Sea Control - Sea Control 316 - Fighter Control over Vietnam with Master Chief Larry Nowell (ret.), Pt. 2

Episode Date: February 6, 2022

Master Chief (ret) Larry Nowell joins the program to discuss his Navy career, to include his time at TOPGUN and controlling fighters over Vietnam. This episode was edited and produced by Joshua Groover.

Hey folks, Jared here. Today we have part two of a two-part episode. Part one aired on Thursday. We'll be doing this in the future whenever we have a longer recording session. So between these two episodes, we have almost 80 minutes of audio with Master Chief Larry Nowell. If you're a Top Gun grad, his name is no doubt familiar to you. He controlled fighters off the coast of Vietnam. We're going to hear the rest of his story today. So again, go back, check out part one, then listen to this part two here. This episode was edited and produced by Joshua Gruber.

Speaking of audio editors, we're always looking to add to our team. If you're interested, please email us at seacontrol at simsec.org with your resume. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Village Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. So I think you said you did three floats off of Vietnam. What were you doing in between those deployments? Were you doing normal shipboard stuff or was the Navy pulling you off to garner some of the lessons learned from your time off the coast? it depends a lot of the times when i was you know more junior i was uh you know supervising

cleaning and painting and uh preparing for the next deployment and you know we would have import drills to train situations that might occur in a wartime environment and that was our primary job when we weren't uh you know in an operational environment was to be training for a combat environment you build your team you know you learn how to use the pubs you learn how to interpret the publications and know what's going on and you know display that and the combat information center not only controls cap but they're the backup for the bridge you know we're down below and we're tracking other ships and we're tracking uh everything that's going on associated with ship's movement and we're trying to cross check uh navigation uh publications anything any

communications that's going on we're we would be in communications with the lookouts the visual lookouts on the ship that would we compare those to our surface lookouts we would be looking uh coordinating with sonar about submarines and so any gunfire support we would be tracking and plotting and navigation stuff on cic so a lot of jobs going on keeping the status boards up to date keeping everything accurate presenting a clear picture to the evaluator or the commanding officer to representative or the commanding officer uh what's really going on in a real-time situation. So, busy place. How then did you become associated with Top Gun? When did that sort of association start, and what were you doing with Top Gun? Well, I attended, I was

invited to attend Top Gun in January of 1973. Vietnam was still going on at that time, and I had just finished up, you know, my tour over there, and I was the most successful air intercept controller so i had the opportunity to go to top gun as a support at that time the air intercept controller was a support for the air crews the all the instruction was for the air crews it was to teach them every it was a it was training air crews training air crews and when i got through with them uh they decided they would bring air intercept controllers in making part of the staff and make a team out of the Air Intercept Controllers and the air crews. So one of my finest accomplishments.

How long were you associated with Top Gun after that initial engagement in 1973? Well, I guess I'm still engaged with them. I got a letter from the admiral that runs Top Gun. It's been about a year now that they were setting up an award at Top Gun for the one, the enlisted man or the officer that had contributed the most to air crew training or air crew events in Top Gun's mind. So they asked me if they can name their trophy after myself. And I said, well, sure. So, and I've gone back out there to mid killers debrief, I think about every five years. When I was in San Diego, I used to go to every class and give a brief

hand with Top Gun. So I go out regularly whenever they ask me. So for those of us who aren't familiar with it, can you tell us what MIG Killers debrief is? Well, talk about, I go with like, for example, Pete Pettigrew and Hispax here. Those are MIG Killers. And I was, you know, i was a part of that team so we would be we would be the mid killers and we would go give them a debrief about how it was how we did it in vietnam how we did it in the air warfare which is uh not been duplicated since so uh the top gun crew gets raked over every mid kill every fight a friendly fighter kill that was in Vietnam as a as a part of the training and so when you get there they know what you contributed they know what you said you they know what you did and they

know what you should have and uh they know what you didn't do so it's um you just go there to basically give them an opportunity to uh you know explain a little bit about yourself and your attitude toward it and open yourself up for questions and see if they've got any questions, which they always do about, you know, especially the, you know, the air crews are in the heat of their very, very interested in talking to people that have actually been in combat. You actually, based on what you just told me, so you would have been associated with that school with the entire time through the development of the Aegis weapons system, You're just kind of revolutionary as far as the shipboard ability.

