Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier (Part 2 of 3)

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

Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia

Interview Date: circa 1966

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 United States Navy. In part two, Cormier continues to describe his experiences with Composite Squadron 1 (VC-1) and Fighting Squadron 80 (VF-80) during World War II. He also discusses his postwar assignments, including his time with the Blue Angels and his time at the 5th Air Force Headquarters in Seoul during the Korean War. Cormier also shares stories about the life and military career of fellow fighter ace Patrick D. Fleming, who died in a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress crash in 1956.

Biography:

Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier was born on December 19, 1919 in Centralia, Washington. He joined the United States Navy 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 naval aviation 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.

Rights Statement:

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

Index:

Desire to become a carrier pilot ...... 4

Anti-submarine assignment in the North Atlantic ...... 4

End of World War II ...... 7

Remembering Patrick D. Fleming ...... 8

Postwar assignment in Guam ...... 18

Joining the Blue Angels ...... 18

Time in Seoul during the Korean War ...... 20

Blue Angels show at Los Alamitos ...... 21

Richard L. “Zeke” Cormier (Part 2 of 3)

[START OF INTERVIEW]

00:00:01

[Desire to become a carrier pilot]

EUGENE A. VALENCIA: These will be the questions that I'll ask Captain Cormier and will not necessarily be in order, but included as inserts. As inserts. This is reel two. Reel two. Three- and-three-quarters. Zeke, why did you choose the Navy—while you're in the California National Guard at Oxnard decided, by god, the Navy was going to be the thing?

RICHARD L. CORMIER: Well, you got to go back a little bit now in the CPT training. I was introduced to the aviating business through the Civil Pilot Training right here in Chula Vista. And the thrill, even flying those old ancient Cubs that we had, really captured my imagination and a great desire to do more flying. And after having a taste of the ground foot-soldiering, why, I was more convinced than ever that flying was the only way to go if you have to go to war.

00:01:08

RLC: And then I equated the whole big picture, both from the—it was the Army Air Corps— and from the Navy standpoint. And the prospect of landing aboard a carrier, that alone was inducement enough to want to go into the Navy. And of course, my aim from the very beginning, the first day I signed up in the V-5 program, was to become a carrier pilot.

EAV: All right. So this, again, gets back to that added ingredient you mentioned earlier about the extra hurdle to round out a pilot.

RLC: Yeah. It's a—you know, it's a real challenge to an aviator, I feel. This is why that some people were successful in being carrier pilots and others, after one tour, found that they'd had enough of it and went on to other things. I have very—I am sure you do, too—lots of friends who started out in the carrier business as a single engine and went on to multi-engine patrol or into the utility groups.

[Anti-submarine assignment in the North Atlantic]

EAV: Zeke, what was your first thought when after going through ACTG in San Diego, you qualified as a carrier fighter pilot, when the escort carrier headed towards Panama and, hence, the North Atlantic?

RLC: [laughs] Well, that's the, uh—of course, we were all surprised. Being a young ensign in those days, you weren't really aware of all the inner circle of activities, nor of communications.

And even though you knew they existed, why, the mystery of orders and changing of orders was always something that was left to the hierarchy. And we were all terribly surprised because we kind of trained and had whetted our appetite for looking at the South Seas. And after reading all the accounts of Guadalcanal and Henderson Field and all the romantic spots in the South Pacific and the great flying that had been going on there, we were ready for it. I mean, we weren’t really prepared to start thinking in terms of flying in the North Atlantic with the cold water and the round-the-clock type of operation and searching out the only subs that we knew existed. But, um—and it had become a real problem, of course, and a tremendous menace to the total war effort in Europe. But we hadn't trained in that direction. And we, uh—this came as like a rude shock to everybody, particularly the young ensigns in the JO bunk rooms.

EAV: They're always the last to get the word.

RLC: Always the last.

EAV: When did you first get the information?

