http://www.usna.edu/VirtualTour/150years/1980.htm
August 22, 1981
Vice Admiral Edward C. Waller becomes superintendent.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal June 23, 2006
Lisa Waller was her name. She was in the Class of 1982 at Ashdown, as was Jeannine Bowman, although I don't think Jeannine liked her very much. In my memory, I met Lisa just after the 10th grade started so that would be consistent, in that it would have been late summer of 1981.
There was that time Felicia Simpson was going on to Lesa Jewell about me driving by her house in my red Ford pickup.
It was my Junior year that I got that American Legion medal. I believe that Junior year represents my 3rd year at the USNA.
What is it about the Cross pen? That has shown up in a few places. I can remember myself having two of them that I liked. I think Denzil gave me the first one, with my initials inscribed on it. There was also that guy named Ray Cross who worked with me at Eagle Business Systems.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Annapolis
Waller was the name of a girlfriend in the 10th grade. She said she decided to take the offer to join the TARGETS class because I was in there. We used to always go to the Sonic for lunch.
http://www.usna.edu/VirtualTour/150years/1980.htm
August 22, 1981
Vice Admiral Edward C. Waller becomes superintendent.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal May 27, 2006
Made a chess board in shop class. It snowed on Thanksgiving day of 1980. Went to Camp Couchdale in the summer of '81, after graduating 9th grade. Tried to organize a panty raid on the girls buildings on the other side of the compound, but the staff was obviously listening and showed up at the screen door of our building with a big dog. Tried to start a food fight in the cafeteria but no one else got into it. Met a girl named Phoebe, took her out on the lake in a boat and paddled around. We wrote letters for a long time afterwards.
After we moved to Hicks Road, Michael and I shared a room with bunk beds. I was thinking yesterday about how similar it was to an officers stateroom on a Navy ship.
I was selected for TARGETS class in the 10th and then again in the 11th. I think the acronym was something like "towards a real goal of excellence for talented and gifted students."
I don't think I got my red Ford until the end of 10th grade, but not really sure. That sounds right the more I think about though.
The last time I saw my father was in 1981. We went up to the plains of North Oklahoma to stay with him one summer. He was working as the manager of a cattle ranch during that time, although in memory that was the only job he had as other than a truck driver. I brought my 20 gauge with me and bagged a lot of those big jackrabbits. I remember zipping around the fields in my brothers go cart. One day it was very windy and we stood there and watched a plane almost crash into a field very close by. Went exploring this really big ravine that started near my dad's house. I think of that ravine when I see those kids playing war at the beginning of the movie Born on the fourth of July.
When I was leaving for the Navy, Denzil told me I was going to be an Ensign. I corrected him that the lowest enlisted rank was Seaman Recruit, although after boot camp, I would be automatically promoted to E-3, Seaman, because I was in the Advanced Electronics Field. And actually, I think I was being paid as an E-3 even in boot camp, they just called everyone a Recruit in boot camp.
I was talking to Mogge a few years ago when I was working here at Microsoft and he was working at our Charlotte office. We were talking about our time on the Wainwright. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of another guy there in the office had been part of that Blackhawk Down event, as known from the movie of that name. I didn't really believe him for some reason. I mentioned at one point about the letter of commendation for the Wainwright CO and he said something that made me doubt my perception that everyone in Missile Plot had got a similar letter. He told me he still had his, it was there somewhere in his desk drawer, but then he started reciting from the Joint Unit Meritorious award which was given to all of us in the unit. I thought something was odd about that and decided that maybe I was the only one that had gotten an individual award.
There was some other stuff, adventures, that Micheal and I got into but too tired to write about it now. He did have that shotgun explode one time when he was out duck hunting, that was pretty scary.
I wonder if the bicycle I remember riding after I crashed my red Ford is supposed to represent a propeller driven aircraft?
There was the American Legion award I got, it was an actual medal, not unlike a real military medal, when I was in the 11th grade.
Ah, and how could I forget working for Donald Mills at his store and then for him when he was mayor of Wilton. At one point, I was the supervisor of a group of kids as we were fixing potholes on the Wilton town roads.
Phoebe told me to "never forget" that dance where we met, because she never would.
They lined up all the girls at the start of the dance and told me to pick who I wanted to dance with. I still remember thinking about how she just seemed the right choice. She was laughing, kind of delighted, kind of frightened, that one day in the boat on the lake when I saw a snake in the water and started chasing it for some reason.
The name of that teacher for the TARGETS class was Mrs. Hill and I believe this is why I have that artificial and symbolic memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_Air_Force_Base
Hill Air Force Base is an Air Force Materiel Command base of the United States Air Force. Located in northern Utah, Hill AFB is the largest employer in the state as of 2004. It is mostly known as the home of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and soon the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. Hill AFB is located in Davis and Weber Counties, near Ogden.