But you also would have seen sort of the airborne control capability come online. So with the E-2s flying off of carriers, what were your impressions of some of those developments here? Were you jealous, as you saw, of some of these systems and thought, what could I have done with these systems at my time? Well, obviously, it would have been a different situation. I would not have been very successful. compared to other people if uh everybody had had that advantage including the the airborne if the airborne had that advantage because they were there able to go down and brief with talk to

the you them by name uh they didn't know us from adam on shipboard so when they called up they're saying okay who am i getting a good air controller or am i going to get a guy that don't know what he's doing, you know, and it's a good thing, because a lot of them didn't, you know, when I was in Top Gun, the commanding officer, Muggs McEwen, is the one that, you know, he was the one in the story about him in Top Gun, that he was, he was the one that they were telling the story about, Muggs McEwen, and he was telling us about his big kill, I asked him, I said, hey, Muggs, let me ask you a question um he he indicated that the air intercept controller really did a good job for him i said now exactly what did uh i was listening to that intercept by the way what did

the air intercept controller do for you mugs he said well i don't know exactly you know it was real heated but uh you know everything worked great it was a good team effort i said well let me tell you what i heard from my viewpoint one you were 100 miles off station so you weren't doing your job down here as you were supposed to be doing and two uh mugs asked you three times for your uh position where are you mugs where are you mugs you know using different terminology but that's what he was asking me where are you and then after you started screaming as the air crews do when they get a mid-kill screaming at the top of their voice uh you know he says are you all Right. I mean, that was the extent of the submissions that I heard him give during your one minute engagement, Muggs.

What did the air interceptor controller do for you? He didn't even know where you were at. So, I mean, you know, it's just like, I don't know. You know, it's just crazy. You know, if the guy is successful, if the air crew is successful, you just don't understand how much that means to an air crew. If they stay in the Navy and keep the nose halfway clean, they're going to make Admiral. All the guys in the Air Force, they're going to make General. Their career is set. You know, they're heroes. You know, they're done.

You know, it's thanks. They did. We had previously discussed kind of the way you were able to get controllers on the staff at Top Gun as well as tankers. So could you tell us that story, please? well to start with with Top Gun you know we we started out talking about well if it if it's wrong and you do it and it works then it's not wrong you got to think out of the box and they talked about Jonathan Livingston Seagull at the time that was a new book back in the early 70s about like a seagull that wanted to fly like an eel and do things that other seagulls did not do.

So that was, here these aviators are talking about this all the time, about Jonathan Lewis' seagulls. So I went over to the Navy Exchange, got a copy of it, read it over the lunch break. So they had the whole idea of, you know, thinking out of the box, doing what works. and you know just because everybody else is doing it doesn't necessarily make it be right so here i am i'm a control report person for the air crew training which is okay that's that's what we're there for but you know all this time throughout this uh time in school i kept saying to myself you know i gosh i could i could i could be helping these guys a lot more and when i try to talk to them you know they're very busy trying to keep their heads in the schedule and do what the

instructors want them to do and survive Topka you know so we're getting ready for graduation and I would drive to Miramar you know and have my class get a brief with the instructors and the students get in my car drive a half hour down to Point Alma and get on the radar and control them and then drive back up to Miramar after the flight and go through the debriefing. So as I was driving down in my car the last time for the classrooms in Top Gun, I told myself, I said, you know, I haven't done what I could do. You know, I haven't shown them what controllers, they should

be working as a team, not as two different individuals. You know, we could be doing so much more as a team And I need to show them that, you know, and this is the last chance I got to do that. And so I started thinking about the things that I could possibly do to affect that. And one of the things they do when the controllers are in their final flight at Top Gun is they invite all these fighter squadrons that's in the area to come in and beat up on the students during that mission. So, you know, you could you could wind up with a lot of aircraft out there just having fun beating up on the students. And it's a slaughter. You know, they just they just slaughter. It just is miserable. So I decided what I would do is I would, you know, cancel those guys out.

