The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington

Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier (Part 3 of 3)

Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia

Interview Date: October 14, 1966

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Abstract:

In this three-part oral history, fighter ace Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier is interviewed by Eugene A. Valencia about his military service with the Navy. In part three, Cormier discusses his time with the , shares more stories from World War II, and reflects on his military career. He concludes the interview with his thoughts on fighter aces and fighter pilots.

Biography:

Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier was born on December 19, 1919 in Centralia, Washington. He joined the in 1941 and was designated a naval aviator the following year. During World War II, Cormier served several combat tours, first with Composite Squadron 1 (VC-1) aboard the USS Card and then with Fighting Squadron 80 (VF-80) aboard the USS Ticonderoga and USS Hancock. He remained in the military after the war and continued his career with Fighter Squadron 2A (VF-2A), Fighter Photographic Squadron 61 (VFP-61), Attack Squadron 113 (VFA-113), and Air Group 11. He also commanded the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, during the mid-1950s and served as executive officer aboard the USS Wasp. Cormier retired as a captain in 1964 and passed away in 2001.

Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996.

Restrictions:

Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.

Transcript:

Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services

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Index:

Selecting and training the Blue Angels ...... 4

Blue Angels training schedule ...... 6

Funny experiences with the Blue Angels...... 6

Mishap in Ulithi ...... 8

Leaving the Navy ...... 9

Thoughts on fighter pilots ...... 10

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Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier (Part 3 of 3)

[START OF INTERVIEW]

0:00:00

[Selecting and training the Blue Angels]

EUGENE A. VALENCIA: Zeke, as we have discussed, one of the prime duties or the most sought-after duties of an aviator, a naval aviator, is that of selection of the team, the Blue Angels. You, as leader, when you selected the men—well, first off, will you tell me how the selection of a man comes about, as well as the determination if he'll remain.

RICHARD L. CORMIER: Well, if you recall, Gene, we mentioned at one time that there are— that the role of a pilot is a many-headed thing, and some things you do naturally better than you do other things. Some people, for instance, shoot the guns well, but you ask them to go on an instrument hop or you ask them to go night flying or night carrier landings, and they're not—they won't say they won't go, but they're not as eager to go as you say, “Let's go on a gunnery hop.”

0:01:15

RLC: The same thing is true in flying an airplane in formation. There are some people who like it and do it well and no matter what you ask them to do flying formation, it can be done. Well, the task of a team, of course, was to take some basic maneuvers that—and this is the way that it had evolved in the training command—to take some basic maneuvers taught to all the naval cadets, the ones in flight training, basic fighter maneuvers primarily, and bring them down to a level and do them in a manner that would demonstrate to the viewing public the kind of things that were taught to naval aviators. But bring them down where they could see them and do them in a formation that would demonstrate the type of precision that was taught to naval aviators. And so what we're doing, in effect—the team was, in effect—or kind of a showcase for the training command. This is the original conception of the team.

EAV: Yes, but Zeke, one thing, when that is announced, it always gets a chuckle from—well, not only the crowd, but from the aviators.

RLC: Well, you must remember now that the aviators in the audience represent about one-tenth of one percent of the total viewing audience, and you tell this to a 10-year-old, for instance—

0:03:03

EAV: Yeah.

RLC: …or you tell this to a 12-year-old and he hears this. Or a 15-year-old. He said, “By Jimmy, I want to do that. I want to become a naval aviator. If they can do that sort of thing and do it with four airplanes down here, think of how much fun it must be or how much of a thrill it 5 must be to do it in a high-powered airplane up where you can enjoy it.” So you're not reaching me. You're not doing this thing for the naval aviators, because naval aviators—or any kind of aviator, for that matter—looks at the total picture and says, "Well, I could do that, too." And when you come right down to it, with the kind of proper training and if the guy has any inclination or any talent in flying formation, he can be taught to do that.

EAV: So a man reports to the Angels, the Blues, do you take them out first as an example [unintelligible 00:03:55]

RLC: First of all, you ask for volunteers.

EAV: Oh, yes.

