Leaving San Diego and all our friends behind for an unknown place in California’s central valley in the summer of 1963 was bittersweet, but my siblings and I viewed it as a new adventure. It would also become a part of our normal, and accepted, way of life. Didn’t all families move every two years? Moreover, my father’s excitement about returning to the cockpit and flying jet aircraft was infectious, as was his promise that we would meet all kinds of new friends at the base. Outwardly my mother was enthusiastic and reassuring about the move, and she kept any reservations she had quietly to herself. After all, she was a Navy wife, and this is what Navy wives had done for decades: follow their husbands from one assignment to the next while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy at home and unconditionally supporting their husbands’ careers.

The drive north up Highway 99 toward Bakersfield and beyond saw the landscape transformed as my brothers and sister peered out from the station wagon’s windows. The parched landscape of oil fields dotted with “giant metal grasshoppers” (which my father carefully explained were reciprocating piston pumps designed to pump the oil from the well) steadily gave way to seemingly endless, fertile fields of grapes, cotton, tomatoes, and alfalfa that were watered by mile after mile of irrigation ditches and water pipelines. Dozens of small towns with interesting and often funny names like Delano, Pixley, and “Too Larry” (Tulare) passed by before we turned west on Highway 198 toward Lemoore itself.

My mom, the Kansas farm girl, was in her element. She expertly answered our constant stream of questions. What kind of crops are those? Why is that field all dirt? What’s that funny smell? (This was our first introduction to a commercial dairy farm.) Unlike many other pilots’ wives who would find Lemoore’s rural and small town feel as isolating and even depressing after having lived in San Diego or in the San Francisco Bay area, to my mom it felt a lot like home.

We spent our first night in Lemoore at the Kings Rest Motel (still operating today) out on Highway 41, nestled among a few oak trees just north of the town. In what was to become a familiar Emerson family tradition with every move, we would stay a day or two at a local motel until we had cleaned the new residence to my mom’s exacting standards. Only then were the new quarters ready to move into. These were family affairs with my dad handling the heavy chores, my mom focusing on the kitchen, bathrooms, and floors, and we kids doing our part as directed. One learned early on the value of hot, soapy water and elbow grease!

The short drive from the motel to our new home for the first time was filled with excitement and anticipation. After driving westward on Highway 198 and crossing the concrete bridge over the meandering, muddy waters of Kings River, we caught our first glimpse of the naval air station: a long row of single-story non-descriptive houses that sat several hundred feet behind an eight-foot-high, chain-linked fence paralleling the highway. Adorning the fence every quarter mile or so were signs proclaiming: “US Government Property – No Trespassing.” We soon approached a flashing yellow light across the highway that marked the entrance to the main gate on the right. Prominently displayed in bold letters over the entrance were the words: Naval Air Station Lemoore. The Marine on duty saluted my dad, and we drove onto the base for the first time. Welcome to NAS Lemoore. This would be our new home.

The drumbeat of war escalation had been steady since my dad departed Midway in July 1965. President Johnson had announced his intention to increase the number of U.S. ground troops to 125,000 that same month, and the initial American search-and-destroy operations in South Vietnam had just begun. A 1965 Christmas truce had turned into a prolonged 37-day bombing halt as the Johnson Administration pursued an ill-fated diplomatic effort to achieve a peace settlement, but when this failed military escalation became a fait accompli. A huge troop surge in 1966 would bring the total U.S. troop presence in South Vietnam to 385,000 men, rising to nearly a half million men by the end of 1967. The bombing campaign against North Vietnam had also gained momentum as the Johnson Administration sought to tighten the screws on Hanoi, and Lemoore-based squadrons were increasingly called on to shoulder much of this burden.

The first year of the war was proving to be a warmup act to the next two years, especially for naval aviation. The North Vietnamese made good use of the Christmas bombing halt to rebuild or repair much of their damaged transportation infrastructure and reconstituted, resupplied, and strengthened their air defenses. By early 1966, U.S. intelligence believed that the North had constructed nearly 14,000 anti-aircraft positions and had some two dozen SA-2 surface-to-air missile battalions rotating among some 100 identified missile sites. Critically, transportation routes and key cities south of the 20th parallel, which were the focus of the American bombing campaign, bristled with heavy caliber anti-aircraft weapons, fire guidance radars, and SAM sites. The area between Thanh Hoa and the central logistics hub at Vinh was especially well defended. Proving just how deadly this could be, in the first two months of resuming Rolling Thunder in 1966, a total of 29 American aircraft would be lost along with 24 pilots and crew.