I could do that very easily. I asked the guy that ran the check in down at Point Alma, which was roofless roof. if you've ever heard that call sign and when they air crews checked in I told them that the top gun exercise for the fleet aircraft had been cancelled today

you can either RTB or we've got some controllers here you can run some intercepts if you want to. Friday afternoon they want to be in the Oakland so most of them turned around, a few of them took a couple of hops then went home. Nobody questioned it. Everyone turned around and went home. And I asked one of

the instructors that was a good friend of mine to give me a jabbing circuit that I could jam the frequency that the instructors had briefed. They had briefed two different frequencies. So we set up a jabbing signal on both of their frequencies. And one of the things I used to do in the Gulf of Tonkin is when we were going on a raid for Hanoi, the fighters would go up along the border between Vietnam

and China because they wouldn't fire at them because they were afraid that the missiles would go over into China. So they may step over the line a little bit, but they don't get fired at, see, until they start coming in

down toward Hanoi. And the admirals would yell at us to get those fighters back into Vietnam. And I would give them a vector. You know, what's a vector for a race? Well, we got to watch our area of control. And they say, negative, we're okay. I said, well, you know, getting a lot of heat here.

And they'd say, we're okay. We're right where we're supposed to be. So what I decided to do was Vietnam and drive it along the border. And when they came back in, I would just join it back up. so the admirals were happy the air crews were happy so on that given day i took my symbol and flew it out west of where we were going in where the target was we were supposed to go out and

bomb and so my symbol's going out here we're going straight ahead and the controller that's talking to the staff is calling up the staff telling them hey they're going to the west they're going to come in from the north and as quick as they made that transmission then i you know gave took their circuit away from them and then gave the circuit back so they could make that transmission and then took it back away from them so they couldn't talk to each other and um i said well sure you know figure this shit out so here we are we go in we bomb the target we you know we take pictures of the target we get bored with the target we go home and man i'm so I almost sprained my arm pat myself on the back and on the way back I started thinking about it

well you know we sure wasted a lot of gas that day you know the fleet aircraft aren't gonna be very happy with me when they know I tricked them and the instructors didn't get to do their objectives they didn't get to teach the students anything that day about what they were supposed to be learning they got really big bits so by the time i got back up to miramar to go into the rain room i was got a cold sweat and uh i was just kind of very nervous about it until i saw randy cunningham come in and he was the in charge of that instructors that day for that exercise and his little beady eyes were smiling at me he said you got me ace you got me and um so i knew i was okay so he he says you know we got to do something different because you know we got it

put in our lap today and so i was very proud of that that uh they accepted it for the meaning and what it was meant to be you know as an encouragement to get those uh get the team effort going and get the maximum uh effect that we can get out of the aics and the air crews working together so that was great now taking they did not teach us in school even though we just when you get to the fleet just about every time you have a flight up you have to take them so what we we normally do is just run the two aircraft together and a nearest collision intercept at different altitudes obviously until the uh until the tanker uh until the guy that heats the fuel could see him and then get in behind him and get his fuel so in vietnam um

that's basically what we were doing with the air force it was very difficult with uh all the fighters came up on one frequency and so if you can imagine in a war and uh war environment in a war zone and let's say that you got 26 to 30 f4s above one frequency and i'm talking to them They're running out of gas, they're chasing me, they're getting chased by Migs, they're getting shot at by SAMs, and every one of them wants individual attention. So, you do what you can do. In that type of environment, I claim, you know, my ship put down two flights of F-4s that I saved. But our crew in CIC, for example, we only had three AICs, and we were controlling three sections of cap all the time. So we had to do everything on top of everything else.