0:03:59

RLC: Okay. That narrows the picture down considerably just in that respect alone, because there are some who like to do that sort of thing and some others who think it's too dangerous. They just—or the team is gone too much or there are several other things. And so the scope of the problem is narrowed by just asking for volunteers. Okay, then from the volunteers, you look at the man's record and a recommendation from his last command, an aviating command, and then narrow it down even farther. And those who survive that little test then are brought to wherever the team may be at that time and have an opportunity to fly with one of the members of the team, not necessarily with a leader. And depending on how this flight goes, then the man is flown with the leader, and the leader makes the ultimate selection. But you can normally tell the way the man handles the airplane in just a couple of hops whether or not he is going to fit into the team. Or whether or not there's a place for him, for instance, as a solo pilot. But he has to have a desire to join the team to do what they do to begin with.

EAV: So the man with the desire and the equipment, you feel that you can develop this man into a team member?

RLC: Right. And sometimes it doesn't always work like that. I can remember one gent who was a very talented aviator and did—was with the team a short time as a solo pilot. He did a beautiful job. The maneuvers were precise and his timing was good and he handled the airplane beautifully, but he just didn't have that talent to fly in the formation. He, uh—and as close as I ever came to piling up the whole team was one formation that we did when we were canopy-to- canopy at a couple thousand feet in the air.

0:06:15

RLC: And how we were able to unscramble that, I don't know. But it was just because he became a little behind in the maneuver and then got a little panicky and damn near did us all in.

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[Blue Angels training schedule]

EAV: Zeke, what is a normal routine, if there is one of the team?

RLC: You mean the sequence of maneuvers or—

EAV: No, events. Well, let's say the routine training schedule.

RLC: Okay. The team selects an area that will give them the best flying weather, and this happens during the winter months. Now, this has been either in El Centro, at the Naval Air Station in El Centro, before they closed it, or Yuma or down at Key West, where you can count on the reasonably good flying weather during the winter months, during the stand-down period. So the transfers are affected during these three months, from November through January. Normally, the team will fly about 80 demonstrations in the operational year, which is from February through the last of November. So you can see that the team is pretty busy.

0:07:33

EAV: Oh, yes.

RLC: This is, you know—this is one-and-a-half a week. So they're busy as they can be, and there isn't time to train a new guy during the season. So you necessarily then have to take the winter months and go to an area where you can expect some good flying weather and fly at least three hops a day. So in between the shows, in the last months of the season, why, you're going through the routine of selecting the new pilots. And of course, the ideal situation is to take two in at a time and phase them into—either as into the formation or into the solo spot—[unintelligible 00:08:13] lead the solo people, the ones who have been flying the single airplanes, into the formation because they're more familiar with the routine. They've flown the airplane for at least a year, and they know what the problems are in flying formation. So the ideal situation is to fleet one of these people up into the formation every year. So then you fly six days a week, about two or three hops a day during the months of December and January and then take a two- or three- week break between the end of the training cycle and the start of the show season, which starts normally with the open house in New Orleans in February. That's normally the first show, has been for the past ten years.

[Funny experiences with the Blue Angels]

EAV: Zeke, you must have had some humorous experiences with the Angels?

RLC: Oh, yes. You always have—you have to have a few laughs or things get pretty dull. I think the—I can think of one funny incident that happened. The very first show that I flew—and actually, there was a little bit of stage fright, a little nervousness before the show—and there was one maneuver that I never was very clever at performing. It was called a Reverse Cuban Eight. 7

And it really didn't give you anything to look at when you stuck your nose up in the air to start your climb. This was sort of a mark one eyeball and air speed. And of course, the reverse turn was at the top of the climb, and then you pulled through and a half of a split S. And this was the first show we had done for the staff at Chief of Naval Air Training in Pensacola at Saufley Field.

