Finally able to catch my breath

This is part of a story told at a 2000 reunion by Lloyd Sime- VAN Team #13.

On a clear, cold day in March, after making several field carrier practice landings on the previous day, four of us nuggets left NAS Glenview headed for the USS Wolverine. By sheer luck or the Grace of God, we found the ship sailing along on Lake Michigan. I looked down at the ship's flight deck with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was not a large deck, but we made a sharp break over the ship and began our practice approaches.


The pre-flight briefing had emphasized that we would make several practice approaches with wave-off's until the landing signal officers were confident that each of us would make safe arrested landings. I was making my fourth "practice" approach, confident of another wave off when on final I saw the "cut" signal. My left hand immediately cut the power as my heart leaped into my throat. Fortunately, the tail hook caught an arresting wire and I came to a stop. When I was finally able to catch my breath, I realized I was standing on the brakes and a deck hand was frantically giving me a brake release signal. This began another frightening experience. About 20 sailors manned the wing and pushed me aft as far as possible. Remember there were no catapults on the ship, so it was necessary to make a deck launch. At this time I saw the Flight Deck Officer giving me a frantic full power signal. When I reached maximum power, the flight deck officer made a motion pointing towards the bow of the ship and I released the brakes and was rolling forward. The bow of the ship seemed to be directly in front of me and still holding my breath I tentatively raised the nose of my Wildcat and it flew off the deck.

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tags : USS Sable ... USS Wolverine .... aircraft carrier .... training carrier .... World War II .... US Navy