So when someone declared an emergency, you had to take time to find the tanker closest to him and get him vectored in and make sure he gets in. So I would teach the other guys in down and tracking how to do that and get them to do it. And one time the Air Force was going to control a MiG suite coming in over Vietnam with every aircraft they had that would fly. And I asked the Admiral to put out a notice that we would only assist those that had a declared emergency, not someone that just wanted fuel. And of course, they sent a lot of planes over there in the Gulf to refuel the aircraft, but finding them is a different thing. you know in a timely fashion that day we had 52 declared emergencies within an hour and that that's just general everyday work okay now one sunday morning i had a section af4s flipping circuits coming around trying to call screaming for anybody that would

listen to them and i heard them and i called up and asked them what's going on and they said we got 10 minutes of fuel left we're getting ready to go in the drink get a plot on us so you can get us picked up and i said i took a quick look around and i said hey we got a kc-135 over here we were using as a communications relay bird it was an air force and there again in in pearl harbor i found out that he had an emergency fuel package on board it was a minimum fuel but he had an emergency fuel package on board in case we ever needed it so i said i think i can get this tanker over here and they said okay so i'm screaming at the tanker giving him a vector so they can come in and get in behind them we got 10 minutes and you know and this guy keeps turning in and you

know getting a little close to land and he's not saying anything he's just turning and i say I'm screaming at him, I said, don't turn, don't turn, slow down, whatever, you know, short, long story short, he finally slowed down, they got hooked up, you know, with just fumes left, and both of them were able to get back, and they had to refill them all the way to the name, they were out of fuel, and had bullet holes in things, and everything else, so So that was the two that they gave me credit for, you know, to keep from going in the drink. And then a month later, pretty much the same thing had happened, except the night before we'd lost an F8 from Sam's right over the Denang Harbor. And these guys were headed right for that area.

And that night, after we got through controlling, I plotted all the Sam's sites that we had in that area around there. and so here here here's these aircraft coming back out shot up one was on fire had been on fire and they said get me to the water and i says uh turn north i you know i gave them a vector to turn north and i said negative negative i just want to get to the water and i said well you got 10 sam side stead ahead 10 miles he said i'm turning i'm turning and by that time that kc 135 tanker that i controlled before when he went home they uh gave him a ribbon before he got off the airplane so every time he'd come up he'd get on my frequency and he'd monitor me and uh he said ace i'm up i vectored that guy up into china we were hooked up before we got people with that and

he had to fly all the way back so I was trying to make a joke with him after everything settled down and I says I caught him up and says don't you I says I got three emergency landing decks that he had 60 miles they said nope I said

don't you have tail hooks he said yeah we had tail hooks we just don't have any steel balls you know so they were they weren't going to land on that carrier and the carrier says well if they'd have come down there we just shot him down because they didn't know how to land on the carrier now how many of the uh pilots did you get the opportunity to meet afterwards or in the course of your uh

tours in vietnam you mentioned you're not on the carrier so you can't walk down to the ready room and see him but were you seeing uh these gentlemen you know during port visits or were they people that you met later on at top gunner as part of the mid killer debrief process well the first The first opportunity I had was the Air Force requested that I come over to Da Nang or either Da Nang or Tylan, Newborn, I think is where they were at. And the commander says, no, hell no. He's not leaving the ship. He's not going over there.

And finally, they come up and propose that I go down to the carrier and do a news interview down at the carrier. And he said, OK. He came and talked to me and he said, we're getting reviewed. After you turn over the file to the oncoming ship, you can go down to the carrier and do a news interview. You know, we'll finish up on station and we'll pick you up on the way out. We'd been on station for 45 days, I think. And we were going to take a few days to go down to the Philippines and get a little R&R. So he was going to pick me up on the way out of the Gulf of Tonkin.

i was going to go down to the coral sea for news interviews so the helicopter took me down there and i met with them and the first thing your wagon said to me was uh you know i got clearance uh i'm going to take you up in the f4 and we're going to i'm going to that shot down those that big and i'm going to take you for a tool around and uh show you show you what it looks like from our side and i said uh let me get this straight now you're gonna we're gonna launch and an F-4 off the carrier deck, be, you know, launched off the deck. And we're going to go over there in a war zone and tune around by ourselves. And then we're going to come back and land at 128 miles an hour on the carrier.

