Interview with Edward Auble, March 29, 2022

Interview Ed Auble(Video).m4a

Justin Fenicle: All right, so my name is Justin Fenicle. I'm interviewing Ed Auble on March 29th, 2022 at approximately 5:03P.M.. First off, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak with me. It's greatly appreciated, and Ed Auble has given us consent to submit this to Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. Correct?

Ed Auble: That's right.

Justin Fenicle: All right, we'll get started. So first off, I just-- want to know about your background, uh, where did you grow up?

Ed Auble: (Chuckles) Uhh-- Well, I guess during World War II, we lived in New Milford, uh, New Jersey, Bergen County. We moved up to, uh, Connecticut to a small town, Staffordville, Connecticut, 500 people and um and the general store, you probably don't find places like that anymore. The general store doesn't 00:01:00exist anymore, unfortunately. Um, my father died in uh, late 1950, and uh we moved down to Belvedere, New Jersey, which uh.. It Warren County. A town of about 3000 then three thousand now, but I consider that my home town and we moved there because the family was there and my mother-- needed the support, certainly of family and friends, people she knew many years ago, Uh, I went to a high school there and uh, graduated and uh, went to Lafayette College, which was about 10 miles down the road, got a degree in business administration. And I graduated in '61 and had a couple job offers, one of them was with a bank in New York City and the personnel director said, Well, you-- uh-- Need to come with us 00:02:00for at least 18 months. Uh-- That was the time of the Berlin crisis. And so a lot of us were being called into the army, and I wasn't wild about that. I wasn't wild about the military, actually. Uh, but he said, you might want to consider OCS, which is uh, Officer Candidate School in Newport um. I applied for that. And uh. Shortly thereafter, I was accepted uh, into OCS. I went through that, uhhh it's about a 16 month program, 16 week program, excuse me. And um. I was uh, stationed on a ship in Newport. USS Yosemite, which was a cruise, 00:03:00Cruiser Destroyer Atlantic Fleet Command ship. Um, I was a communication officer on that and uh, in the next year.We, no, that year in '62, we headed down to uh, the Cuban blockade. We were the flagship for the blockade. So we were involved in that for um, for a few weeks. Came back and. And uh, in '63, I had a drinking buddy, was on a ship across the the, uh, the pier from our ship. Uh, Thomas Patrick Quinn and, um. He said, Well, I'm going to uh, to Grosvenor Square in London, in communications. Why don't you put in for European short duty? Well, I was a small town boy, never thought about going overseas, but I did. I applied, 00:04:00and a few weeks later, I got my orders. To Naples, Italy. And I had put in for, uh for uh, for Northern Europe. I knew nothing about Naples, Italy. Small town boy and uh, went there, got there before Kennedy was assassinated in uh, in uh, '63. And spent, spent, uh, 2 years there. And I was 25 years old, approaching 26, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And, one evening I was sitting on the terrace that, uh, where Ron Carl Carlson had his apartment. And we're looking out on Naples, we're looking out on Vesuvius, it's a beautiful night, and I said to Ron, I said, "Well, Ron, I'm about ready to get out and I don't know what I 00:05:00want to do." And he said, "Ed. You know, you're a pretty good athlete and you're not too stupid. Why don't you become a navy pilot?" I could tell you the whole story on that one, but I applied. And son of a gun, I was accepted. Never thought about flying and never flown before, except commercially and uh, went to a Navy flight training in November of 60, uh, was that '65. It's a 16 month program, it's pretty intensive, and there's a certain, percentage of people who flunked out for various reasons, and you have to be physically fit and mentally sound. And um, got through that. Went to communi.., went to, uh All right, went, 00:06:00I got orders then. To San Diego to VS-33. And anti submarine squadron based at Naval Air Station, uh, North Island, which is part of Coronado. It's right off. Um, the water there from San Diego. And um. That was my start of-- flying in the fleet. And the one I flew was-- Was this if you could see that?(Shows S-2 Model Plane) That is an S-2 tracker. It flew in the fleet from '54 to 1974 was replaced by a, a newer model, but uh, that's a plane that's-- um-- about, fully 00:07:00loaded is nearly 14 tons. It's has a pilot, copilot. Two crew members handling the electronic gear and other gear in the back of the plane. Um, two, 18, 20 engines, pretty powerful. Well, we only cruised at 140 miles an hour, but anti sub, we didn't need speed, we needed stability and this plane was-- very trustworthy and-- Regardless, out in flights or around the carrier. And what else, we uh, well in April, the next year of '68. We sailed for Vietnam. And 00:08:00this-- (holds up picture of USS Bennington) Picture here is a picture of the USS Bennington CVS 20, which was the, uh, carrier I flew off mostly and uh, we went on board Bennington and and went to um, Gulf of Tonkin that way. Probably hard to see, but there's a number of S-2's there, there's helicopters there, which in part were rescue and face. We didn't land on the uh, on the deck and landed in the water. Did not happen, but you always want to be prepared. So our mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. The mission of the, of the S-2 was twofold primary mission was hunting and killing submarines well. That was at that time, the Russians had 00:09:00a lot of submarines, right? And so it was appropriate to have a plane that could go after them, but the Gulf, Gulf of Tonkin was not a deep gulf. The North Vietnamese did not have submarines. And so our secondary mission was patrol, and. So we would uh, We divide up the-- Gulf of Tonkin in four quadrants. And we each launch. We'd have five planes, four the planes would go one to each quadrant and the fifth plane. I would say on the operation market time, which was basically going along the coast to make sure that North Vietnamese weren't shipping goods down along the coast. And if we saw some. Excuse me, if we saw 00:10:00something, we could call in the destroyers and we would act as gunfire spotters. So. We had three periods of time on station. 9 days, 30 days and 35 days, and during those times, we flew missions around the clock. It was fairly demanding because. We would uh, we had the same pilot, copilot. And two crew members, we had a team four of us that flew together. And. We would launch. For a 6 and a half hour flight with the four other planes, you're saying come back to the carrier land. And then we had to grab some sleep some time or other, and we all 00:11:00had jobs on with the squadron on board the carrier. And so we had to do those jobs. So it was uh, it could be, it could be tiring.

