 Mr. Vice President, at the time, you were the youngest naval aviator in World War II. How did you come today to join the Navy? How did you decide to miss? Well, I signed up on my 18th birthday as a seamen second class. I waited and graduated from a boarding school until I was 18. I was sworn in, determined to become a pilot. And right about that time, they changed the regulations so you could get to be a pilot going through college or having had two years of college. And I guess the real reason is our country was engaged, had been bombed six months before. Pearl Harbor took place December 7, 1941. So when June of 42 rolled around and I became 18, everybody in this country wanted to go out and fight for freedom and fight against the imperialists and fight against the Nazis. So it wasn't a hard decision. It was one that I took earlier than some others in my class, for example. But the country was together. Why an aviator? Why flying? Oh, I don't know. I think the excitement of it. I'd been intrigued by airplanes. I'd never flown one. But there was a certain glamour and excitement to it. I had always had great respect for the Navy. When I was a little kid, I remember going aboard a destroyer in New York when it came in around 1939. But I just was intrigued by naval aviation. I had great respect for the outfit, for the excellence. And though very, very young, I just aspired to be a Navy pilot, carrier-based Navy pilot. Where was your training? Well, it started in Chapel Hill. The pre-flight school stage, the first time I ever flew, was in Minneapolis at what they call the E-Base Naval Air Station. What's now a walled chamber in the great commercial airfield. And we started flying in those yellow perils, those two-winged NTSs. And I flew there. Coldest weather you can imagine. Never landed, I don't think, without some snow and ice on the ground until I got to Florida. Where I went to advanced training. I mean, in Texas, to Corpus Christi and some outlying air bases from Corpus. And I got my wings at Corpus, so that was the training scenario. Was the San Jacinto your first ship assignment? First and only ship. We put the ship into commission. And either the end of 1943 or early in 1944, our air group, to which I was assigned after I got my commission, I went through torpedo bomber training. I wanted to be a torpedo bomber. And then we did other training. And then our group, BT-51, was assigned to the San Jacinto. And we put her in commission. I took her on her shakedown cruise down to Trinidad. Did some anti-submarine work there. Then on around through the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific in early 1944. Is there any way to describe your missions or the kind of day-to-day life of the pilot? It's hard to describe the day-to-day missions. A lot of it was boredom. I was going over some letters that I'd sent home just the other day. And we did a lot of what they called ASP anti-submarine patrol. And we'd go out in front of the fleet, each pilot assigned a certain sector, each pilot torpedo bomber pilot having some fighter cover. And we'd go out in search visually for anti-submarines or for hostile military action of any kind on the part of the Japanese. And it was some of what was boring, the actual combat missions, most of which were what we call glide bombing. You push your plane over in about a 35-degree angle, I guess. And we had four 500-pound bombs. And most of the combat missions of actual bomb-dropping missions were of that nature. Was that the kind of mission you were on the day you were shot down? Yeah, I would say it. My target was a radio station on Chichi Jima near the island of Ha Ha Jima. I'm sure everybody's heard of that, and also Iwo Jima, which everyone has heard of. And my mission was to take out a radio station. We went down, went up to about 10,000-12,000 feet, came in that high, and pushed over with wingmen and various groups following down and proceeding us. And the air was full of this very, very black and ominous puffs that seemed almost surrealistic. I'd been shot at before, but never heard anything quite this intense. And I'll never forget it. You couldn't hear it, but you could almost feel the puffs of black smoke around you coming up from the ground. What about when you went down in the water? What was that sensation like? That was a few minutes later. And I was hit about halfway down a run, and the plane was on fire. The cockpit filled up with smoke. I had two men in the back of the plane. And I continued the bombing run just to release my bombs over the target. This was all split-second stuff. You're going not fast by today's standards, but red-lined by old standards. And I released the bombs, pulled out to sea, and then I saw that my airplane was simply not flyable. Wings on a torpedo bomber fold, and the gas tanks are on either side of the wings. And there was fire right along where the fold of the wings were, which made me think that any minute the wing tanks would blow, I couldn't hardly see the instruments because the smoke filled the compartment so high. And I did some emergency procedures so the people in the back of the plane could get out, one of whom did, and regrettably one who didn't want the one who did was killed incidentally on the way down. And I made the radio calls to our skipper, and then I bailed out myself, hit my head on the tail of the airplane for pulling my own ripcord too early, and landed in the Pacific, and fairly close to the Japanese-held island, and broke the record for the 100-yard swimming dash to find my life raft and paddle out to sea. Today, 40-some years later, it doesn't seem like it all happened, and yet in a sense it's been a very, very internal and important part of my life. The saddest part, of course, being the loss of two crewmen that were depending on me for their lives. When you were in the water, what was the hope that went through your mind, or did you look for ships or something? Well, I knew that that night the Halsey's Fifth Fleet was going to turn into, I mean, Mitcher's Fifth Fleet was going to turn into Halsey's Third Fleet. We had been briefed on the fact that this was the last day our carrier was going to be in the northern Pacific waters, and that we were then to set sail for a general area of the Philippines. And so I knew that somebody better pick me up that day, or I would be picked up by the Japanese. And indeed they did send a boat out, which was strafed. But I had hoped that I would be picked up because they had rescued submarines stationed as often as possible when we made raids like this. And I knew there was a submarine on patrol. In fact, we had a special code to call if we got in distress, which I did, and then I understand when I got back to my ship that the commanding officer of our squadron did the same thing, called the submarine. But the trouble is they never knew where the submarine