00:04:03

RLC: Well, we'd sortied from San Diego and from all sources that we could, uh—even from the mess cooks—we thought we were going to go out to Pearl. And we'd been at sea about a couple of days and the captain of the ship—the name I can't recall at the present time. He was the captain—oh, what the hell is his name? Well, anyway, a great skipper, but an old time-type Navy captain, got all the crew together and he said, "Our orders are now to proceed through the Panama Canal into Norfolk to join the anti-submarine warfare group.”

EAV: Hmm.

RLC: In Norfolk. And the air group will be offloaded at a little field just south of Oceana. Um, Oceana and, uh—gosh, my memory's leaving me today—Pungo. Pungo Field was the name of the joint. We were trained there in anti-submarine warfare and then joined the force on convoy duty. So our faces fell about 10 feet, you know. [laughs]

EAV: Did you enjoy you first flight in the TBM from the F4F? Was there any…?

RLC: Well, we—you know, we made one cruise in the—we were aboard the USS Card. Now, this was a jeep carrier. We made one cruise with our full complement. We had 12 F4Fs and 12 TBMs. We had transferred into the TBM when we were at Norfolk. And we took one cruise out to about mid-Atlantic with a convoy and turned it over to another convoy group that took them on into, um—across and into England. And we found that we couldn't do the job with that many fighters aboard. And there was no purpose of having them aboard. And I went—all of this was— anti-submarine warfare was all brand new to everybody in those days, you know. They didn't know what combination to send. Two TBFs and one fighter or two fighters and one TBF. But as it turned out, why, they needed more of the torpedo bombers to carry the depth charges than they

needed fighters. There wasn't that great a need for them. So they selected some of the hotshot fighter pilots in the squadron and said, "We need six volunteers: you, you, you, and you." And I had just happened to be one of those “yous.” So we started training immediately in the TBFs. Of course, I had always pictured myself as being the “scarf and the goggles” fighter pilot, you know. And so they gave us this great big hog to fly.

Why, the only thing that really saved it was the fact that we did a lot of flying and everybody was anxious to be as much in the air as possible. And we flew two and three hops a day there for months on end. Special training and we went to special school for anti-submarine warfare schools and listening to sonobuoy patterns and, you know, fish gurglings and that sort of thing. We spent a hell of a time—lot of time brushing up on Aldis lamp of the light signals and the hand signals and any other kind of signals. And went to sea as a bomber pilot. And of course, when we got into the convoy duty, actually into the duty itself, and we joined up with a convoy, why, our work really just began because we flew constantly. We had airplanes in the air almost 24 hours a day for there—for many days on end. And it got to be kind of a drag after a while because you can only spend so many days and our cruise would last about 20 days. And I can't say that it was tremendously interesting because it got to be terribly monotonous. Day after day, looking at the surface of the water out there—

EAV: [overlapping] Lot of water.

00:08:40

RLC: …and waiting for something to happen. And of course, the—when you did make a sighting, it turned out to be some kind of a freighter, a Panamanian freighter, or some other vessel under a different flag of some nature that was a neutral in those days. Why, you just hoped that somebody'd wave to you or something from the bridge, you know, just to break up the monotony, go down and make as low a pass as you dared over the ship and waggle your wings and shoot an Aldis lamp on him and ask his name and destination and that sort of thing. And invariably, you'd find nobody on the bridge. Oh, the Iron Mike would be cranked in and very seldom see anybody.

EAV: Going back to the German prisoners.

RLC: Oh, yes.

EAV: Did you have any—were there any other comments that particularly stood out?

RLC: Well, as I mentioned, we took the prisoners aboard from a whale boat. And they had been picked up by a destroyer and transferred to the ship. And we—the skipper wanted to know— have some off-the-cuff comments from these people and their immediate impressions of not only the ship, but the airplanes and crew and whatever else he could find out from them. You know, other than his—their rank, name, and serial number.