Justin Fenicle: Yeah, and so you said the plane you flew was approximately 14 tons?

Ed Auble: Right.

Justin Fenicle: So that's not an easy thing to do, if you don't mind me asking, um, can you tell me a little bit about the the training you had to go through to, to get to that point before you got in active duty and everything?

Ed Auble: Ohh. Umm. Well, you started off in primary flight training a, a T34 and eventually there you came. You got to do a solo flight when they thought you were-- capable of doing that. Primary wasn't that long, you learn basic things about aviation, and when you were done there, you went to uh, NAS(Naval Air 00:12:00Station) Whiting Field. At Whiting Field we flew the T-28, which was a fighter bomber, it was used at that time during Vietnam, the Vietnamese used to use that. Pretty powerful engine. And uh, we were-- I forget how long we were there. Uhh-- 2 months. But we went through learning how to formation flying, we learned precision flying, uh-- doing various things in the plane, including landing the plane sort of a-- primary thing to do. And um, and then that was the first time we took a plane out to the carrier, which we did on the Lexington out in the 00:13:00Gulf of Mexico. Um, the plane was, a pretty solid plane, but I went up with the instructor one day and he had me do a, uh, oh, a weird maneuver. And there was in the plane, something called a chip light detector and apparently a little piece of metal got-- loose somewhere in the engine and contacted this chip detector and indicated this was indicated in the cockpit and you you wanted to get the plane down pretty quickly because you didn't know what was happening with the engine if it was going to be a engine failure. And uh, we landed in a farmer's field someplace near the near the airport. Landed fine wasn't a problem, but. So then after finishing that, we went to Corpus Christi and then 00:14:00Corpus Christi is when we started flying the the S-2. And, bigger plane, different things to do with it. And then we started doing cross-country, cross-country flights. So. We. We would just sign out the plane. You go someplace. After we got to the point where they knew we could be trusted with the plane. And, um. Then we did, we did. Carrier landings on this, also. By that time, hey, it was a scary thing. It was. It really got your attention. Going around the carrier. After a while when you were-- fully confident, and it wasn't as big a thing anymore, but it got your attention. That's for sure. Um, and that 00:15:00was it, and. We got graded on every flight. And. Certain point and they told us we'd had made it. We got our orders went out and, my case went out to San Diego.

Justin Fenicle: So a lot of what you said does not sound easy at all.

Ed Auble: (Chuckles)

Justin Fenicle: Was there anything that stuck out to you that was the most difficult part of training or is it all just kind of similarly difficult for you?