got the message. So I must say I was apprehensive. I didn't know what was going to happen for a couple of hours. Out of the sea came a periscope and then a submarine. And thank God it turned out to be ours. Had you ever been on a submarine before? Well, been on the deck of one, but I'd never been on a patrol. We stayed on this thing about the USS Finback. And I stayed on Finback for 30 days to get some air. We went topside and stood watch at night, some of the most majestic nights I've ever seen in my life. The stars so bright you could touch them. Flying fish, a lot of time to think about what I'd been through, and think about life, faith, and all that kind of thing. And we got depth charged. Our commanding officer, that submarine, was awarded the Silver Star for the amount of Japanese tonnage sunk while I was riding that submarine. So it was more terrifying than flying. Submariner didn't think so, but we three pilots that were picked up dead. How long were you on it, sir? About 30 days. And they didn't have any extra beds, so one guy would climb out of a bed and I'd climb in. A little bank in there I might add, too. Air conditioning went too good and you could take a shower once a week. And even then some guy would be standing there with a stopwatch saying you didn't use up 120 seconds worth of water. Where did you go after that in terms of your naval career? Well, the submarine took me back to, I think it was midway, or wait, midway. And then I got off and flew some Navy Air transport plane, just hitched a ride down to Pearl Harbor. I had some rest time there, and then hitchhiked on back out to the fleet, which is thousands of miles away by that time out in the Philippines. And the last air strike I flew was over the Philippine Islands, over Manila. And then we were relieved and came back in time for Christmas 44, joined another squadron, had our orders to go out overseas again, DT 153, and the war ended. And meantime I'd been married, so I was just thrilled about all that. Then you were an instructor? No, I was just a normal torpedo bomber pilot, training up new guys that hadn't been in combat and flying my missions and doing our gunnery and doing our bombing runs and all of that, same kind of airplane. As you look back on the naval experience, is there any something up you can do about its importance to your life? I think it was probably the single most maturing experience I had. I went in there as an 18-year-old kid out of a rather sheltered environment and came out having nearly lost my life a couple of times. I had to land another time and torpedo bomber in the water with four or five hundred pound depth charges in it, so that was the one that kept me on the ball. And I saw lives lost right on our flight deck. I saw a Chief Petty Officer and cut in half and I just landed my plane standing there. This guy was just cut apart and the flight deck was stunned and this fantastic Chief Petty Officer yelled at the man to grab a hose, clean this mess up, come on, let's get this ship going and we were, it was life and yet it was life going on. And this made an impression on me as an 19-year-old kid, 20-year-old kid saying this kind of thing. But it really formed my impressions about the need for a strong military, the need for the country to be together when things are rough out there. I think combat is something I hope none of my five kids and none of my nine grandchildren will ever be involved in. But it gave my life a dimension that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise and it gave me a great respect for the armed services of the United States. It gave me great respect for those who list their lives now even though maybe not in a combat situation but I think of the recent raids on Libya, superb performance by the Air Force, the Navy. And I just think, I guess to sum it up, it's heightened my convictions about the rightness and the greatness of the United States and my convictions about the need to keep this country strong. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Oh, excuse me. Could you ask him just to talk a little bit about the aircraft itself? Okay. I'd like to ask a couple of questions about the Avenger. Yeah. What was it like flying that... Well, I liked it because it was stable. It was then the biggest single-engine plane, I believe, in either the Air Force or the Navy. The Army Air Corps or the Navy, as you then call it, was very stable. Had a large wing, was a three-place plane. I was a pilot, had a guy in the turret, then a guy below, tail gunner with a 50-caliber or 30-caliber pop gun back there and the turret headed. I forget what. We had some 20-caliber guns firing forward that triggered from the stack. But the beautiful thing about the airplane was its stability for landing on a tossing deck. The CVL, a fast carrier, but it was a cruiser hull, very narrow, and I think she tossed more than the big CVs. So the thing that was reassuring, you could slow that airplane down and not worry as much about spinning in like you would from a Corsair or an F6F or something of that nature. And it was stable, was dependable. You could take a hit and the plane could still fly. I remember landing it in the water. My plane, having been disabled from engine troubles, fleet hardship couldn't take me on board so I had to land in the water and threw two men on the plane, four or five hundred pound depth charges and a little bit of sea, not much, but I never got wet. Put the tail down, landed tail first, hull came in, climbed out on the wing, crewmen climbed out through the turret, pulled out the life raft and they didn't get wet. And the plane stayed there, floated for a while and then gradually sank to the depths of the Pacific. But stability, dependability, they could fly when a lot of airplanes were down. Because there was no ejection seat so when you went out you had to climb over the edge. When you went out, you hopefully did it better than I did. You're supposed to dive out onto the wing and the TVF had a bar across the top of it so you heisted yourself out by this bar and then dove on, dove out as opposed to put the plane in a right hand turn so men could get out of the door in the back which I did, made a 360 and I put it in a turn so I could get out but I pulled the ripcord too early and my head struck the tail of the plane so much so that I thought I'd really been wounded. Got down, in fact, at one of the pilots, Doug West, who was flying a fighter, I know flying a torpedo bomber saw me and dropped some medical supplies because he thought I didn't really hurt, it was really like a strawberry in baseball on your side when you slide, it just took the whole side of my skin off but no damage at all and I'm not too proud of that part of my exit from the airplane. It wasn't too easy a plane to get out, you couldn't dump it upside down because you had a bar on top of your head.