00:10:07

RLC: So we had stationed these men along the route. And we had asked prior to their arrival at the ship, the individuals in the crew, who could speak German well enough to understand the comments of these people. So these gents were stationed along their route on the ship and made it sort of a circuitous route around the ship so that they'd be exposed to more of the ship for a longer period of time before they got down there to the forward hull. And their comments ranged all the way from "Jesus, look at the size of that big airplane in this little bitty ship" to "Look at this little bitty ship and to think that they're out here in the middle of the Atlantic and these guys are flying from this thing" to "Look at that old airplane." They were—of course, they were pointing to the F4F, which wasn't really an F4F at all. It was a TB—no, correction, it was a FM- 2. This was with the Wright engine, you know. And they were all well aware of the names of the ship—of the planes and the capabilities of them, but they were a little surprised at the size of the torpedo bombers because we had—rather than have the wings folded, we had them spread. And you know those little old ships, we had to kind of fly down the—when we were launching—deck launch—we'd have to hug the left-hand, the port side, of the ship or there wasn't enough clearance between the wingspan and the island. It used to scare the old man half to death, taking off veering toward his island. And of course, on the—on the O-2—on the O-2 level of that little old vessel, you're just about eyeball level with the guy in the cockpit, so you're peering out over the rail. But they had some very intelligent comments to make about the capabilities of the airplanes. They said, “Ah, they really do—” One of the comments one of the sailors made, said, “They actually do have a gun sticking out the turret there.” They thought it was an observer. And—

00:12:20

EAV: I'll be darned.

RLC: …they were surprised at the size—mostly surprised at the size of the airplanes.

[End of World War II]

EAV: Zeke, when you got back in for reassignment—to go the Pacific—did P.D. [Patrick D. Fleming] have much trouble getting you reassigned to the squadron for your post-war tour?

RLC: Well, you must remember now, Gene, that when we returned, the war has not—had not ended yet. It was on the tail end, and things were looking much brighter out in the Pacific area. But our orders were to re-form, regroup, and to be ready to go in another three months. Well, we had new skippers and a new crew and started training immediately. We had some R&R and got the squadron—the personnel together at Ream Field. Now after regroup, we actually arrived in San Francisco. So we got the squadron back together, and we were up to full complement with

new airplanes. And the fighter-bomber squadron was refitted with F4Us. We retained our—the old F6F-5, the latest version of the machine. And we got ready to go to sea. And of course, the war ended that summer. And we had been delayed. And of course, in those days, then everything was being wrapped up and directly after the war everything was getting wrapped up. People being released from active duty, and it was a complete flail in all areas of—all theaters of the Pacific.

00:14:30

RLC: But we had onboard roughly about 70 percent of regular Navy. Now how this came about, I really can't tell you, except that Fleming had been doing some selecting, too, and had known the detail officer on the Com Nav Air Pac staff, which was now then called Com Air West Coast. And had done the selecting very well. And of course, we didn't need to pump our squadron up too much to be back up to complement after the reserve officers had been released, one of those of whom had the number of points that were required. So in a month's time after that, we were ready to go. So we were assigned to return to West Pac in December of 1945. And we were transported from there to Hawaii and from there—or out to the Hawaiian Islands, rather, to Oahu, and then transferred to Maui where we spent two months waiting for the ship.

EAV: Did you have any humorous experiences during that time?

RLC: Yeah. When we were out in Hawaii?

EAV: Maui? Reforming?

00:16:03

RLC: Oh, yeah, we had, uh—of course, in those days, you know, everything was kind of an anticlimactic type of experience. And we had some top notch aviators in that—in Air Group 80 at that time. As a matter of fact, our CARQUAL out in Hawaii, during this period when we went out to Hawaii to qualify everybody aboard ship, made more landings—and I can't tell you how many it was in one day, but these were all prop airplanes now. We made more landings during a 24-hour period with fewer deck accidents than had been made ever in the Pacific at that time. And we just had some aviators that were par excellence. They just—well, Fleming, of course, inspired that kind of performance. He himself was such a polished, capable guy that it wasn't— perfectionist. It's just he presented himself in such a manner that he just let some of his confidence and talent rub off on everybody in the squadron. [unintelligible 00:17:20].

[Remembering Patrick D. Fleming]

EAV: Well, speak about Fleming, what were his philosophies concerning combat, Navy, and naval aviation, particularly at this time?