To help counter the growing air defense threat, both the Navy and Air Force increasingly relied on specialized aircraft and SAM and flak suppression missions to accompany all strike packages. Armed with the state-of-the-art air-to-ground missile known as the Shrike, Navy A-4 “Iron Hands” and Air Force F-105F “Wild Weasels” were able to home in on enemy guidance radars from up to 25 miles away. Although North Vietnamese SAM gunners quickly learned to turn off their guidance radars to disrupt the Shrikes’ homing ability, the continual threat of these missiles often acted as an effective deterrent to SA-2 launches.

Nonetheless, it was often a dangerous, adrenaline-pumping, cat-and-mouse game that American pilots played as they took on the North Vietnamese defenders. “An A-4 can’t outfly an SA-2 missile,” recalled Ernst “Mel” Moore, “but it could certainly out turn one.” As a veteran combat pilot and XO of Lemoore-based VA-192 in late 1966, Commander Moore repeatedly volunteered to fly Iron Hand missions. He reasoned that such confrontations were always going to be military to military, which aligned with his desire to avoid inflicting collateral civilian casualties during bombing missions.

Restrictive rules of engagement, tight White House control over target selection and sortie rates, and prohibitions against attacking critical targets—including North Vietnamese airfields—in and around Hanoi and Haiphong, however, continued to constrain the air campaign. For pilots, too, the Johnson Administration’s micromanagement of Rolling Thunder was also a constant bone of contention. Many complained of being forced to fight a war with one arm tied behind their back. Eventually the reins would be loosened, but lingering White House concerns over drawing the Soviets and Chinese into the war and further political upheaval in Saigon prevented the dramatic overhaul and expansion that many military men sought.

Nonetheless, the next several months saw Hanoi’s transportation network and important industrial and economic targets in the northeast come under repeated attack by American warplanes. In April 1966 alone, naval aircraft from USS Ticonderoga and USS Kitty Hawk put several major bridges out of service, including the important Hai Duong bridge over the Thai Binh River between Haiphong and Hanoi. At the same time Air Force planes were hitting major infrastructure targets to the north and west of Hanoi, including a highly successful strike on the Thai Nguyen railyard northwest of the capital that inflicted major damage. Several other bridges along the rail line to the northeast of Hanoi, however, proved to be tougher nuts to crack. Over the course of two days, the Air Force would lose four F-105s to anti-aircraft fire and SA-2 missiles during attacks on the Phu Lang Thuong bridge. Knocking out the nearby Bac Giang rail bridge that was close to the MiG fighter base at Kep airfield, would be even more challenging. It would take five missions and behemoth 3,000-pound bombs to finally collapse several spans of the bridge in early May.

...
By the time of the 1966 Christmas bombing pause, American pilots had flown more than 79,000 sorties, including 280 B-52 strikes, and dropped over 100,000 tons of bombs on the North. According to U.S. estimates, Rolling Thunder operations had destroyed or damaged nearly 5,500 vehicles, 13,600 military buildings, more than 3,400 bridges, and sunk at least 6,300 rivercraft of various types and sizes, as well as made more than 8,000 road cuts and nearly 900 rail line cuts, while destroying or damaging some 1,200 anti-aircraft sites and 77 SAM sites. Nonetheless, Hanoi showed no sign of capitulating. If the air campaign was to be successful, the Americans would certainly have to increase the pressure further.

No one who has ever been assigned to, or lived at Naval Air Station Lemoore, or simply NAS Lemoore in Navy lingo, is ever likely to forget the experience. It was often either the best of times or the worst of times, with little room in-between. A tour of duty there was often personally demanding, yet professionally rewarding. NAS Lemoore, lying in a remote and sparsely populated part of central California’s San Joaquin’s Valley some 40 miles south of Fresno, could be a harsh and isolating place, especially in its early days. For those assigned there it seemed light years away from the glamor of San Francisco’s big city lights or the sun-drenched beaches of San Diego’s Coronado Island. Moreover, the irony of being assigned to a “Navy base” in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley was not lost on anyone receiving orders to report there for the first time. In spite of all these challenges, NAS Lemoore would come to evolve into so much more than just another naval air station as the nation drifted toward war in Southeast Asia in the early 1960s. For the Vietnam War would come to define the base and a generation of Lemoore pilots and sailors, as the heart and soul of naval attack aviation, establishing a legacy that endures to this very day.