Ed Auble: Anything that was difficult. Yeah, certain parts of it. Maybe I didn't do well the first-- time I did it, and then I had to rethink it and do it again. Um-- No, I can't think of-- It's just. It's just. You have to know what you're 00:16:00doing. I mean, there's. You have to do the studying, you have to, when you're in that cockpit, you have an instructor with you, you've got to do it right. And, um. I can't think of a-- particular aspect of flight training that was, um, outstanding as far as difficulty, but. But it all was to me, I was. A good pilot. There were guys there, and I know we're better pilots. And I was, I felt that that was the case. But um. But I was confident and hey, I got through it. And. I got. Wings, Gold Wings. That was the name of the game. So they can't take 00:17:00that away from me. So there we are, Justin. (Chuckles)

Justin Fenicle: Right. And what we, we talked about previously was the Proper Preflight Planning Prevents Piss Poor Pilot Performing correct.

Ed Auble: (Chuckles) You're putting that in this, OK?

Justin Fenicle: (Laughs)

Ed Auble: Yeah. You preflighted in the plane when you are going out into flight, better know what the hell you're doing for one thing, and you better check the airplane airplane over before you go out. You want to make sure. Well, I didn't tell you about this when we talked about this last week, but we had a flight. In Vietnam, we were taking off at 11 o'clock in the morning. And. Brian and I, the pilots, we would check over certain parts of the plane and then the aircrew would would check over other parts, and we had a young fellow-- Check the, Oil 00:18:00tank, and to do that, you had to go up on the top of the plane on top of the wings and there was a, doesn't show in this model, but there was a oil cap there and I don't know if we had 13 gallons of oil. We had quite a quite a bit of oil with two engines turning and um, he was to check the oil. And we got back into the plane. We uh, It was a it was a deck launch, we weren't-- catapulted off. And uh, It'll come the other crew member, (ANNONYMOUS) was in the right seat and he as we got off the deck, his job was to check the cell around the engine on 00:19:00the right side, see that everything was OK. And as soon as we got off the deck, he said, there's oil coming out. Oh, man, that's not what we needed. I wasn't flying that day, Brian was flying the plane. And we did what we had to do, which was he climbed it up to 360 feet, 300 feet above the flight deck level. Made a horseshoe turn. Came down, the other side of the carrier made a turn again to come in to land. And we managed to get in, and I don't think we somebody said that we didn't have much more than a gallon of oil, if we had been airborne for another, oh, I don't know, half a minute, minute. What have you. That engine could have frozen, and we would be trying to come in on carrier landing with one, with one engine in a very asymmetrical approach. That would really be a 00:20:00challenge to do that. I never saw that. I'm sure it happened out in carriers, but. And the young fellow. He said he put the cap on tightly and he couldn't have. I felt sorry for him in a way because he probably thinks about that still. But 4 people almost died because of that. So that was. That was probably about the hairest thing that we experienced around the carrier.

Justin Fenicle: So when you weren't flying, I noticed you said that you had jobs on the carrier. Could you tell me a little bit about your job on the carrier and what a typical day would be like when you weren't flying on the USS Bennington?

Ed Auble: Well, I had, I had three or four people enlisted men in the uh, in the 00:21:00administration personnel, uh, I had taken over administration, which is normally, I think, for Lieutenant Commander, I was-- a lieutenant at the time. And. They were they were very capable, so I probably didn't have to do much more than sign documents, but um, but it was something things that I had to do. I can't remember how much time I spent at that, but they were good. They were good troopers and they they got the work. They got the work done so. But, you know, we Justin the nice thing is we came back, we go out and fly our mission and we come back to the carrier. Oh, it might be 11 o'clock at night, be dark, no one would be up except the personnel on the carrier making sure that we got in OK, 00:22:00but um. But we weren't ground pounders, we weren't out there in the jungles of Vietnam. And yeah, it was, what we did was. Try and um. But we came back and we can have a clean have a shower and. Clean bunk and uh. And we were safe out there, so.

Justin Fenicle: So how long would a, a typical flight be for you, you would come back. You just said 11:00 P.M. Um What time would you guys leave?

Ed Auble: Well, it was a 6 and a half hour flight. So, because we we launched every 30 hours, sometimes we would launch at 11 o'clock at night. You have a 6 and a half hour flight, we come back 5:30 in the morning. It was dark for the whole period of time. So. Uh. So then if you came back at 5:30. Uh. You would 00:23:00launch-- at 5 o'clock the next morning. Um. And. When you did it for 30 or 35 days at a time. That's you just you did the flying and you made sure you got to sleep. You couldn't (chuckles) you couldn't sleep in the plane. Well, that's not totally true.