RLC: Well, you got to go back a little bit and pick up Fleming from the time that he wanted to be an aviator. First of all, he went through the Naval Academy the hard way; that is, he joined the Navy as an enlisted man and made the grade by taking the competitive examinations. Graduated from the Naval Academy very high in his class and from the very beginning wanted to be an aviator. And he felt, even at that time and later in his—in some of the chats we had together, as men will, on ship—onboard ship. I, um—he had expressed the desire to become an aviator even before going to the Academy. So this desire was in him from the beginning. And of course, when he did finish flight training and joined Fighting 80, why, he was in his element. He just took to it like a duck to water. And because he felt this way about aviation, why, he wanted to perfect his skills to the point that he was going to be the best pilot around.

00:18:48

RLC: And aviating, as you know, is—you can sort of liken it a little bit to golf. You can take a guy and he may have the greatest drive in the world. He can strike the ball from the tee and hit it out there out in the middle of the fairway and down far with a wood. But you put a long iron in his hand and he would be lucky to hit the ground with it.

You can almost say the same thing about aviating. There are so many facets of aviating, from just taking the airplane off the ground and then getting it back on the ground, but then you add the elements of instrument flying, radio procedure, being able to make the airplane do what you want it to do at a specific time, like firing guns at a sleeve or dropping bombs on a target—you can't really expect a guy to be four-oh, or proficient, at each one of these elements that makes him a top notch pilot. He'll do some of the things that are better than others. Like you take a man—he may be the greatest formation flyer in the world. He can—you put him on the wing and he'll fly there if you were upside-down, straight up, straight down, on your back, outside, anything. He's going to be there because he knows the right manipulation of the controls of the aircraft to do precisely what you're doing. But you ask him to go out and drop a bomb on a target, he may be lucky if he hits the ground with it.

00:20:18

RLC: So Fleming wanted to perfect each one of these skills in creating his own and establishing his own proficiency as a pilot. And he worked hard at it because he wasn't skillful at all these elements. But his greatest skill was the fact that he knew the airplane and he knew what its capabilities were and he was well aware of what the shortcomings were of each of the airplanes that he flew. And I think that was his greatest asset. Not only that but knowing his own capabilities. And trying to perfect those in which he wasn't the most skillful.

And as far as his philosophy of flying is concerned and his contribution to the total picture as far as the warfare is concerned, he was a thinking pilot. And you can only explain that in one way. He wasn't up there, as many of us have—and I know that I've done this on some occasion— you're up there sort of daydreaming. It's a beautiful day and the sun is shining and the cockpit's

kind of warm. And you take your helmet off and you're sitting in the sun and you're just enjoying the ride only because of the sheer beauty of it. And I know that you goof off a couple of times and you're cloud flying. You know, you're just up there lazing around the clouds. These big, puffy clouds with tunnels in them. And it's one of those beautiful days where you’re like a bird and you want to fly like a bird. And you do fly like a bird.

But, uh—and Fleming has done this, although with a different thought in mind. He’d say, “Now I'm going to fly around this cloud, and while I'm doing this, I'm going to see if I can roll on that point and keep the ball centered.” He sort of applied his time a little more judiciously than some of us others. And he thought that way when he was flying, each time he flew. And particularly so when he was on a combat mission. He would go where the action was. “That's what I'm going to do.” He created his own action.

00:22:42

EAV: Now at this time, postwar, what were his thoughts as to the future and his particular role as the next Academy man who would more than likely be shouldered for surface rather than aviation?

RLC: Well, this was his—

EAV: [overlapping] Was he concerned?

RLC: He knew very well that the Navy felt that even though you're a top notch naval aviator, you're—you were a naval officer first and an aviator second. And each element of your training was aimed in that direction. Even though you might have been the most accomplished aviator in the fleet, the sole purpose of your being was to be a naval officer. Okay, what does that mean? That means that you have to be qualified on a surface ship underway in a port. You've got to be versed in the engineering aspects of the vessel in which you're which you're sailing. You have to know the operational and administrative functions of each one of the departments. There's so many little goodies about being a naval officer that the thinking was a little wrong. But there was that—that's the way it was. And they instilled this in you as a naval officer that you were that and you just happened to be a guy who flew an airplane.