From a 20,000-acre patch of arid, sunbaked, and tumbleweed strewn ground located about 10 miles west of the small, quiet farming town of Lemoore, California sprang not just the Navy’s newest Master Jet Base in 1961, but so too the seeds of a new community. One that would reshape the cultural, social, and economic identity of the area for more than a half century to come. It would indeed be a learning experience for all, and one that certainly had its growing pains for the Navy and locals alike. Yet, over time the relationship matured and developed into something greater than the sum of its parts. For those passing through the gates of base during the Vietnam War years, their lives and those of their families would be forever changed by the experience. It was be one filled with great excitement and adventure, that was frequently tempered by a lingering sadness and loss. Of incredible achievements weighed against bitter disillusionment and frustration. But most of all the experience created a level of connectivity and camaraderie that forged a special bond among all those who served at Lemoore in those years.

For most children, like me, my siblings, and my friends, coming of age there in the 1960s and early 1970s it provided a safe and nurturing environment for exploration and testing the limits of our independence. It was indeed our kingdom. We were constantly roaming at will across the vast expansiveness of the base, either on foot or by bike, on our own or together in small packs seeking out new adventures and activities. Whether it was trekking to the Officers Club (O’Club) pool on hot summer afternoons. Going to the library or the 25-cent Saturday matinee at the base movie theater. Checking out the latest toy arrivals at the Navy Exchange or buying French fries—we rarely had money for a hamburger too—at the base bowling alley, this world was our oyster and we relished it.

There was always something going on in our neighborhoods too. One had to simply walk out the door to find a pickup game of football or baseball or kids playing marbles. We could join in a game of tag, hide-and-seek, or kick the can, or try our hand at someone’s improvised obstacle course. The latter usually involving some sharply-pointed objects or dangerous activity to make it more interesting. We were generally given a long leash by our parents, but knew the critical boundaries: do not embarrass your father and be home in time for dinner.

It was a far different life for the wives and our mothers. Being stationed at Lemoore was not exactly the exciting and glamorous life that many young Navy wives had envisioned for themselves when they married their dashing Navy pilot husbands. Thus, orders to Lemoore were frequently not met with the wildest of enthusiasm by them. The reality was often ever worse, with more than one wife breaking down in tears upon seeing the isolated base for the first time, and disappointing housing that “looked more like a trailer park” than Navy quarters, recalls one former pilot. Seasoned Navy wives already at Lemoore did their best to welcome the new arrivals and assuage any disillusionment. But it could be an uphill struggle. Weekly squadron wives’ coffees, shopping trips to Fresno, family events or even just a friendly shoulder to cry on, were balanced with a kindly reminder that this was the reality of Navy life. And wives, moreover, were expected to suffer in silence if need be to advance their husband’s careers.

As the war in Vietnam heated up and the cycle of combat deployments intensified, family separations became the new norm. Mothers became the de facto head of household and found themselves trying to maintain a sense of normalcy amid the backdrop of war, while doing their best to insulate their children from the worst vestiges of that war. Increasingly this meant taking on non-traditional roles and responsibilities, that they neither particularly wanted nor desired. It would prove to be a difficult and stressful balancing act, that often took them far outside of their comfort zones. Many women stepped up to the challenge and flourished, finding their voice and taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent themselves. Others, however, became overwhelmed and withdrawn, unable to cope. Unfortunately, alcohol and loneliness often went hand-in-hand in these cases. Marriages and families often cracked under the stress, and the divorce rate rose exponentially as the war dragged on.

In sharp contrast, pilots assigned to the base found it usually one of the most exhilarating times of their professional lives. Being at Lemoore was all about flying—and that is what they joined the Navy to do. Many experienced pilots, like my dad were excited to get back into the cockpit and be flying again after a non-flying tour of duty. While newly-minted young pilots were eager to join their first operational fleet squadron. As one pilot simply stated, “Lemoore equaled opportunity.” The lack of noise restrictions and great flying weather meant more seat time for pilots of all stripes from which to hone their skills in the skies over the central valley. Flight operations at the base ran round the clock and it was common for a pilot to fly multiple training “hops” or missions in a single day. Likewise, we kids learned to fall asleep to the sounds of jet aircraft roaring gently overhead. It was all completely normal.

