A Young Boy's Dream

By Captain Aubrey L. (Al) Wise

The author describes his Navy life beginning with growing up in the" Cradle of Naval Aviation" in Pensacola, Florida during the mid-1940's and 1950 time periods. He also writes about the social aspects of those times in Pensacola and the effects World War 11 naval officers and enlisted had on him. He writes about the deadly seriousness of combat

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Writing Cube
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798868905025

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A Young Boy’s Dream

Captain Aubrey L. (Al) Wise, USN, RET.

All rights reserved.

First published and printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Book Writing Cube

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Published by Book Writing Cube

Printed in the United States

Copyright © 2023 Captain Aubrey L. Wise

Dedication

I must have a separate section for the person who made 98% of this wild ride with me.

In the summer of 1959, I met Patricia Bainter Wise at a ballpark. She was 16, and I was 17. We got married while in college and shortly entered the aviation world. She was 20, and I was 21. We had our first daughter, Kim, in January 1964.

From December 1962 until, unfortunately, the end, Pat was the epitome of what it meant to be one of the struggling wives who held the families together during some of the most demanding times. Viet Nam and the post Viet Nam era had low to miserable pay, no housing, no Navy support, multiple deployments with short turnarounds, constant detachments, and in our case, very little meaningful shore duty.

Our second daughter, Leigh, was born in October 1968, and I got deployed again in 1969 to begin another period of my career which included eight more deployments.

Other than Vietnam, the cycle continued, but the pay was better. Pat always did her duty above and beyond and more than covered for some of my boneheaded moves. She was a Navy wife and mother extraordinaire, and without her, there would be no book, for there would have been no career.

Obviously, without Pat, there would be no Kimberly Wise Cowan or Leigh Wise Penner. Both girls growing up during these times were as close to perfect as one can be. They never complained, never were any trouble. Well, Leigh would complain a little, but her complaints did not last long. Both girls had excellent work ethics that show today in their professional lives. Yes, they were Navy brats, using the old term for Navy children, and I am very proud of them.

Typing this, it just dawned on me that Leigh has never forgiven me for not putting in a second pool after one of our moves. Don’t worry, Leigh, your mother has never let me forget I traded in her brand-new Volkswagen for a used Thunderbird that we could not afford.

About the Author

Preface

This part is strictly thievery of verbiage from one of those senior naval aviators, Captain Thomas P. Scott, USN (Ret.), who not only inspired me but saved my bacon.

I am not an author, but I must admit in my early days thought I could be. Thank goodness I did not think too hard. I am known as someone who has stories. I either write or speak in sometimes short, non-sensical sentences or long Faulkner-like sentences. Sometimes beautiful sentences and phrases, and sometimes What the hell is he talking about?

Unlike CAG Scott, who says in his book, The Stories of One Shot Scott, I think of myself as a fair historian.

This book of stories is written strictly from memory with no notes, background research, or help. This is my attempt to share what it was like in my small piece of naval aviation during my fling with it. I have not embellished anything. It is strictly as I lived it, and one will find I am usually the goat.  

I probably could have written something double in size of printable stories, but I have tried to hit the highlights of a period that covered from 1944 to 1989.

Any book or story about naval aviation is full of abbreviations, acronyms, slang, and hidden language. Instead of listing what all of them mean on a separate page, I have attempted to explain them in the narrative. Hope I did. I took some liberty with capitalizing and quotes. I used quotations when I was absolutely sure I remembered, as it was being said many years ago. In other instances where I was not 100% sure, I left them off. I also attempted to capitalize on rank when I was speaking of a specific person.

I also have used some names here and there for emphasis on the stories but, for the most part, decided not to use all names. I am past 81 now, and many have passed. Not all were my idols, but the vast majority were and will always be.

I have had the most dynamic run since childhood, and because of you all, I think my life has been fairly successful, happy, funny, serious, sad, and very lucky, but never boring. Friends for life.

I want to thank Captain Tom Scott for his leadership, friendship, and excellent book to guide me.

I want to thank former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, for his advice from years ago that the two of us write a book on the beginnings of the Navy’s, Remotely Piloted Vehicle Program (RPV), later called Unmanned Vehicle (UAV) and now Drones. We never got around to doing it, but I think I gave it a good short shot in this telling.