Well, Fleming certainly knew this because he'd gone both ways. He's been in the surface Navy, not only as an officer but as an enlisted man, and was certainly aware of the difference in the roles that each played and particularly through a position that each—in which each occupied— the role that he occupied as a surface sailor. So he could kind of see the handwriting on the wall, and this is why I feel that Pat spent so much time flying when some of us were out partying or doing something else on the weekends.

00:24:53

RLC: He was out flying around, perfecting his skills and polishing techniques up. But he knew very well that if he stayed in the Navy, his role in future assignments would be concerned in surface ships.

EAV: Well, what was it, Zeke, that after that cruise, when he was in flight test, that he became interested in joining the Air Force?

RLC: Well, we—

EAV: [overlapping/unintelligible 00:25:33] …the first?

RLC: Uh, yes. Now, you got to kind of put us in a timespan here, now. This is directly after the war is over. And we trained for combat and we were honed to a fine point. We just were ready and had some outstanding-type talent in the squadron. So when we out to Pearl, why, they put us ashore in Maui, where we sort of vacationed and had some—few laughs and goodies. [laughs] And, uh—

EAV: Von Tempskys?

00:26:06

RLC: Yeah, the Von Tempskys and the many party days and just had a ball out there. So we went from there out into the Pacific to relieve—now, there were only two ships, two carriers, after the—you've seen the battleship—not the Battleship Row, but Killers Row tied up at Ulithi, where they had 15 carriers all lined up in a line. You go from that situation to one in which you have two active carriers in the whole Pacific fleet. At that time, the Shangri-La was on a—what they call the magic carpet run and running back and forth from the area out there and taking people in airplanes and whatever else they carted back to the—to the States and on back out again.

We went aboard the Boxer. And the Boxer and the Hancock were both operating in the Pacific fleet. We went out and relieved two carriers on the line, and I can't recall now just which two they were, but we visited all the spots we had hit during the war: Hong Kong, Shanghai, on the Shandong Peninsula, and Manila. And we didn't get to the home islands, but we went into Okinawa and mostly in the Philippines. But there wasn't a great deal for us to do, and so we spent a lot of time just flying parades, the parade in the Philippines for Independence Day 19— this is now 1946. Big parade type of flyover. And then some shooting at the sleeve and that sort of thing. But it was kind of a restricted type of flying.

00:27:57

RLC: So we had a great deal of time on the ship to talk about everything. Basic philosophy of a naval aviator's life, likes/dislikes of a military career, on and on. And at that time, Fleming gave a speech in the ready room to all the pilots and based on some of the things that he had read and

based, too, on some of his own feelings and philosophy of air power and its role in the total picture of the military posture. And he concluded at that time that the role of the airplane was going to be with us a long, long time. And even in those days, they were talking in terms of the push-button type of warfare, without the pilot in the vehicle, whatever the vehicle may be. And of course, the Buck Rogers type of approach to a machine doing what the man had done. And of course, we knew that was a long way off, but he had projected this thinking into terms of not the next 10, 15 years, but the 20, 30, 50 years.

And he was a deep thinker and a damn good one. And so his philosophy was that the airplane pilot, the driver himself, was going to be with us one hell of a long time because it was—as far as he was concerned, he's the brain and the manipulator that can't be replaced in doing the thinking that's necessary to make an effective fighting weapon or a weapons system. And he went on to say that his problem, of course, was, “Okay, where do we get these people to do this?” And he equated it in terms of himself and, “What happens to me as a naval officer, a squadron skipper, a lieutenant commander squadron skipper, and a junior one, then—after an air group, where am I? I'm now 35 years old. And I've had all of the air commands that are available in the Navy. So for all practical purposes, my tour as an operation pilot after 35 are almost limited to—relegated to proficiency type of flying. So is this any way to—you know, is this the way to run the railroad?”