Justin Fenicle: (Laughs)

Ed Auble: If we were out, I don't think we'd did much sleeping in Vietnam. But with two pilots, you might you might be out in a 6 hour flight and you just be exhausted and uh. You said to the other pilot, "Hey, I'm just going to get a few minutes" and you'd take off your hard hat and uh. You'd be napping for 10-15 00:24:00minutes and that made all the difference in the world. But it was, it was basically around the clock and. We um. I should mention the launches that we did. Uh, During the day-- Before any flight you get our, of course, get our flight gear on, bring our hardhat down to the ready room. Ready Room had a TV that had pictures of the uh, planes as they were coming in. So whenever you landed on the carrier, there were people watching on TV(chuckles) Um. And we would have a flight briefing, well, flight briefings weren't too long out there because it's pretty much the same thing any time, but maybe 20 minutes or so. You go up to the flight deck um, and get the plane you were assigned to. Do the 00:25:00preflight and get to the plane. Turn up the engines and um taxi out to the launch point on the deck. And uh. A certain point we. When we knew where everything was OK in the plane, we'd run, run the engines up full power, and salute the fellow on the deck, guiding our takeoff. He would give the signal in about a second or a half later, we would start running down the deck and uh. It was only about a hundred and ten feet, I forget the exact length. But by the time we would get on a deck launch, by the time we get there, we'd only be doing maybe 70 knots, maybe a little bit more than that. And the deck is 60 feet above 00:26:00water. And you would start you got off the edge of the deck, you'd start sinking. I don't know how far down we would go. But but the plane had full power on it, so it didn't take long for it to--get a higher speed and and pull itself up, and then you were OK, you didn't want to let it sink, and there was a lot of water down there, if you, if you didn't handle it properly. Um, so that was a, a daytime. In nighttime we always used to catapult because there were nights out there where you couldn't see the end of the carrier, I mean, it was just black, no moon. And so same thing applied with, well, except in the ready room. We put on red lens goggles so that we would night adapt and uh, go up to the, go up to the deck. What you didn't want to be walking around the deck. And not have 00:27:00appropriate vision, there was an enlisted man during our time in Vietnam. That was on the deck with somebody I don't know how. The person he was with, but the fellow started walking towards a turning prop and his friend saw this is happening, he grabbed him and pulled him back with the guy's arm swung out at it. The prop took off a couple of fingers. If it hadn't done that, and he'd kept going, it would have been a lot worse than that. So. Uh, for the night launches, we would uh, again. Taxi out, but we would taxi to the catapult. And I can't get into all the detail on this, but the plane would be on the catapult it would be held with a hold back fitting to keep the plane there. When you ran up that we 00:28:00would run up the power, then full power and then signal the outside person,

that we're ready to go, he would give the signal to launch and the catapult would fire and it would break the hold back fitting and we'd be heading down the track it was. You'd better make sure your feet in your hands were on the throttles and whatever, uh because the it was four G's of pressure on you, but you got off the end of the deck and you didn't want to fool around at night. Uh, you want to make sure that you're safely airborne, so that's the reason for using the uh, catapult.

Justin Fenicle: So you're describing these different uh, take off techniques. Was there one that was harder than the other or were they both pretty similar?

Ed Auble: No.. no. No, I. It was expected you'd use a catapult at night. And, um. No, no, no difficult, no difficulty. The difficulty came when it was bad weather, when you were in nighttime and you were doing landings on the carrier. That's when it got-- sticky, so. Um, coming back into the carrier. Whether it's daytime or nighttime, the mantra. That you would say to yourself if you were powering the plane. Is "meatball line up air speed, meatball line up air speed", 00:30:00meatball meant the mirror landing system. The uh, that had to be in the appropriate position because it, it told you where you were on the glide path and the glide path coming in was something like 3 and a half degrees. Um-- line up, you had to come in and hit within a couple feet of the yellow line, in the landing area. You didn't want to be drifting, right, because-- there is an island there. The thing that sticks up on the carrier deck (clears throat) and you didn't want to run into that. And. The uh, nor did you want to go left. The. The tour. The year before. Steve, one of the pilots, not funny, I don't know why I'm chuckling about it. Uh, he was flying with the commanding officer and for 00:31:00whatever reason, they they. Came in, not on the yellow line. They started moving towards the um-- towards the side of the landing deck, and they went over the side and, of course, you have a tail hook on a plane that's used to catch the wire, that's how you stop when on carrier. Fortunately, the tail hook was connected to one of the wires and they're dangling down there just about in the water 60 feet below. Uh, that would uh, that would concern you a bit, I could say. Uh, but they have a cherry picker on on the deck that they could use to lift the plane back up, and and that's what they did, but (chuckles) I'm sure the skipper and Steve there (chuckles) moments after that, I. And airspeed, and 00:32:00for us, we had to come in at 92 knots. It was a very, very specific in the landing signal officer on on the deck there when he's looking at the plane. He knows whether you're going 92 or 93 or 91. And the reason for the airspeed is because it gives a certain angle on the plane to allow the tail hook to catch the wire. So. Which I did every time, but three times. And those three times you just you're on the deck and you know that you didn't catch the wire and you had power and you go around to get for me, those three times were at night in bad weather, and it wasn't just me. Other people, including the commanding officer, had a problem with that. So that's. That that is a (chuckles) that is a delicious moment, anyway. So.