The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) is one of the only live-fire air force training ranges in the United States. It is located in far-western Utah, near the Nevada border, and lies both north and south of Interstate 80 (with several miles of separation on each side of the interstate highway). The portion of the training range that lies north of Interstate 80 is also west of the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Test and Training Range lies in Tooele County and is owned by the state of Utah, but the airspace and training is scheduled by Hill AFB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilan_Ramon
Ilan Ramon (June 20, 1954 - February 1, 2003; ) was a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force, and later the first Israeli astronaut. Ramon was the space shuttle payload specialist of STS-107, the fatal mission of Columbia, where he and the other crew were killed in a re-entry accident over Texas. Ramon is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Ramon was a Colonel (Aluf Mishne) and fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, with thousands of hours flying experience. In 1980, he was in the first group of Israeli pilots to fly the newly purchased F-16s. In 1981, he took part in the bombing of Iraq's unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor (Operation Opera).
In 1974, Ramon graduated as a fighter pilot from the Israel Air Force (IAF) Flight School. From 1974–1976 he participated in A-4 Basic Training and Operations. 1976–1980 was spent in Mirage III-C training and operations. In 1980, as one of the IAF’s establishment team of the first F-16 Squadron in Israel, he attended the F-16 Training Course at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Opera
Raid On The Sun
Looks like an interesting book. Judging by all the people trying to look at the book cover as I was walking by them, there must be a great deal of interest in the topic.
The back cover has that photo of the pilots and something catches my eye about the one who has his face turned completely sideways, as though he is looking at someone to his right. There's another guy with his face turned sideways, but not as much as the unsmiling one in the second row from the front.
On the cover photo, the first two F-16s do not have Sidewinders on the wingtips and it appears they only have the 84s although I can't remember what any of that would actually look like.
What is it about 1720? Is that a time? Did something happen at 1720? There must be a reason I was making myself remember that number in my symbolic memory.
Wasn't that guy at Microsoft named 'Ariel'? Was his last name 'Netz'? And I think his brother who worked there also was named 'Amir.'
Corbis has the credit for several images in this book. David Rubinger is the name associated with Corbis. Corbis has partial credit for Ramon, as well as the Osirak site. I met someone from Corbis one time, wasn't it when I volunteered for Danskin? She was also a volunteer. But there was also someone I was riding bicycles with one time who worked at Corbis. Let's see......I met her in a new group of cyclists......it was Kate that invited me. Kate was a woman, from England I believe, who worked at Microsoft and I met her at Suzanne Morgans house. I think it was the time Suzanne invited me over for a Christmas party. I liked Kate, she had red hair and there was something else I can't remember that attracted me. She was also a very strong cyclist. That was probably around 2000. I was still riding with Grace Stahre then, as Kate was riding around Mercer Island with Grace and I. I don't remember riding with Grace after the STP of 2000. I did it the next year by myself.
This reference to the Ku band stands out in my memory:
The "Gun Dish" radar operates in the Ku band,
The SA-6's are more than I thought too, I was thinking they were comparable to Stingers, but they actually look more like Standard missiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA-6_Gainful
The fairly large missiles have an effective range of 3-24 km (2-15 miles) and an effective altitude of 50-12000m (164-39,370 ft). The missile weighs 599 kg (1321 lb) and the warhead weighs 56 kg (123 lb). Top missile speed is approx. Mach 2.8.
At some point last night, either as I was about to go to sleep or while I was asleep, a message popped into my head that I was the only one to have an air-to-air kill on this strike.
"The leader Raz held the speed steady at 360 knots"
In my symbolic memory, this what I did in boot camp when we marched in formation. I was at the very front and to the very right. Somebody complained one day why were we traveling so fast and someone else suggested they asked me.
AND, in boot camp, there were two elements to the formation we marched in. We forget the term for those two units, I want to say 'platoon' but that's not right as we didn't use that term. As a group, we were refered to as a 'company.' Generally, the second unit marched along with the main group, but sometimes they split off. The person to my left and I had counterparts in the front of that second unit. That started making me think about my right elbow again, there is a tenderness to it, and I remember something like bone chips under the surface. I am wondering if I didn't tuck it in well enough when I had to eject from an aircraft at some point. I don't think that happened during this event, but I'm not sure. I have been wondering again today if a memory I have of running out of gas in my red Ford relates here. I was on my way to supervising construction of the Senior-class float for the school parade. It's hard to know if these thoughts that come up are the result of memories coming back or they are just imagination. I am wondering again about that thought of me having an air-to-air kill during this operation and I ran out of gas because I engaged another fighter.
"He was not due to break radio silence and check in with Command until the 38-degree-longitude point, about one-quarter the distance to Baghdad, another twenty minutes. Then he would break silence only long enough to utter the code word 'Moscow,' indicating "so far, so good."
I am eager to finish this book. But I am having a lot of trouble concentrating.
I read about one sentence and then my mind drifts off for about 2 minutes. Now it'll be 3 minutes as I know people will start watching me reading.