0:10:11

RLC: This was in the spring of, uh—no, this is in the winter months of '53, as I had taken over for Ray Hawkins, Commander Hawkins. And Ray was still flying with the team to kind of talk the thing through a little bit. So we started this maneuver and kept getting a little slower and slower at the top and I started my turn and we were much too slow. And so a fellow by the name of Roland Aslund was flying on the left wing, and as we turn into him, why, he was on the inside of the turn, which made him even slower. He said, “We can't go through this thing. I'm going to spin.” He said, “You'll have to start pulling her. I'm going to spin out of this maneuver.” So Ray, who was always kind of a dry wit anyway, came up and said, “Well, if you're going to spin, spin in pairs in formation.” Which we did. [laughter]

It was kind of hairy at the time, but the funny part about it was that that the radio that we use— we have our own private frequency for communication between airplanes—and a gent by the name of Dick Newhafer was then the public information officer and was announcing it from the steps of the administration building, right—that faces onto the field. And standing next to him was Price and his chief of staff and some of the other higher-ranking officers in the training command. And he had a monitoring radio right there. So when the admiral heard us call for spinning in formation, he said, “That's the [laughing/unintelligible 00:12:02] in formation flying when you spin together.” But we all got together before we get over the field again, back over the field, and so the next show we did, why, we eliminated that maneuver. [laughter]

EAV: Zeke, I hear—I understand that you had your frequency monitored one other time—

0:12:28

RLC: Oh, yeah. That was—

EAV: …by the group instead of a select group?

RLC: Well, normally, we have the information on the frequency is not something for public use because it is a private—not private, but it's a frequency that's set aside specifically for this type of thing. And it's an exclusive frequency for the team. Well, unbeknown, we were doing a show in Miami—this was the same year, incidentally, that we were doing a show in Miami for the International at Opa-Locka, and the public information officer from the base had gotten our frequency—the setting for our frequency—and, not telling anyone on the team about it, had piped it into the radio and through the loudspeaker system to roughly 100,000 people who are witnessing the demonstration. Well, it'd been all right if he had let us know about it, or let me 8 know about it, because normally some of the maneuvers get a little hairy and the conversation gets a little hairier. So we had done a couple of maneuvers and no comment was made, and we had one maneuver that we called the Left Echelon Roll. It's a very tough maneuver because the turn is into the echelon and it's just—it can be a real hairy maneuver, particularly if the air is bumpy. So Kenny Wallace, Ken Wallace, Lieutenant Wallace was then flying in the slot number four spot, and after each maneuver, why, I'd normally call up and say, “How'd the maneuver go back there, Ken?” Or, “Was everything all right? Everything running all right?” And he'd have a comment of some nature, either, “Well, I need a little more power there” or “Keep your nose up, Bill, so you don't get in my way.” Or, you know, if it went poorly, why, he'd said, “It was pretty damn poor.” But this day it went very bad, and he got stretched out there and separated from the formation, maybe—

0:14:46

RLC: When we say “very bad,” three or feet out of formation. It's quite obvious. So we call it very bad. And so he said, “Well, you left me sitting out there like a bottle of urine on the doctor's table.” And this frantic voice comes over the radio then, “Blue Angel Leader, Blue Angel Leader, this is Opa-Locka Control.” And I didn't know who Opa-Locka control was. I thought, “Good heavens, we're being monitored by someone.” And he said, “Please don't use that kind of language on the radio.” And I said, “What difference does it make? We're all friends.” He said, “Because it's being piped into all the audience at the air show.” And I said, “Thank you, Charlie. We're okay because we're going over in Tampa and land.” [laughs]

EAV: I think that's great. I think that's great.

[recording stops and starts again 00:15:46]

[Mishap in Ulithi]

EAV: This will be another insert, separate insert, in and about Ulithi. Ulithi.

RLC: Oh, you want me to tell the story about—well, you know, Gene, the rest—what we call the rest and recreation area for the western Pacific at that time, was a little atoll to the east of the Philippine Islands called Ulithi. And on the island of Mogmog in the Ulithi Atoll was our recreation area. And it consisted of, oh, some palm trees and a beer-drinking hall and some horseshoe pits and some lounging area. And that was the sum and substance of it, and so we spent most of our time drinking beer. One day, we—and it rained and it was miserable over there and so we decided—about four or five of us went to go back to the ship. And we, rather than wait for the regular fare, why—which was an LST or an LSD or whatever those little troop carrier M-boats—why, we thought we'd go out and try to talk one of the motor boats into taking us to the Ticonderoga. 9