I really have to give more than thanks to the now deceased Rear Admiral Thomas Russell, who, as a commander in VF-121 when I was an Ensign, told me I had to change my Navy name to Al, the first letters of my full name, Aubrey Lavoid, because no could ever remember Lavoid. It was great advice. It was easily remembered and helped me immensely in my career. Of course, because of that, it also nearly doomed me more than once. When I was an aide, I got the opportunity to pay him back. Admiral Russell.

Al, Magellan, Silver Tongue Devil, Pee Wee Harris, Rocky, and Captain A.L. Wise, USN, (Ret.)

Contents

Prologue

The Beginning

Basic Naval Aviation Officers School – Glynco, Georgia

VF-121, VF-213, Vietnam Magellan

Next Hangar Over and VF-213

Magellan

VF-213 Second Thoughts

VF-213, Those Who Also Served

VT-10

VF-74

VF-74, Second Cruise, WANG

VF-74 Second Cruise/Pee Wee Harris

Pee Wee Harris

Another World

Air Wing Operations Officer-Rocky

Fooled Again

VF-171 First Time

VF-11, the World Famous Red Rippers, WFRR, the Silver Tongue Devil

Commanding Officer VF-11

The Silver Tongued Devil

National War College- Sixth Fleet

VF-171

The Last Great Admin

Pentagon

Super (Senior) Cag

Underway, Gitmo, Work-Ups and Deployment

Home

What a Hoot!

Prologue

Why? That is an excellent question.

Why strive to write a book about Naval Aviation when dozens, if not millions, have already been published by great authors and naval legends?

Obviously, I am not a published novelist or a naval hero. So why?

Well, I figured I’d have a bunch of stories from a regular, average Navy Officer that one or two people could find fascinating, and besides, Father Time has honed in on me.

The Beginning

I was actually born in Jay, Florida, a crossroads town about 20 miles north of Pensacola. Even though my parents were living in Pensacola, my mother, like many in the South in those days, wanted to be with her mother when I entered life. Almost did not enter. The country Doc told my father he could save one but not both. My father said that it needed to be his wife. Boy, did I surprise them? Maybe that’s why I don’t believe my father ever called me by name. For many years I thought my name was Son.

During the period 1943-44, we lived right by the railroad tracks close to the Pensacola Depot. Coal-burning trains. There was no good or side of the tracks, just bad.

My first remembered association with the Navy was in 1944. My strong-willed mother took me and my weeks-old brother on the train to Norfolk, VA, where my drafted father was just finishing boot camp. My mother had never been more than 20 miles from her mother. The train was packed with sailors, and they took care of us. I still remember how they gave me ice cream by folding the lid and scooping. I can also still hear ships’ guns firing practice rounds at night just off Ocean View on the Chesapeake. Mother rented a two-bit house for a few weeks. I only remember three things about the house, the freezing cold, how my brother slept in a dresser drawer, and I sat on a nail. Check out Ocean View today. Slightly changed.

My first memory of aviation was when I was five years old. I was lying on my back in the grass of my grandmother’s yard with my first of sixteen dogs, this one named Trigger, and up in the sky were these huge planes. Up until about a few years ago, I always thought they were B-36s out of the Eglin Air Force base, but I discovered there were no B-36s at that time. They were B-29s. This was 1946, and I was fascinated by them. Trigger did not have much to say on the matter.

When the war ended, my father worked at Whiting, Bronson, and Bloody Barin and ended up at NAS Pensacola. There was little to no housing in Pensacola other than Navy Point just outside of the main gate, so a bunch of us same-aged kids lived in Morena Court, half of which was Navy barracks. It is amazing that many of us remained tight friends most of our lives. Sad that only four are living at the time of this writing.

Moreno Court was only about two miles from Corry Naval Auxiliary Air Station. It was an advanced flight training facility and a beehive of day and night flying. All props, no jets, then. I was fascinated by the planes and, I guess, determined to do that one day. One day, my desires were not dented when my mother and I were sitting on our back steps when an F8F Bearcat came just a few feet over us, canopy open, on fire with flames in the cockpit. The pilot was in extreme distress, and he crashed just short of the runway where the Navy Exchange is today. I was blessed with a very good memory, and while it is good to have most of the time today, 76 years later, I am taken aback by the image of flames in the cockpit.