That was the Junior float actually. I was supervising because I was the class president. Jennifer Jones thought I was too uptight. It had been pouring rain earlier and I was wearing my hunting jacket, which was waterproof. Mark Miller thought that was funny for some reason and asked me if I was going hunting. Years later, there was a style of men's jacket that was popular and I would think about how similar it was to that hunting jacket I wore. They called them "Barn jackets."
6/7/1981
6 7 1 9 8 1
F G A I H A
HAGAI F
F = Feline? = Katz?
"As Raz had struggled to modify his approach, he saw Yadlin cut in beneath him. Not a bad move, he thought. He pulled all the way back on the stick, angling the F-16 backward and, finally, all the way over, executing a maneuver pilots called an "overturn," an incredible, circuslike loop-de-loop in which his F-16 turned full circle like a Ferris wheel. Raz came swooping down on the dome at a perfect angle."
"Nothing was said about Raz missing the navigation. Neither Raz nor Yadlin mentioned that Yadlin had cut in beneath Raz, or the fact that the first two bombs had been dropped by the number two flier. Unmentioned also was Raz's astounding 360-degree backflip over the target, under enemy fire, and then dropping both two-thousand-pounders with 100 percent accuracy."
This explains those recurring dreams I was having a while back. I can't remember when I was having them, seems like it has been during this period of captivity while I was homeless. The recurring element in those dreams was that I was in a pickup, one time in a Jeep, and the vehicle was going backwards. I couldn't get it to start moving forward again. A very disturbing dream. Seems like I wrote in my sleep journal about the last one. Something about me in my red Ford spinning my wheels as I approached a cliff.
As for the ambidextrous theory, I started thinking again about this scar I have on the side of my right wrist. I have been wondering if that is actually a bullet wound and not the burning apple pie I remember while in a day care center. I wonder if that wound caused some nerve damage that affects my dexterity. I am also wondering if that is one of five bullet wounds. There are two right next to each other that I wonder if are separate wounds or if they are entry and exit scars.
Now I understand why Bill Latimer [ the "Peter Griffin" look-alike from "Family Guy" ] was talking one day at Microsoft about the nature of how an orbiting space craft reenters the atmosphere. He pointed out to someone that I knew what he was talking about. The craft, with the engine pointing in the direction of travel executes a burn which slows the craft down which in turn causes the Earth's gravity to capture it.
Something nags at my mind about the sequence of events of the actual strike as described in the book. I am wondering if the reality is also detailed in the movie Flight Of The Intruder. I wonder if I realized I would miss the target so I flew over it, gave the other aircraft time to make their approach, which really would have been just a few seconds of delay, then I did the backflip, and dropped my bombs after Ramon made his pass.
A while back, I was writing about that time I got my red Ford stuck in the mud while out hunting on that underground pipeline. Could that situation symbolically connect to this strike? The place I got stuck wasn't far from where I hit that 9-point deer, but I am pretty certain represents the Osirak strike, but I'm not sure which event happened first for Kerry, the 9-point or the stuck Ford. That corridor the pipeline passed through, carved out of the trees, reminds of what I was reading in this book, where the stike group went through some kind of radar corridor. There is also a corridor aspect to the travel through Jordan. Assuming I did get shot down or ran out of gas on the way back, I had to walk my way out through the very dark terrain until I found someone that could help. Kerry Burgess found someone that went to the same church to drive him back and pull his truck out. Not sure what happened in reality, assuming that I really was on the ground evading capture. It may represent a local giving me a ride back to friendly terrain. There was also that aspect of everyone back home out searching for me, but I told them I was going hunting in a different place so I was miles away from where they were actually looking for me.
And when I write about that pipeline, if I call it a "buried pipeline" I feel compelled to change that to "underground pipeline." There must be a reason for that.
All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you'd understand?
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/coldplay/speedofsound.html
Was I missing in action at this point ?????
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/61281b.htm
Remarks on Signing a Resolution and a Proclamation Declaring National P.O.W.-M.I.A. Recognition Day, 1981
June 12, 1981
Or maybe this represents that I had been found or that I had returned.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Annapolis
I happened to glance at this article and it reminded me of something I had thought of a few times in recent memory. It was a time when Randy Romines father was in the hospital. He was dying from emphysema. That would have been 1978 I believe. I spent the night at least once on the sofa in his hospital room. I can't remember for certain his name, but I'm pretty sure it was Ronnie Romine. This article describes when Ronald Reagan was in the hospital after being shot by an assassin. He was having a lot of trouble it sounds like with the breathing tubes and he wanted to thank the nurse for staying with him. The article states her name as Marisa Mize.
Seattle Times June 9, 1981
Reagan, trauma past, seeks his Florence Nightingale
Ten weeks have passed since the assassination attempt on President Reagan
From 3/3/1959 to 5/22/1981 is: 1159 weeks, 3 days
1-59-3
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869/
Outland (1981)
Plot Summary: Marshal W.T. O'Niel is assigned to a mining colony on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. During his tenure miners are dying - usually violently
Release Date: 22 May 1981 (USA)
Sean Connery ... O'Niel