0:17:19

RLC: So we'd had about 14 beers or so. We were all feeling no pain. It was hot and sticky and we walked out to the end of the quay wall and there was one captain's gig there and the coxswain was sitting in the stern. I said, “How about—how about taking us out to the Ticonderoga? We don't want to wait for the regular boat.” And he'd had about three or four beers himself and was a little—sitting out in the sun getting a little high, and he said, “No, no. I can't do that because it's the captain's gig, and it's not the Ticonderoga’s boat." I said, “Well, it's only where the first ship that you come to. It'll only take you a couple minutes to go out there.” And we talked him into taking us out there. So we all piled in this captain's gig, and we're just clearing the wall, the quay wall, when this frantic figure comes running down the—from the—through the palm trees. “Wait a minute! That's my boat!” So he comes rushing out there, and sure enough, it was the captain of—it was either the Hornet or the Hancock, one of the other vessels, and I can't tell you the captain's name. But the coxswain had cleared away from the landing and we were still out about four or five feet and people were saying, “Oh, come on. Get up here. Come on, Captain, jump!” And he jumped and didn't make the boat. He fell in the water, and we thought, “Uh oh. Boy, we're in for it now. This is going to be the end of the line.” And we fished him out and dragged him by the seat of the pants and pulled him headfirst into his boat. He lost his hat, got all wet, ruined his watch, and his only comment was—and he'd had—of course, some of the senior officers could get something better than beer, and so he'd had a couple of those. And his only comment was, “Well, I'm not the broad jumper I used to be. Let's go.”

0:19:06

EAV: Geez, that's good.

RLC: So off we went to the Tico, and he was happy to give us a ride.

[recording stops and starts again 00:19:14]

[Leaving the Navy]

RLC: Which two of these now?

EAV: Zeke, why did you, as a successful naval officer, resign from the Navy?

RLC: I was afraid you were going to ask that one. Well, you have to look at the total picture, Gene, in equating your position in the Navy, and I reckon it back a little bit to Pal Fleming's philosophy in joining an organization that zeroes in on a man's ability to fly an airplane. And we talked earlier about a naval officer as such. I can't say that Pat Fleming's philosophy influenced my thinking as far as leaving the Navy or the naval aviation and joining the Air Force because I 10 have—I was extremely happy and more than content in being that, a naval aviator. It's an exciting and very, oh, self-satisfying type of occupation. It has enough challenge to it, to each new assignment, that there's always a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of personal interest, tremendous challenge to perfect skills that are necessary to conduct your performance to do the job and do it right. So I looked at the whole picture and thought, “Well, now, I'm 45 years old and have been selected for a captain, who has spent two years in grading captain. And what assignments await me as a senior naval officer and what will the ultimate goal be?"

0:21:18

RLC: You can only look at the history of naval officers and their performance of duty in qualifying them for the next grade of admiral. There's a prescribed route, a professional and career-planned route of duties that bring him to the broad stripe, even in line for a broad stripe. It includes command of a deep draft, both an auxiliary-type vessel and a carrier, or command; a graduate of the or an equivalent; a duty on a staff, an operational staff, carrier division preferably; and an assignment to a shore staff as either chief of staff or an operational billet. And so there's a definite pattern of career planning that has to be maintained, and then when you get down to the end of the line on this and you've done all these things, you have no assurance that there won't be somebody on the board who feels that you're not qualified to be an admiral. Well, one of those qualifications in the past has been that you be a graduate of the Naval Academy. Now, I don't find that that's objectionable. I find that that may sort of restrict and may color the thinking of the people on the board, and it doesn't mean that the people who’ve been NavCads, in particular my category, won't someday become admirals. But I just wasn't prepared at that time to accept this controlled planning for my future for the next ten years and then accept a failure at the end of that time, a failure in that I would not have been selected for admiral. I didn't want to take that chance. I felt that I was young enough at that time to pursue another career in civilian life. And the way was paved in any direction I wanted to go.

[Thoughts on fighter pilots]

EAV: Well, would you say that because you were a successful fighter pilot that you are an individual?