Is that right? He said, yeah, yeah, that's about it. I said, no, I'm not going. I wish I had gone yesterday, but I'm not going today. You know, he says, well, what's the problem? I said, well, those are the guys that are out there tooling around, don't know what they're doing. Or the guys that get jumped, you know.

I've been watching this for six months, you know. So anyway, he was a little disappointed. But we went down to where they had the aircraft. And I got to sit in the front seat. So that was enough for me. And the news interview guys were just, you know, really giving me a hard time. Because they would give anything to get out there and fly in an F-4. And I knew my commanding officer would kill me if I had.

going up in one of those F-4s to tool around in the combat zone. You know, he wouldn't even let me fly over to talk to the Air Force, you know. So I didn't get that opportunity, but I did get a chance to talk to the air crews then. And, of course, afterwards, I went to Top Gun. A lot of the, you know, the mid-killers that got involved in mid-kills were at Top Gun teaching. So Randy Cunningham was there. He was our first fighter ace from Vietnam in the Navy, and his call sign was Duke. And he was a very good instructor, very good pilot.

And everybody in the United States wanted to fight him, get an air fight with him. So he had a long list. In fact, when he left there, he went to set up a command for an adversary squadron where people would sign up and they would go out there and beat up on them. And that's the way you learn. You learn those skills and try to get closest to combat. And that's basically what Top Gun is all about. Train like a fight. You know, wonderful organization.

Our kill rate went from about one and a half to about nine or something like that, I think, before the war ended. So how did you come to Admiral Zumwalt's attention? And I think you mentioned he sent you on a world tour after, is that correct? Well, not a world tour, but a southeast training command tour, naval southeast training command tour. Well, you know, Zumwalt came in as chief of naval operations as a young, very young admiral and had a lot of Z-grams. I don't know if you're familiar with those or not, but he started putting out Z-grams basically in my eyes saying, hey, guys, these enlisted guys are, you know, they can be trusted. You know, they can be responsible.

You know, trust them. Give them more responsibility. Let's, you know, make them part of the team. Basically, that was his philosophy, and that's what I saw. And I possibly may not have been able to do what I did, if not for Zumwalt, and Zumwalt being in command. But, of course, when I got in trouble with the Air Force, running the Air Force out of gas, I wasn't in trouble with the Air Force. I was in trouble with our 7th Fleet commander, him thinking that I was running the Air Force out of gas. by the way every every year i ever met said hey ace there's no way you can run an f4 out

at an aircraft body yes we're not going to let you do that it's kind of like running a co-altitude intercept you know nearest collision you know in case your missiles don't work let's just run it ran it they won't do that either in case you're wondering but um so third fleet commander came out to chicago that december and called me up you know in front of the group and says uh chief i won't come on up here i want to talk to you you're the only one i knew by name when i came out here and i wanted to say to you that you're doing a great job and keep up the good work and uh on the way back from going home he held up our ship there trying to get permission to give me the medal in Pearl Harbor you know he really wanted to give me the medal he was really

proud of uh our performance there and he wanted to be a part of it but Admiral Zumwalt not let him after my success the commanding officer recommended me for a um Legion of Merit uh Legion of Valor Legion of Merit medal. And when it got to Zumwalt's office, he wrote back and said, no, we're going to recommend him, we're going to give him the Distinguished Service Medal, which, you know, basically was Zumwalt that upgraded my medal to the Distinguished Service Medal. Secretary of the Navy at that time, you know, had given me a pamphlet about the Seaworth Service Medal in the time that he had given me the pamphlet, which was an old one, I guess, because at that time it was next to the Medal of Honor. It got put in between the DSM and

