Easy To Change & Easy Not to Change
Jeff Olson wrote “The Slight Edge” in 2013. I remember reading it and relating it to many of my flights from Hawaii to the Mainland back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We used to joke that if you were off more than a few degrees, you would know instantly if the landing field spoke French or Spanish. However, flying from California to Hawaii was a different animal.
One of my first navigation courses in the Navy discussed how the old seaplanes flew intentionally 200 miles south of Hawaii. When you thought you were close to Hawaii, they would turn north and hope to run into one of the islands. Latitude was easier to calculate than longitude in the pre-WWII days. Latitude is dependent on the celestial body's location, and longitude is more dependent on your movement across the globe.
I joined the Navy in late June 1968. My best friend and I flew from Corpus Christi to Dallas, Texas, to take the Navy Aviation Aptitude Test and Flight Physical. We both passed the Aptitude Test. I passed the physical, and he did not. He stayed an extra day, and I headed home that Sunday afternoon after saying, “I do!” to the Navy. The following Wednesday night, I said, “I do!” to my wife.
My best friend ended up 4F and was not admitted to the military. Ironically, he wanted to fly and had his private pilot’s license. I was a bit ambivalent and figured that I could follow in my father’s footsteps as a pilot in the Navy. My father earned his Navy Pilot Wings when he was a Second Class Machinist Mate at the beginning of WWII. He retired with twenty years of service after flying dozens of models of aircraft – single-engine, multi-engine, jets, seaplanes, and helicopters.
On my second day in the military, I entered boot camp, which significantly changed my life. We were at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute (NAMI) when a young corpsman gathered us around and read a message informing us that, effective immediately, all pilots must complete five years of service after earning their wings. I asked about Naval Flight Officers (NFOs) and if there were any stipulations about that career path. The answer was NO!
My plan was to get out after my first tour of duty and add an extra year of flight training to become a pilot. However, adding an extra year and a half of service time did not make sense, especially with the Vietnam War continuing to build.
Unbeknownst to anyone else in the world (and I kept it that way for nearly twenty years), I changed my designator from 1315 (Pilot) to 1325 (Naval Flight Officer). All the records were paper, and I had everything on my lap. I put an “N” in front of the AOC (Aviation Officer Candidate) designator and immediately became an NFO.
I have no regrets at all. I wanted to be stationed in Hawaii and got that as my first duty station. I wanted to fly P3s because they were too big to land on carriers. If I stayed in the pilot pipeline, I would have no choice but to select a type of jet that routinely flew off carriers. It was part of my big plan but not critical. In 1969, I intended to put in one tour of duty and become a civilian.
The events in my world aligned on that early June morning in 1969 as I continued through the AOC program in Pensacola as part of Class 24-69 and graduated sixteen weeks later as an Ensign. It would be several more months before I earned my Naval Flight Officer wings. And more months of training before I arrived at my first duty station, VP-6, in Barbers Point, Hawaii.
Adding a single letter to a designator on a piece of paper was super easy. I could have decided not to. The world changed by the time my career on active duty was over. Vietnam was winding down. I took a significant cut in salary, becoming a civilian working for National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. I joined the Navy Reserves and flew for another dozen-plus years. On top of that, I stayed in the Reserves for a total of twenty years and then went back on active duty when the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War started to decline a bit. My last six years were mainly active duty, with my last two years in Stuttgart, Germany.
After 31+ years since I said, “I do!” in Dallas, Texas, and my retirement from the Navy in late 1999, I had many choices—some easier than others. As I enter nearly twenty years of retirement, I think about the many choices. Most of the time, it was easy to make an incremental change for improvement, but sometimes no decision was made, and the default was that it was easy not to decide.
Some decisions today are easy to make because of the years of experience behind me. Other decisions are left hanging a day, a week, a month, or longer. So, what gets done? Most of the time, it is the easy stuff. Sometimes, it is the stuff we love to do. We are forced into it a few times by forces beyond our control.
I do not regret any of the decisions that had major impacts on my life and family. You do the best you can with the knowledge and tools you have at that time. We continue to make mistakes, but we should not make the same ones repeatedly. Sit down in a quiet spot and reminisce for a moment or two or three, and feel the smiles creep across your face.
Those good feelings reduce the stress of life and make the rest of the day worth doing, especially with the ones you love. This year will be 57 years with my wife - a better record than 31 years in the military.