The early days, right after the war and before the Korean War started, was a period when the Navy destroyed thousands of aircraft. Untold numbers were just dropped into the ocean. I saw some of this happening in Pensacola.

In 1947, I started school in Warrington, and we moved into a house literally on the other side of the tracks. It was close to the bay and very close to many post-World War II naval aviators. My house was 2.5 miles from NAS Pensacola’s main gate, and my school was loaded with naval aviation dependents. All of this was starting to add to my desire to become a Naval Officer. These things described above really made Pensacola different from most Deep South towns. We thought that since we were on unlimited water and isolated from the main tourist tracks, life in other areas of the world could not offer more than we had. We realized at the time that what we believed was a small slice of paradise had several social, economic, and ethnic issues. The many Navy facilities had a moderating influence on the brewing racial upheaval coming.

We nonmilitary dependent kids were a very tight group. My gang consisted of about 20 of the craziest, wild, and free-spirited, and in that group, the core became the Wild Bunch. Talented, not lazy, some gifted athletes, some like me, the runts, and wannabee athletes. The girls were typically Southern. Good looking and would let you copy their homework. Can’t beat that combination. The military brats fit right in, but sadly, they did not stay long and, for the most part, vanished from our lives over time.

A couple of things happened during the 50s that had a great impact on my future. All of us in the Wild Bunch had paper routes. Very lucrative jobs for kids of very modest means parents. We could make $20-25 per week. Not bad in 1955 for 14-15-year-old boys. It was very tough work, though. Up in the mornings, 3:30-4:00 am, seven days a week. We had to fold stack and deliver by bike to between 100 and 130 homes in the morning. Back home, breakfast, and bike to school and back. The same thing happened in the afternoon for the evening paper. Thursday and Friday nights were for collecting from customers and paying our bills on Saturday mornings. We were early junior versions of independent contractors.

My paper route stretched from Bayou Chico to the Pensacola Country Club. It had some of the poorest at one end and the most affluent at the other end, making up for the most part of old Pensacola families. It had some dirt roads that wound around the bay side among 1890s mansions. It was scary in the morning, and unlike other routes, it had three segregated sections. The middle section is where most of the World War II types mentioned earlier lived. Several were well-known historical Captains and Admiral types. Also, a couple of Tombstone Admirals existed. If you were a captain and had a silver star when you retired, you could retire with the honorific title of Admiral. No Admiral money, but what the heck? Most people did not know the difference.

With the exception of a couple, they all talked to me and did not mind me bugging them. They were very open with a 14-15-year-old on a bike. I was at that time completely hooked on naval aviation. One of their houses was a scene in a John Wayne/Maureen O’Hara movie, Wings of Eagle. Yes, I was there with the Bunch and my girlfriend at the time watching the filming. The girl at that time was a catch for a runt. She was it, and no other worries. She dropped me and later married a naval aviator whom I came to know quite well later in life.

The paper route was not all talk. I witnessed two murders. One by gunshot, maybe about 50 feet away from me at five in the morning. Domestic. Thank goodness my buddy Phillip was with me. He was a Wild Buncher and no braver than me, just bigger. The second one happened just around that corner on a Friday night. I had just collected from a customer, and from around the house came a man who jumped up on the porch and stabbed my customer in the heart with an ice pick just as I turned my back on them. He was also my customer. Beginning of the end of my paper business.

Postscript on the girlfriend issue. After being dumped by my first love, I met a daughter of a captain aviator. A real coup, but she stiffed me for one of my Bunch. Pledges of lifelong loyalty only went so far in the Bunch. I was nearing the end of my high school romances when I snagged another. Later she told me to hit the road. Why? I asked. Without me, you are out of the social circle. She said, Obviously, you have no problem getting them, but you can’t keep them. Girls do not like it when you spend the majority of your time with your buds and ignore them in the school halls while talking and laughing with the same buds. I guess that might have been the beginning of holding court in the NAS Oceana Officers Club back bar.