Quote:
Originally Posted by sygazelle
Good for you to get him to write it down. I wish I'd got my dad to write it down. Oh well. When he was in his late 80s, I took him to the Reno Air Races so he could see his beloved F4U flying. The smile on his face was priceless. He was so proud that day. I should have gotten him to talk about it when he was in such a good frame of mind about it.
Did your dad fly in Korea? I wonder if they were in the air on the same days.
When I saw the movie Devotion about the first black Navy pilot and the F4U, I went back home to see if my dad was flying on that key date in the in the movie. He was in fact there. What a history of all the planes he flew over a 14 years flying career.
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After my Dad's test pilot tour at Patuxent River, he got tapped to go to VF-61 'Jolly Rogers' flying the F9F-2 Panther on the Atlantic side and did a deployment to the Atlantic/Med. His only tour on that side in his career so he missed the Korean War. I have a priceless photo taken by him from the deck of the Roosevelt of my mother next to the family station wagon with three little kids (me the oldest, sister, little brother; all in cowboy boots
) waiting on the pier in Norfolk for the ship to tie up and let the crew ashore. How did my Mom do it? Of course, the deployment was for only six months -- they were nine months on the Pacific side and he did a couple of those later on, but we were older.