Well, he didn't express his feeling as far as going into the Air Force to the—to the ready room at that time. But in our private conversations, he said, “When I get back to the States, I am going to look into the possibility of joining the Army Air Corps.” Well, I thought he was kidding, of course, because, you know, you don't—you don’t take some man who's been in the Navy for ten years, which he had at that time—not 10 years—almost 10 years—and suddenly decide he's going to leave the Navy and go into some foreign organization. [laughs]

00:31:14

RLC: Because we hadn't—we didn't have a great deal of respect for the Army Air Corps at that time. I didn't, anyway. Because we’d had a couple of bunches of those people out in the Pacific, and to be real honest with you, I just wasn't—I wasn't impressed. And I'm sure that this is not true of all the organization, but the ones we had come in contact with, we were—we just weren't overly impressed.

So this is the first time that he had mentioned that. And I thought at the time that he was serious to the point of investigating it, but not really in following it through. We later found out that this was not true and that he—after his reassignment to—on our return to the States, his reassignment was to Patuxent River to the Test Pilot Training School. And my assignment was from VF-80 to a fighter squadron at North Island. VF-21. The first inkling I had had was a phone call from Fleming to say, "Fly back here and see me because I want to go in and see the General. If you're interested in going into the Air Force, the Army Air Force, you get back here." So this was, um—this was the first real concrete information I had had from him that he was—in all

earnestness, he was going to go into the Army Air Corps. And all these good things he's been telling us were true, and he was going to follow it through and find a new niche for himself in an organization that allowed its people to fly airplanes and not be concerned about being something other than a Navy Air.

EAV: In your first call, you proceeded to join in the morning.

00:33:14

RLC: Right, right. He had a—he had arranged for a—an interview with General Johnson. This is the General Johnson who was the Medal of Honor winner. And at that time, I think he was Director of Personnel of the Army Air Corps. And I met up with Pat and we suited up in Navy uniforms and we walk into General Johnson's office. And he said, “Well, gentlemen, this is an honor. What—to what do I owe this honor?” So Pat, without any frills or any preliminaries, jumped right into it and said, “We want to go into the Army Air Corps.” [laughs] The General was a little taken aback by this, and he wasn't—he kind of went, “Was, uh—well, I, uh…” He stammered a little bit and he said, “Um, this is the first time I've run up against a problem like this. I don't know if this can be done.”

So he proceeded to call some colonel on the telephone and say, “Hey, Charlie, get up here. We got two Navy guys who want to join up.” [laughs] And so the colonel showed up, and Pat Fleming said again that he had considered joining an organization that was, uh—and now, you must remember, this is before the National Security Act of 1947, at which time the Air Force was created as a separate and distinct military service. So it was still Army Air Corps, and these guys were in their pink uniforms. So the colonel said, “Well, I don't know if this can be done or not. What are your qualifications?” And Pat's qualifications were that he was a Naval Academy graduate and that he had shot down 19 airplanes in one cruise in the Pacific and that he was an accomplished naval officer and naval aviator and he wanted to be a—to continue his military career but he wanted to be an aviator. It was asked shortly. So they asked him what mine were and I told them. And they said, “Well, we'll have to look into it, see what we can do. I don't know what the answer is.” And first of all, the General said, “We ain't an Air Force yet.” He said, "We're going to be, but we ain't."

00:35:44

And so we parted with that. And Pat said, “Okay. Well, I'll call you first information I get.” So I proceeded—jumped in my F6F and flew all the way the hell back to San Diego and got out here. And about a week later, got a call from Pat and said, “We can do it and this is what has to be done. We have to resign from the Navy and apply for the Army Air Corps Reserve. And you call Colonel so-and-so and find out what your status will be when this happens. So now when I resign, I'm going to go in as a first john, a first lieutenant in the Army Air Corps Reserve—no, I'm not going into the reserve, I'm going into the regular because of my academy.” He said, “I

don't know whether you're going to hack that or not, Cormier. You're going to have to find out from Colonel so-and-so.”

