My Navy Story - Hacienda Heights to The Tonkin Gulf

 The next 8 months would find me back at Lemoore Naval Air Station. The first 4 months Joe, Smitty, Willie and I were all still attached to VA 23. But then on March 20, 1970 the Black Knights ceased to exist as our squadron was decommissioned and then we were all waiting to see where we would be sent next.  During that four months we spent a lot of time running back and forth to Southern California and going to parties with any of my friends who were either still living there or were home on leave from their own duty stations.  This period of time is also when Smitty and Joe met some of the other devils who were still around, on leave of back from their time in the service. That included trips to camp on the beach in Mexico. These are a couple of pictures from when we went south for weekends. The first was from late ‘69 or early ‘70 when Fred was home on leave and Willie went to LA with me. The second was at a party at Pete’s parents house for his 21st birthday . The thir...

For this past Christmas (2021) my daughter sent me the book pictured here. I really enjoyed it and read it in a day. The cool part about it is that it talks in Chapter 5 about the Westpac Cruise that we took on it with VA 23 in 1969. One thing that really caught my interest is that the author was aboard the Oriskany at the same time as I was. It brought up a lot of memories and when I was thanking my daughter, Stacie, she mentioned how other than a few posts in other blogs I had done she knew nothing about my military service and she would like the kids to know more about it so I decided that I would attempt to share what I remembered or what pictures I had reminded me of in a blog and this blog is that result.  Here’s another picture of us leaving. Can’t remember the details but Johnny Ramos probably took us to the bus station in LA so we could report back to our duty stations. This was probably around April 1969.  When I got out of the Navy I didn't talk about it much with ...

My next duty assignment brought me back to the West Coast to Lemoore Naval Air Station in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. The first duty was once again training. Smitty, Joe and I were assigned to VA 125 a training squadron for the A 4 attack aircraft. We had to report December 26, 1968. Upon completion of training in Memphis I received a promotion to AQF Airman which was E-3. It came with a small bump in pay and believe me every little bit helped.  Even though my family didn’t live in Hacienda Heights anymore I spent Christmas there. I don’t have any memory of that Christmas but there are a few pictures of several of our group being at my Mom's friend Mary Alice’s house. She lived the street behind us. And apparently then I reported to VA 125 but was back in Hacienda Heights for New Year’s Eve where we were at Mary Alice’s again. Fred, Bill Kennedy and Bill Sumner all must have been home on leave.  Our training lasted through April 3rd 1969. We were trained in ...

 Boot Camp was the last time that the five of us would be stationed together, Rob, Ted and I as well as Ken Peters from boot camp were all sent to the NATTC Memphis for training and to eventually find out what our duty assignments would be going forward. Clarence and Fred wound up driving cross country to their duty stations; Clarence at Naval Air Station Glencoe in Brunswick, Georgia and Fred to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida. It was kind of ironic that all of us including Pete were Southern California boys and we all got sent to the southern United States.  This was a picture at my parents house the day we were all heading South   Side Note: This was a really tense time in America and made even more so in the South because Martin Luther King had just been assassinated by a white man. He was assassinated on April 4th while we were still in boot camp and just before we were all sent south.  This a picture from where the assassination took place. Ted, Pete an...