the Medal of Honor. But anyway, they started giving the Seaworth Service Medal to the Massachusetts Petty Officers of the Navy when they retired. So Massachusetts Petty Officer Black received the first Seaworth Service Medal when he retired. I got an opportunity to meet him on that tour of the southeast training commands that soon won't fit me on and um very nice man so i was the first one to receive it for combat action as far as i know i still am the only one for combat action to receive the dsm i just have a final question given that your father-in-law you kind of had the same job did you ever swap stories with him as far as uh what he got to do when he was controlling i would imagine he was controlling during the second world war is that is that

or korea well if he had any experience as an aic he didn't share with me i think he was uh more of a cic officer doing evaluation type stuff not having an opportunity because you know there's a whole chain of command going up to the commanding officer and aic is just like uh you know kind of like having another weapon like you have weapons control you have you know a chain of command there that talks to the evaluator or the commanding officer. And then, you know, on our side, we've got an AIC that control the aircraft. So it's just another weapon assigned to the ship. Well, let me ask a follow-up on that then as well, because you talked about chain of command with the speed with which these engagements are developing. What are you actually

reporting back to your CO and what we would call today a tactical action officer? Are you updating them on what you're doing or are you executing the engagement and then telling them afterwards basically what has happened it's a little bit of a long story but when i went aboard to chicago we had 76 radar men about 12 of 12 of those were air intercept controllers we were going back to san diego for a short turnaround and then we were going to go back and fill a gap in the gulf of tonkin for four months we're going to take a short cruise and then go to the yards for a year so we'd be out of commission for a year so i had taken the test for e8 at damn neck before i left there and shore duty to go aboard to chicago on the way back from the cruise in 71 early 71

i got the information that i had been selected for e8 and when we got back to the states everybody started leaving the ship including the a8 we had since i had been selected for e8 he put in a request to be transferred to a ship in ukuska uss warden which eventually got shot at with a strike missile from our air force and he's lucky he didn't get killed um but anyway i wound up as as a senior enlisted senior aic in in the ship very quickly you know and we had and we were going back with 26 radar men 26 30 somewhere i mean you know less than half of what we had the crews before and i called up my detailer and i said hey look we're out of we're you know we're getting ready You go to the war zone, and we only have so many radar men, and we have three AICs.

Can you help me? And he said, well, no, there's nothing going on over there, and I'm not going to waste a billion on you guys. You guys are going to come back and go in the archery here. So, man, I said, this is crazy. I said, you know, he said, well, you'll be all right. So I got back to the ship, and I got back, and they were taking consoles off of our ship. actual physical consoles out of the AIC area and I said hey whoa what's going on and he said well you know we got ships over here that don't have consoles we got it we got to get them from

somewhere so we're taking them off your ship you know you're getting ready to go on a short cruise you're going to the yards for a year you don't need them and the one right next to where I sat which was right kind of behind the evaluator or the TAO, as you call it now, there was a big empty spot. I said, well, can you at least put a chair in there? Because the commanding officer would come down there and look around. I said, at least put a chair down there for him. And he said, well, you know, I do have a flag chair that we use up in the pilot's office. And I said, well, yeah can you do that he said yeah i'll do it so he put a chair down there and i didn't say anything to anybody the ceo come down one day and he said what is that and i said well that's

your chair and he said i don't see no shit for a chair down here he said i said well i got to put in he said okay so i got the ship serviceman to put in a little stand for him a little light and we ran the one mc over there and he spent 90 percent of his time in the war zone down there he and i would sit there and exchange ideas and i i would tell him you know and he could see you know after a couple of intercepts you got 30 seconds you can't i can't tell him he can't He can't understand what's going on. The evaluator cannot run this show. He said, OK, so we would do it.