So I called the colonel up, the good colonel. And I said, “Okay, this is—” “Oh, yeah. I know. You're the guy who wants to transfer to the Air—the Army Air Corps.” And I said, “Right. I'm with Commander Fleming.” He said, “We all know all about you two characters. And this is what you have to do.” He said, “You have to resign from the Navy and you have to apply for the Reserve.” I said, “I understand that. But I've, uh—I was selected for regular Navy just a short time ago and I don't want to go through this flail of Reserve again. Is there any way possible to avoid that?” He said, “Well, we can't take you right into the regular Army.” And I said, “Well, how do I get into the regular Army from the Reserve?” He said, “You have to apply through the normal channels of the Reserve.” And I said, “Well, is there a chance that I wouldn't be selected?” He said, “Well, I can't answer that. This is something you have to make up your own mind to. I don't know.” So I said, “Well, do I go in as a first lieutenant or do I go in as a second lieutenant?” He said, “Well, the only rank we can give you to begin with is a second lieutenant.”

00:37:48

RLC: Well, I was a full lieutenant in the Navy, which is a captain, you know, in the Army. So I thought, well, here I am in the regular Navy. I said, “I'll have to let you know about this.” So he said, “Okay. You let us know and we'll send you the papers, the necessary papers in the meantime. And you submit your resignation to the Navy. And then you have to go to Monterey at the Presidio in San Francisco with these papers that I'm going to send you so you can get in the Army Air Corps Reserve.” I said, “Okay.” So he said, “Good luck, and oh, you'll be hearing from us.” So I said, “Fine.”

I talked to Fleming again on the telephone and gave him all this news. He said, “Fine. I'm going to submit my resignation today.” And then which he did. And the thing went through the normal channels of the Navy. As you know, it takes days and days and days and it goes on to weeks. And he received the resignation paper back disapproved. Had gone to the commanding officer of the Naval Test Center, Test Pilot Center, at Pax River. And the guy was highly incensed that Fleming would even consider leaving the Navy for an organization like the Army Air Corps. That was like, you know, acting the role of the prince and finally you're the garbage collector. So he turned it down and sent it back to Fleming. So he—Pat, in turn, said that, uh, “This is written to the Bureau of Personnel. And so I have the prerogative of sending it on even though it's been disapproved.” Which he did.

00:39:29

So more weeks go by. And in the meantime, we're corresponding back and forth, “Have you submitted your resignation yet?” And I said, “No, I'm going to wait and see what happens to you.” So he said, “Well, don't get nervous here because I haven't been too successful in getting an approval on this resignation.” Well, to make a long story short, it went through the channels

and weeks went by and it came back disapproved again. So he personally took it to Washington. Fortunately, he was close to the board at Pax River that he could do this or he'd have ended up as a lieutenant commander, and that's as far as he would have gone, you know, in the Navy. But he took it to Washington, took it to the Office of Chief of Naval Operations. And talked with him. And he was very kind in giving him permission to talk with General—with Forrestal, James Forrestal, who was then the Secretary of the Navy.

EAV: Pete Witcher was CNO then, too, wasn’t he?

RLC: I can't tell you who CNO was, to be honest with you. But anyway, he was kind enough to get him—he said, “If you feel this strongly about it.” And Pat, on his resignation, had listed the reasons for his resignation in the Navy: that he had—that he wanted to be an aviator, that he felt that his time in the air contributed in some way to developing newer tactics, newer aircraft requirements, weapon delivery. He went on and enumerated all these things, which was true. And that he felt that his career in the Navy would be, from this point forward, concerned with more surface Navy than in the air. And he didn't want that. Well, of course, when this got to some of the black shoe-type admirals, this—they took a very dim view of his reasoning. And even some of the more senior naval aviators, although they knew what he had to say was true, took a dim view of it, too.

00:41:46

RLC: So anyway, he got the admiral—I keep calling him admiral. James Forrestal. And James Forrestal, after having a conference with Pat, said, “I will personally sign the resignation.” Which he did. And Pat went from there into the Air Force as a second lieutenant. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, regular Army Air Corps, and was promoted very shortly thereafter up the ranks into major and assigned to the Testing Center at Dayton—Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, where he was involved with new airplanes and new techniques and some of the airplanes coming up and the planning stage of new machines and requirements for each of these airplanes. And that was the start of his Air Force career, which was short but very brilliant.