RLC: Oh, definitely. I think that each pilot, each fighter pilot—if you want to put it this way— each fighter pilot has expressed himself in a way that he sort of equates his life.

0:24:23

RLC: I don't think there's any other business in flying that allows a man to inject his own personal aggressiveness, astuteness, knowledge of himself and/or machine, to inject his personality into flying an airplane. This is really quite evident, particularly if you're ever 11

involved in scheduling, for instance. The men who are expressive in their views on general capabilities of airplanes, for instance, know what the airplane will do or will not do and test it up to its ultimate, you know, to find whether it'll do something other than what's advertised. Well, not all pilots will do that. In some instances, it may be a little foolhardy, and we all have tried to do some things in airplanes that the airplane was not meant to do. So what you've done is you have injected a degree of your personality into your flying, and I think to be a successful fighter pilot is indicative of a successful life in any endeavor.

EAV: Oh, now. This comes around to another point, which you have formed a pattern of 102 fighter aces, Army or Air Force or Navy or Marines. What happens to the successful combatant pilot or fighter ace at the end of the war? There have been many colonels who have never gone beyond . There are many people that have never gone beyond a certain grade, rank.

RLC: Hm-hmm [affirmative].

EAV: What has happened? Has the military decided after the war that they want pink tea drinkers, as Hub Zemke said—who when he was shot down, Hitler said that half the war was over. He feels that—well, it was Lufbery that said that there is no tomorrow for the fighter ace of today. Is this individual too much to reckon with, to muzzle, or conforming with established or with the norm?

0:27:03

RLC: I don't think so at all. I think that there's always a place in the world for individuals. You could see it in your everyday life that men that who have been successful at one thing normally are successful at another. And it's a matter of applying their own initiative and energies to enter another direction. You can take—you can name them one right after another. Take Joe Foss, for instance. Joe Foss is tremendously successful in anything he does. It's a matter of application of the individual self, and I think if you can express it in a manner of being, even those—you can take—you can go even farther than that, Gene. You can say this. You can even project it farther in this respect. A man who has the potential of being a top-type airplane driver and has succeeded in being a first-flying type of fighter pilot, even though he hasn't had the opportunity or hasn't been at the right place at the right time to establish himself as an ace, for instance, has that capability of being successful in something else.

Now—and I can think of one that I can right offhand, that comes to mind, and I've mentioned this man before and only because I respect this man tremendously and he is just an outstanding citizen, an American citizen. Cut him in half, and he's red, white, and blue all the way through. And when he left the Navy, he left it as a reserve officer and joined the business world and has been tremendously successful since then. But he stays current with all of his friends that he made during the war and stays current with activities of the Navy. And I bet you if you call this man up today, even after having been away from the Navy for 15 years, if he had a job to do in the Navy 12

and he felt that this job was necessary that he'd be there, that he would be a first-line type naval officer again. That man is Skinny Ennis, Bob Ennis.

0:29:35

EAV: Oh, that's great, Zeke. Talking about the successful fighter pilot in [unintelligible 00:29:40]—or in that realm—

RLC: Well, did I answer your question?

EAV: You did indeed. You did indeed. Will the prerequisite of a successful jet ace be any different than that of the single-engine prop ace of Korea or World War II? Now, of course, Korea introduced the jet ace.

RLC: Yes.

EAV: But is there any demarcation between the needs of the prerequisites of a jet pilot today and the one of World War II?

RLC: Well, I can only say this. If you look at the record of Korea, you'll find that there is one squadron, and I can't name you the number of the squadron right now, but it was—the backbone of the squadron was made up of nine World War II aces.

EAV: Very good.

0:30:38

RLC: It was the top squadron of Korea. It shot down more people, more aircraft. They had fewer accidents. In every department, you'll find that the record of that one squadron—

EAV: [unintelligible 00:30:55]

RLC: And I think that's indicative of the answer to the question.

EAV: It certainly is.

RLC: I think that the man is going to be an ace if he's flying a kite, if you put him in the right place at the right time.

0:31:15

[END OF INTERVIEW]