacola, my old green "college car" finally died in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. However, within a few weeks like most new Ensigns, I would be driving a shiny new sports car, fresh off the lot... and in debt.
Following a few short weeks of pre-flight ground school at "Mainside" NAS Pensacola, it was only a few miles up the road to NAS Saufley and basic, T-34 flight training. Finally, after two summers of AOCS (Aviation Officer Candidate School) and another summer in ground school, in the fall of 1968, I would finally fly.
As I eagerly approached the main gate to check in, a T-34 crashed just behind me into the golf course, well short of the runway.
As I would later learn, this rude welcome to a new duty station would unfortunately be repeated a number of times. Naval Aviation of that period had a real and palpable element of danger.
With only 16 hours in the T-34, and no prior flying experience, I soloed on October 4, 1968. Then after 20 days and a total of 25 flight hours in the T-34B, I had to follow a choice for further training: Props or jets? I chose jets based as much upon what my friends had decided as my own desire. Very soon I would realize what an excellent choice that was!
Nevertheless, for jet training I unfortunately had to leave Pensacola for VT-7 in Meridian, Mississippi.