EAV: Then he was one of the pioneers of in-flight refueling, as I understand.

RLC: Yes, that among other things here. Like for instance, from 1950 to 1952, he was one of the top officers stationed in Wichita to put the new B-47 Stratojet through an elaborate series of tests. Now, this is before the airplane actually went to the Strategic Air Command. And for instance, in August of 1951, he established a nonstop B-47 flight record by piloting the aircraft from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Wichita, which is 2,800 miles. He made the flight in five-and-a-half hours. He also was involved in a cross-the-Atlantic flight in, if I remember correctly, the F-84s to refuel en route to England. And pioneered that route by in-flight refueling. Which is, you know, some of these things that, uh…

00:44:10

EAV: Fantastic. You would never had an opportunity to do that in the Navy.

RLC: No.

EAV: And as you say, had his request not gone beyond Forrestal, he'd have been marked.

RLC: He would have been—he would end up as a lieutenant commander with hash marks up to his armpits.

EAV: Well, Zeke, when was the first time that you met with Pat when he was in an Air Force uniform?

RLC: Well, of course, P.D. and I spent a lot of time in the air together. We did a lot of flying together. And I was as anxious to stay airborne as much as possible, too. And we had been—in developing some of the tactics we used during the combat cruise, why, we used the radio a lot. Maybe it wasn't strict discipline, but we used it a lot anyway. And now, I hadn't seen Pat after he had gone into the Air Force in 1947 for several years. Never had seen him in an Air Force uniform. In the meantime, I had gone to sea and all—you know, done the normal things in the tour of duties and then—in an aircraft asking for permission to land at the Naval Air Station in Alameda. And I hear this voice come over the radio, an Air Force aircraft asking for permission to land. And I recognized the voice as Pat Fleming's.

00:45:56

EAV: And what we you flying?

RLC: I was flying a—at that time, I was flying an F9F-5, a Panther. And he was flying a B-25. It was a plush B-25 that he was squiring some people around in.

EAV: Were you with the Blue Angels?

RLC: Yeah, it was with the Blue Angels.

EAV: [unintelligible 00:46:13]

RLC: Leader. [laughs] Leader of the Blue Angels. And I was by myself at this time. We—the team was at Moffett Field and I had some business to conduct with the Fleet Air Alameda. So I had gone into Alameda. Recognized Pat's voice on the radio. So I immediately came up and said, “Air Force Bravo,” whatever the number, side number, “856, you better not land. This is foreign territory.” And he recognized my voice then and said, “Okay, Cor. I'll see you on the ground.” So that was our first meeting in several years when Pat was in an Air Force uniform and, at that time, was a light colonel. And I was a lieutenant commander.

EAV: Then he was selected to organize the B-52 program, was he not?

00:47:12

RLC: Right. He went into the B-52 program from there and conducted the pilot training course for the B-52s. And it was in the B-52 that he that he was killed. The, um—he was—

EAV: How did that happen?

RLC: He was 38 years old, and he was flying as a command instructor pilot and standing—they were flying at altitude, and he was standing between the seats on the control deck. And one of the auxiliary power units on the after part of the ship failed and threw a blade of the impeller through a fuel cell, and the aircraft caught on fire. Well, of course, it took—the pilot and the co- pilot were both equipped with ejection seats, and they ejected from the aircraft. The rest of the crew—Pat, who was then a colonel and he was the deputy commander of the 93rd Bomb Wing at Castle Air Force Base in Merced—he and four others were killed in the crash. So he ended a very brilliant career at the age of 38 as a full colonel. And, uh…

EAV: Now, Zeke, where were you when you heard about this crash?

RLC: Um, now this was in 19—oh, let's see, what year was this now? What year was this?

[recording stops and starts again 00:49:03]

EAV: Well, where were you when you first heard about Pat, Zeke?