The arrival of the Navy, however, was met with a mixture of excitement and trepidation by the local Lemoore community…

While my dad was off on his second WestPac/Vietnam deployment with VA-146, life on the base went on as usual for us kids as we coped with the everyday challenges of our adolescent years. The fact that our dad was off fighting in Vietnam made us even more cognizant of the war and the danger he was facing as we were older now, but then again, we knew someone’s dad was always away and in harm’s way. It was war after all. Unfortunately, death and dying had become the backdrop to our lives and something we subconsciously learned to accept. This sense of fatalism, however, was greatly offset by the confident belief, even certainty, that nothing bad was ever going to happen to our dad. He was going to come back, like he always did. This may have seemed detached from the reality of war, but to think otherwise was simply inconceivable to us.

Still death did come our way. There was simply no way of avoiding it if you lived in Lemoore during the war years. With the end of the Rolling Thunder campaign in November 1968, the intensity of the air war diminished greatly, but still Lemoore pilots were continuing to die. Each loss was dealt with in stoic, professional silence. There were no casualty lists on bulletin boards. No public announcements in the Golden Eagle newspaper, only notifications passed privately to squadron members and to close friends of the family. Often one didn’t even know or realize someone had been killed until weeks later or with the scheduling of a memorial service. Widows packed up their households for the move off base and said their tearful goodbyes, while children were urged by their mothers to carry on “as your father would have expected” and stay strong. Then life for everyone else went back to normal—such that was normal.

Like with most families at Lemoore facing this potentially dire situation, it was the wife and mother who held things together during deployments. My mom was a rock. She provided us with a delicate mix of wartime realism, tempered by insulating us from its worst and most graphic vestiges, which was exactly what we needed. From her perspective it was all about adherence to one’s faith and trusting in God, doing your duty, and living up to your responsibilities. The latter for us kids was quite straightforward: we were expected to do our absolute best in school, complete our chores without complaining, and not embarrass our father in any way, shape, or form. For me personally, falling short in any of these areas and disappointing my mom was the worst thing I could do.

It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes, and that certainly can also be said of those whose loved ones are off fighting a war. This was never an issue, however, for my mom. As a strong and devout Catholic, she never wavered in her faith that God would keep her husband safe. More important, she was determined to make sure that the family was doing everything in its power to be sure that God was listening too. Thus, frequently after the evening meal as we all sat around the dining room table, my mom would take out her rosary and we would all join in saying the rosary with her. She also constantly reminded us to remember our dad in our personal prayers at night, although I have to confess that I probably just as often asked for the good Lord’s help with an upcoming Spanish test or getting a well-timed hit in my next baseball game.

We also regularly attended Sunday mass at the base chapel, with its wood-beamed, steeply vaulted ceiling and towering brick wall behind the altar that sat just off Avenger Avenue near the main gate. Staffed by Navy chaplains of all faiths, the nondenominational chapel served as a reassuring anchor of normality for us and other families. My sister Marilee was baptized there. It was a place where I received my First Holy Communion, where Paul and I were confirmed, and where my brothers and I served as altar boys. It hosted many a joyous wedding, as well as all too many solemn memorial services.

Prayers of all faiths sought the safe and speedy return home of the men of Lemoore. Many a religious service concluded with the singing of the Navy Hymn, Enteral Father, Strong to Save, with its fourth verse proclaiming: “O Spirit, Whom the Father sent, To spread abroad the Firmament; O wind of heaven, by Thy Might, Save all who dare the eagle's flight; And keep them by Thy watchful care, From every peril in the air.” For the aviators of Lemoore, there were more than enough perils in the air.

While we had our faith to fall back on, there was no escaping the daily reporting of the war with its images of dead American GIs, battle-scared landscape, and faces of terrified South Vietnamese civilians. Nonetheless, my mom did her best to shelter us from the most disturbing images and accounts of the war.

While my parents were grappling with the myriad of challenges surrounding our growing family, the squadron’s readiness, and the pending deployment to Vietnam, my siblings and I were busy just being kids that summer of 1968. With school out, we filled our days with playful activities; thoughts of the war and its potential consequences were far removed from our minds. We were living for today.

