I'm sure there are a lot of stories out there that the class would love to read about, that, for one reason or other you just haven't bothered to "pass along."
For example, R.L. Clark, our highly decorated jet fighter pilot extraordinaire, told me that most of his "stories" are about military flights and probably wouldn't be very interesting to the average reader.
WRONG!
Take a look at this...)
By R.L.Clark
This occurred in June of 1963 when our squadron, VMF(AW)323, was relocating to the Far East. The plan was for 3 flights of 6 planes each to leave El Toro at 45min. intervals. We planned to meet tankers twice en route to Hawaii and repeat this schedule to Wake Island and eventually Atsugi in Japan. I was in the first flight and things went according to plans for us.
We met the tankers, plugged in, received a full load, backed off, and flew to our next tanker rendezvous, and repeated the process, then flew to Kaneohe Bay. The skipper told us about Jud and Tookers’ situation. Since they did not know what caused them to explode, they cancelled the flight and had us fly our planes to Ford Island. We flew to Japan on C-130s and they barged our planes to Japan. They arrived about 3 weeks later.
Cliff Judkins and I are still best friends. Each November 10th he visits us from Marietta, Ga. to attend our Marine Corp Birthday luncheon. The significant element of Cliffs’ story is that he was the only pilot in our squadron who could have survived the fall because he was the only one without a spleen. Anyone else would have bled to death internally.
Regards and Merry Christmas, R.L.
For all you pilots out there, You can read Cliff's version I FELL 15,000 FEET AND LIVED.... CLIFF JUDKINS by going HERE.