And he would do it by shaking his head. Or if we had an intelligence group aboard, they would only talk to the CEO. But he would put them over there and ask him to talk loud enough so that I could hear him. You know, so that was a helpful assist sometimes. and of course having the co there but it got to the point where you know in a life of death situation you know we had a uh commander that was the uh a full commander that was the operations boss my boss my boss's boss he would be down at cic and he no no no let's just keep it you know don't let's don't do anything to shake the tree and uh you know i saw these big this big coming

in on this section of aircraft coming in behind them and i said you know this guy's going to take a shot at these guys and run back home he said you don't it wasn't our aircraft i called up i put in a symbol i i called up the ship over there and told him to heads up give tell him the aircraft he got a big and and they did they said well you know so-and-so called said you got a big coming in on you but we don't see it and i you got down about five miles and i said you know you got to tell these guys they're going to be dead and he says you do not do it this is a direct order you do not get involved i said i can't let them die because i put my hands down and started screaming at them hard starboard you know it's like and that flight fortunately turned out that

they got they shut down two migs and they were going home with no casualties and they were very happy and i kind of apologized to him and he said i don't know no that's you didn't know what to say he said that's home that's all he had to say so but uh you know i could have been in big trouble a couple of different times direct order uh just being a direct order um you know running air force air force out of gas you know training doesn't train you for that type of situation and doesn't teach you what to do. And they're never going to tell you to disobey a direct order. But, you know, when you get into a responsible situation

where you know that if you don't do something, you're going to have to live with that the rest of your life, where you could have possibly saved those guys' lives. You know, so that's four guys there that you could have possibly saved. And I couldn't live with that. So I was willing to take that chance. And you do that in a matter of seconds. You don't have a lot of heck of a time to think about it.

But like I said before, when I got through the heat about controlling the Air Force, I had a long talk with myself about my job and trying to do the best job I could possibly do because no one could do it perfectly. But I made up my mind that I would put in every ounce of energy that I had And I wouldn't go away from there saying, well, if I'd have gone up there and tracked those guys or if I'd have had a better radar, you know, I didn't want to say that. I'd go talk to those people. You know, I'd set it up and give us the best radar, the best EW, you know, and get that coordination going and try to get the best thing. we, without the commanding officer, how would I operate it? Because he just, yes, yes, yes. He

would, whether he knew what was going on, I don't know. You know, I don't know how he could have sometimes, because at some point, I mean, you know, if he was watching me real close, he would say, clear the fire. And, you know, I'd pass it on. That was his responsibility. So, but I met with him many times afterwards and uh we went to the USS Chicago reunion uh when he was 90 years old and uh you know we were able to thank him and his uh but you know that goes back to Zumwalt too in my opinion you know if Zumwalt hadn't pushed for you know giving the enlisted men some leg of responsibilities you know the attitude up at that point that enlisted men aren't to be trusted too much you know and i know that wasn't always the case but you know zoom won't put it down in writing

so i give them a lot of credit for that i appreciate all the stories master chief that's unfortunately all the time that we have today so i'd like to thank you for coming aboard i normally ask my guests now what where we can find them online and what their next project is i don't know if you have any projects going but uh can can we find you online what are you working on with your free time now well youtube has uh the uh u.s navy uh surface hall of fame has a blip on there they don't know how to pronounce by name but uh they do have a on youtube for larry holmes now H-O-L-M-E-S. And when I got out of the Navy, I started working for Logicon as a subject matter expert. We were doing research and development on speech recognition. I went on to get my master's

degree and develop curriculum for 25 years in the civilian community. And I had gotten into wood carving painting and i started teaching wood carving i'd go all pretty much all over the country and teaching wood carving and um did that for 20 years and i went up lake cherokee and fish for stripers uh you know striper they put stripers saltwater fish in a freshwater lake up here to keep the bacteria down and keep the uh control of the amount of bait that we have up here and it's just kind of like going deep sea fishing in freshwater lake did that for five years and basically painting you know trying to figure out what i'm going to do when i get old well thanks again for coming on today master chief and uh to the listeners

thank you for tuning in we'll see you next time © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon