The story thus far...

June 14th, 1967 1130 PM, Sanford Florida, ejection from RA-5C during Field Carrier Landing Practice, (FCLP) killing the pilot, LCDR C.T. Butler, and injuring the Reconnaissance Attack Navigator (RAN), Ensign John Barry Smith. The dead pilot leaves a wife and five children of whom three are boys, the oldest age eight.

July 1990, Pacific Flyer prints an article written by the navigator. A picture from his cruisebook of an A-5 with an A-3 coincidentally on the backside was also submitted.

August, September, October, 1990. Letters pour in to Pacific Flyer regarding mixup in photos.

The story continues...

November 1st 1990. A letter from Pacific Flyer arrives at the navigator's home. I open it and find another letter inside, addressed to me, John Barry Smith, Care of Pacific Flyer. The contents of the letter, handwritten in ink, follow.

Start letter: "Dear Mr Smith, My name is Richard Butler, C.T. Butler was my father. You can imagine my surprise when I came across your "Night of Terror" article in the July Pacific Flyer and realized your pilot in that accident was my father. It was even more strange because a couple of nights before I told a friend that I would like to learn more about my father's accident.

I am now a Navy pilot myself. I am attached to VF-51, flying F-14's at Miramar. We were returning from a WestPac deployment and the USS Carl Vinson was in port at Pearl Harbor, I was SDO sitting in the ready room while everyone else enjoyed the beaches when I happened to find a copy of the Pacific Flyer. What caught my eye was that they put a picture of an A-3 instead of an A-5. When I started to read the article I got a shiver down my back when I read the date and place in the first paragraph and then saw my father's name. I can still vividly remember that next morning, when I was eight years old, and there were several strange women at my house and my mother wouldn't get out of bed. My mother has yet to remarry and did a heroic job raising five kids. We all turned out pretty well. John, the next oldest boy to me is also a Navy pilot at Miramar flying with VF-126, the adversary squadron .

We would both like a chance to meet you. Your article was a good one, answered a lot of questions I had about that accident 23 years ago. If you would like to get together with John and I sometime please give me a call or write. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Richard Butler." End letter.

I held the letter in my hand, stunned and amazed. The past had come alive. There was a string of life which had continued all these years. I immediately made plans to meet the Butler boys.

I had received the letter on a Wednesday and had already planned to fly in my Mooney to San Antonio on Tuesday for a week. I had learned not to make too firm of commitments while flying light airplanes and sent the following letter to Richard Butler.

Start letter: "Dear Richard Butler, Monday, November 5, 1990, Thank you for your letter. We must meet at a convenient time.

I was talking to a retired Navy Captain today who also knew your father. Small world.

It's amazing you and your brother are Navy pilots; it's quite an accomplishment. I met your uncle the day after the crash. I knew there were five children.

After the article appeared a reader wrote in and said he was in the pattern during the crash that night.

In 1969 I was in Sigonella filing a flight plan for an A-5 and the First Class at the tower said he watched one crash. I enquired where and when and it turned out he was the tower operator the night of the crash. He said they were all surprised anyone lived because it happened so suddenly.

Well, I lived because your Dad thought about me back there and told me to eject.

I volunteered for the hop because the previous times I had flown with him I had learned a lot. He was very helpful and patient to a 23 year old Ensign. Maybe he was that way because of his five kids.

I'm off tomorrow to San Antonio in my Mooney for a week. I will return about the 14th of November. I'll call you to set up a rendevous. The pilot who climbed out of the plane just before your father climbed in lives in San Diego. I'll coordinate with him so we can all get together.

I just got my Commercial license with instrument rating and this is my first IFR cross country.

You might write me here at home and give me and your brother in-port schedule. Sincerely, John Barry Smith." End letter.

The trip to San Antonio to visit friends was an annual event but the first in my airplane. A year earlier in San Antonio I had first sat in a Mooney and decided I wanted one. Four days later, after arriving back in Carmel Valley, I had bought my Mooney in Hollister. Now I had it fixed up and was proudly flying it back to show off while exercising my new instrument rating.

I took off in clear weather and a fine running machine to fly direct to Bullhead City to stay in the Flamingo Hilton, courtesy of Barron Hilton who had sent me a free three night certificate, as he had done to many other pilots.

The flight was nice, the Hotel and casino were fine, and the airport was terrible. In a thirty knot wind there was no assistance to push back the plane to parking, no help tying down nor chocks available. They would not bring a gas truck out to refuel unless I walked in and signed a gas chit. The gas truck was slow to get there and there was no ride to and from the plane to office. I was charged for two nights of tie down although I was only there 23 hours. But the room was great, which is to say it was free and I had a view of the airport with my plane on it.

I gambled a little and drank none; the next day was to be a grueling, rugged three leg, nine hour flight to San Antonio. I planned on refueling in Deming, NM, and Fort Stockton Texas.

That night I checked the weather via a phone line to Reno. A low pressure air mass had moved in during the day bringing snow, rain, and freezing rain from Phoenix to El Paso to San Antonio.

I was faced with the common problem, bad weather and what to do. I couldn't go around it to the south because Mexico was down there. To go around to the north would require a detour as far north as Denver over some really high mountains. I had the new instrument rating and was willing to fly in clouds and rain and snow, but not freezing rain. My Mooney had no pitot heat, nor radar, nor de ice.

I did have two more free nights in the hotel, I could wait it out and push it to make the Saturday night party in San Antonio, or I could just follow the front, flying behind it in the rain but avoiding the freezing rain. When it got too bad, I could land and wait it out.

And then I thought of flying to San Diego to meet the Butlers. I gave a call to Richard's home in San Diego from the casino lobby with one of my many quarters. Richard's wife Lana responded by saying Richard was on a mission to Fallon bombing range but would be back the next night and we set up a dinner meeting.

So the attraction of meeting the sons of the man who saved my life years ago turned me away from a huge weather system and towards San Diego.

I had a tailwind and was finally able to see 200 knots on the groundspeed readout. I was in the yellow sailing along when I hit a bit of moderate to severe near Julian and lost 500 feet. I was way above maneuvering speed so I pulled the power back to slow down. Center called and asked what was going on and I replied turbulence. Another plane, a Boeing 737, heard and asked where. Center replied it was just a light plane and wasn't important. The 737 replied he didn't ask what but where.

The next day, I called my regular pilot, Burton J. Larkins, Capt (Ret.) and explained the situation and we agreed to meet that day for lunch and dinner.

We went for a ride on his beautiful forty foot sailboat up and down the San Diego Harbor. We rode by the tied up USS Ranger, where we carrier qualified (carqualled) in RA-5Cs July 1967, three weeks after my ejection. To land on the Ranger in a Vigilante was why we were practicing FCLP that fateful night.

We rode by all the Navy ships in port with the thoughts of the impending Gulf war on our minds. The sister ships to the Iwo Jima were there. The Iwo Jima was a Marine helicopter carrier and the ship that ninety percent of my boot camp class went to after graduation. I went to an electronics school in Memphis because I told the man in the third week of boot camp I liked flying so he made me into an aviation recruit while the others became seamen recruits. We sailed by Navy boot camp and the bridge connecting Camp Nimitz which I recall marching over so often. Also visible was the USS Recruit, a landbound destroyer, where I learned to tie knots. We saw landing craft which were taking recruits to visit a ship as part of their training. Helicopters were frequently flying over us as they landed at North Island.

And we were meeting a pilot who was on a practice bombing mission in Nevada.

Captain Larkins and I were at the Cafe Machado at Montgomery Field a little early to wait for Richard and John Butler to arrive. They walked up and I immediately recognized them as Navy pilots. We made the introductions and sat down to dinner and conversation.

I offered a toast, "To C. T. Butler, a man who created your lives and saved mine." Richard's voice was just like his dad's, sort of a soft southern drawl. Richard was of medium height, sandy hair, and bore a strong resemblance to his father. John was taller and slightly younger. Both of the young men were calm, deliberate, and thoughtful. The saying, "You can tell a fighter pilot, but you can't tell him much," was not true in this case. I had to revise my image of the elite of Naval Aviation.

John had gone to the Naval Academy, then to a short preflight, and then to flight training. He was now flying F-16s, F/A-18s, and F-5s in an adversarial role against F-14s. Richard was flying F-14s in an active Navy fighter squadron. So in professional life the two men were sibling rivals but in their personal lives I saw mutual respect and love.

I remarked that it was possible that C.T. Butler was so patient and willing to teach a 23 year old Ensign named John was because he had a son named John, age six, whom he was teaching also.

Richard had graduated from the University of Kentucky and gone to Preflight in Pensacola. He discussed the landing difficulties of FCLP at San Clemente Island, a practice carrier landing site off San Diego. There are no drop lights, there is always a right crosswind, and the landing pattern is reversed. It turns out the practice for night carrier landings is harder than the real thing.

Captain Larkins explained after he climbed out of the plane and was walking back to the ready room, he saw the flash of the explosion.

Richard mentioned there was a third brother, Paul, who had just gotten married. He said that their mother was a dental hygienist who had gone back to work to help support the raising of five young children.

We reviewed Navy career patterns the way it is now and the way it was then. We were actually representing Naval aviation from the early fifties to the early nineties. We agreed it hasn't changed that much, actually. There are still sea tours, shore tours, school tours, ship's company tours, and exchange tours.

Captain Larkins offered to take Richard and John sailing some time which was accepted. I offered my house for a place to stay if they should come up this way. We all walked out to the ramp to look at my Mooney.

I'm quite proud of N79807, a 1965 M20C/U, but I knew that compared to a F-14 or F-16, it must have looked like a toy model. But, as Richard said, "It was all mine."

We had enjoyed the meal, the talk of the past, present, and future and agreed we would like to get together again, sometime.

I was flying back to the Salinas airport the next day and thinking about the meeting. Naval aviation is in good hands if there are pilots like Richard and John flying. They were polite, mature, reasoning, and intelligent. The Butler family must be one really sharp family.

I wondered what went through their mother's mind when her two sons told her they wanted to be Navy pilots, just like dad. I thought of her lying in bed the morning of the crash, unable to get up, the nightmare come true, no husband, no father, no future. And yet, she did get up, and she succeeded.

It was a beautiful flight from San Diego to LAX to Point Magu, to San Luis Obispo, to Big Sur, to Salinas. The visibility was 200 miles. I could see the Space Shuttle lake bed landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base while over downtown LA at 10000 feet.

The trip up the coast was striking with surf, boats, caves, and windy highways to look at in the clear smooth weather.

And then, my airplane veered off to the left while on the two axis pneumatic autopilot Mooneys have. It then veered off to the right. I checked the vacuum gauge; it was zero. I had had a catastrophic vacuum pump failure and no standby system. While straight and level my attitude gyro showed me in a level, gradual climb and the directional gyro showed me in a right turn. Then they began to spin faster and faster. They ended up just going around and around. I did an ILS into Salinas in VFR under partial panel and realized it is necessary to cover up the defective instruments to avoid distraction because the scan took me right back to them every few seconds.

I taxied up to my hangar and shut down. I sat in the cockpit and reflected on what had happened. The vacuum pump had failed four flight hours out of Bullhead City. If I had gone to San Antonio, as planned, instead of San Diego to see Richard and John Butler, I would have lost my primary flight instruments while in the soup over somewhere near Deming, New Mexico, where mountains are high, radar coverage is poor, and airfields far apart.

C. T. Butler may have saved my tail again.

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