The final weeks of my “senior year” as a fifth grader at Neutra ended on a high, with me hitting my academic stride, much to the delight of my parents. I, along with about a dozen of my fellow classmates, including Steve Anderson and Michelle Moore, were rewarded with an honor roll field trip to Los Angeles. We boarded a Navy bus early one Saturday for the three-hour trip south and then a whirlwind four days of educational and fun-filled activities, including visiting the La Brea tar pits, the Griffith observatory, seeing a premier of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a local production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

....
With the conclusion of baseball season, Boy Scouts took center stage for the Emerson boys. In March 1968, I had joined my brothers in the base’s Troop 425 after attaining the minimum age requirement and being assigned to the Eagle patrol of which my older brother, Mark was the patrol leader. It was quite a large troop with at least 80 scouts fueled in part by the large families with multiple boys of scouting age—ours, the Eggerts, McConnells, and Bakers for instance. Weekly meetings were held at the base chapel’s fellowship hall, where we learned new skills and practiced old ones, organized troop activities, and conducted inter-patrol competitions.

While ours was a typical scouting experience of the times in many respects, our troop’s Navy roots also gave it a distinctive and unique spin. Our fathers served as scoutmasters, assistants, and served on the troop’s board, which instilled a higher level of discipline and order than was common in most Boy Scout troops. Special attention was given to our appearance and behavior, just as in the military: “look sharp and be sharp” was our mantra. Whether it was the proper care and wearing of our uniforms, formation marching, or carrying out ceremonial functions, we sought to establish a high standard of professionalism and excellence, much like our fathers did.

In addition to this mindset, we also had unique access to all sorts of military surplus, equipment, and supplies that set our troop apart. Old parachutes became tents and shelter covers. Surplus C rations were in abundance on hikes. We had seemingly endless amounts of heavy-duty rope for lashing structures together, repelling off hillsides, or building suspension bridges. We used pilot emergency signal mirrors to communicate or for starting campfires, and more than one scout carried one of his dad’s orange switchblade parachute knives.

Like our dads, the war also had a profound impact on us as scouts. I vividly recall when one Navy corpsman recently returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam after serving as a medic with a Marine combat unit. He began to teach us about infiltration tactics, Viet Cong booby traps, and how to recognize an ambush site during one summer camp, while often regaling us with humorous stories of how he coped with life-threatening situations while “in the Nam.”

Not surprisingly we ate this up. Thus, we sited our campsites on the best defensible terrain and surrounded them with homemade fortifications and booby traps. We, too, had no qualms about low crawling our way through the muck of a swamp to gain a surprise advantage over our opponents in a game of capture the flag, which only served to burnish our reputation among other troops as being bad-asses. No one messed with Troop 425. Most of all, this attitude instilled in us a mental toughness at an early age, a sense of team purpose, and the motivation to overcome obstacles.

The big scouting event of that summer, however, was the planned ascent of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental United States, by the troop members as part of the recently established Mt. Whitney Trek Award. I don’t recall the background behind the initiative or who pushed the idea, but it soon gained popularity among many of the older scouts, who began to organize a rigorous training schedule and conditioning program in true Navy fashion.

Despite the all-out effort, the impact of the Flaming Dart operations was much less than expected in terms of damage inflicted and the intended deterrent message to Hanoi lacking in forcefulness. The 267 combat sorties flown resulted in the destruction of or damage to only 69 buildings out of a potential 491. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was highly critical, saying that future “communications of resolve…will carry a hollow ring unless we accomplish more military damage than we have to date.” President Johnson would lay the foundation for a new, more robust message on February 13 when he decided “to execute a program of measured and limited air action” jointly with the Saigon government against selected targets in the north, south of the 19th parallel (about 80 miles into North Vietnam). The stage was set for Operation Rolling Thunder to begin.

Delays caused by political instability in Saigon and poor weather pushed back the start of the air campaign to the afternoon of March 2, 1965—six days before the first of 3,500 U.S. Marines would wade ashore at Da Nang, South Vietnam. Originally proposed as an eight-week campaign of coercive diplomacy through a graduated escalation of air attacks on selected targets, the Johnson Administration sought to convince North Vietnamese leaders that they would pay too high a price for their intransigency in continuing to support the Viet Cong insurgency in the south.

With vivid imagery, the air campaign envisioned “rolling the line of thunder” very slowly from the demilitarized zone northward, coming ever closer to Hanoi and forcing the Ho Chi Minh government to capitulate. Moreover, this could be done, so reasoned the Administration, without provoking military intervention by China and the Soviet Union and thus widening the conflict. Although politically driven, Operation Rolling Thunder had the added benefit of hindering the flow of supplies and infiltration from the North, but it was never designed as a strategic interdiction campaign. As complicated and nuanced as the strategy was, confidence was high in Washington that it would be only a matter of time before the North Vietnamese leadership buckled under the pressure and came to the negotiating table.

Within a few weeks of the campaign’s start, a number of operational changes were made to allow strikes on a daily basis (instead of the original weekly), include U.S. Air Force aircraft from bases in Thailand, and permit random armed reconnaissance missions to attack targets of opportunity. Thus, by mid-March American and South Vietnamese planes were pummeling North Vietnamese barracks, naval bases, supply and ammunition depots, POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) sites, and road infrastructure south of the 20th parallel with regularity. A number of these missions would involve more than 100 aircraft.

In tandem with these missions against the enemy’s infrastructure, a concerted effort was made to degrade the North Vietnamese early warning capability. The Navy was given the task of knocking out four of the well-defended coastal radar sites at Bach Long Vi Island, Ha Tinh, Vinh Son, and Cap Mui Ron. The attacks continued throughout March with the Hancock and Coral Sea air wings suffering substantial losses: seven aircraft and two pilots killed. It also provided some hard-earned lessons for the inexperienced Rolling Thunder pilots.

On one such mission, a 70-plane alpha strike from Hancock was charged with taking out the radar site at Ha Tinh, south of Vinh city. Included in the strike package were Skyraiders from the Barn Owls of VA-215, which had departed Lemoore back in late October. While the Skyhawks of VA-212 and VA-216 made bombing runs on the radar facility, the A-1s and F-8 Crusaders hammered the air defenses with bombs, rockets, and 20-mm cannon fire.

During his sixth pass over the target, Lt. (j.g.) Gus “Goose” Gudmunson’s Spad was severely damaged by enemy fire. “I should have stopped after the fourth pass…but we were too stupid and gung-ho to know better,” recalled Gudmunson. Turning toward the ocean, he coaxed his crippled plane southward toward Da Nang to make an emergency landing. Da Nang operations directed him to a hastily foamed patch of ground at the airfield to avoid tying up the single main runway and “boy, was I happy to get that,” recounted Gudmunson. He walked away from the crash landing, but the A-1 was written off as a total loss.

This was the situation that greeted my dad and his fellow VA-22 pilots aboard Midway when the ship took up station on the line on April 10, 1965, as Rolling Thunder was already in its second month. It would be the first combat cruise for the pilots of the three Lemoore-based attack squadrons—VA-22, VA-23, and VA-25—who would follow in the footsteps of their brethren from Lemoore already on station. It was also a wakeup call. In the eight months since the Gulf of Tonkin incident, 14 Lemoore-based squadrons had already seen combat; 17 aircraft were lost in combat or through operational accidents; eight pilots were dead; and two pilots had been shot down and captured. And this was just the beginning.

Midway would join up with the veteran Coral Sea and the soon-to-be arriving USS Oriskany to form the core of Task Force 77 as both Ranger and Hancock rotated off Yankee Station by May 1965. Like the squadrons before them at this stage of the war, morale and confidence were high. Pilots were both anxious and excited to be heading into combat; it is what they trained for, and now they would be put to the ultimate test.

The first combat missions for my dad and the Fighting Redcocks would become part of a familiar pattern in the years ahead for new air wings coming on line. It began first with a tuning-up period flying in the low-threat South Vietnamese theater of operations before heading up north. On April 15, U.S. military advisers requested naval air support to assist hard-pressed South Vietnamese forces battling the growing Viet Cong threat northwest of Saigon. Midway and Coral Sea pilots, along with support from the aircraft flying off the USS Yorktown positioned at the newly created Dixie Station, approximately 80 miles southeast of Cam Ranh Bay, struck suspected Viet Cong positions.

Relying on direction from forward air controllers circling overhead, my dad and his fellow Skyhawk pilots rolled in, unleashing 2,000 pounds of bombs each on the target area. Skyraiders of VA-25 also joined in the effort by pounding suspected Viet Cong positions in the area. Given the sense of urgency, most Midway pilots would fly at least two missions that day in support of South Vietnamese troops. Climbing out of their planes back on the ship at the end of the day with their adrenaline still pumping, the hot, sweaty, and tired pilots of CVW-2 congratulated themselves. They had done their job. Their training had paid off. They had proved themselves in combat.