Justin Fenicle: So with the the poor weather, um, one of the times you missed it, what kind of weather was, were you going through with that?

Ed Auble: Oh, this is nighttime and we had a typhoon one time out there, which we didn't near where we didn't even fly for three days. It was so bad, but you would get rough seas. And although although the aircraft carrier was at 40,000 ton, 880 foot long piece of metal. It bobbed in the water, and that's that's when you really had a problem. You really had to concentrate then and try to ignore the bobbing up the stern of the carrier and just aim for the what you knew you should be aiming for. Um, but nighttime, nighttime and bad weather. And sometimes you come in the-- the antenna on the top of the island that the piece 00:34:00of a carrier that's sticking up above the deck, the top of that was 198 feet. And sometimes you'd come in and the cloud layer would be down to just about that. And. (chuckling) You sure didn't want to... You sure didn't want to hit that um. So, yeah, there were, there were difficult moments at nighttime with the with the ship bobbing. That was the problem time.

Justin Fenicle: And so. You said previously there's a crew of 4 on the plane that's operating correct?

Ed Auble: Correct.

Justin Fenicle: Are you able to go into a little bit of detail of what each crew member had to do when flying this plane?

Ed Auble: (coughs) Excuse me. Well, I'll tell you the equipment we had, uh we 00:35:00had a we had a boom that stuck out from the back of the plane and that was mag gear, magnetic anomaly detectors. So one of the crew members would handle that. That's when you got down to. In the daytime, 100 feet above the water, and you put that out, (coughs) excuse me, who um-- detected the magnetic field of a submarine if it's within, if it's within 400 feet of the boom. You can pick it up. We had radar. Um. Which we used to chase submarine happen to be on the surface. And um. What else? Uh-- Electronic counter measures. Hey, Vietnam, for 00:36:00me was uh, 50? 54 years ago, Justin uh, I have to stop and think some more about that, um. There's probably something else I'm missing (cough) Sorry.

Justin Fenicle: It's alright.

Ed Auble: We had a searchlight on the, on the right wing. 70 million candle power. You could you, could light up something five miles away.

Justin Fenicle: Wow.

Ed Auble: So if a sub is on the surface we could. You know, we could light it up.

Justin Fenicle: And how common was it for you to see a submarine?

Ed Auble: No we. That was the thing we were. The Navy was prepared we had about. I don't know. We had maybe a. Half dozen, eight squadrons of S-2's East Coast and West Coast. Um-- no, the Russians. We never saw a sub. We worked out against our own submarines, conventional and nuclear, but uh, no, I I don't know if anybody ever. contacted a Russian sub. They were out there, but I don't think they ever came into our waters. And if they had, we could pick up. The Russians had submarines in the sub base up in the North Sea. We we could know here. If 00:38:00any of the subs had come out, of their harbor, we could pick up their signature. Because of their engines in the water, we'd have a distinctive signal. We didn't do that. We had gear. On the ground that could do that.

Justin Fenicle: And so when you were flying, um, talk about transitioning from pilot and copilot sometimes. How--

Ed Auble: We just alternated we alternated each flight.

Justin Fenicle: Would be each flight? Right.

Ed Auble: Nothing. Oh, we just we alternated. And so whoever was in the left seat, did the landing, whether it was Onshore or on the carrier.

Justin Fenicle: And so was your crew, was it the same crew every time?

Ed Auble: Well, when we were out in Nam, yes, it was. And and generally speaking, during the during the year, we will ensure we keep generally keep the same crew, but sometimes we're out uh, onshore when we weren't flying around the carrier and I could fly with just about anybody. So that. But we we kept the same crew in or out at sea because we we we needed to know each other. And um, so. Brian was a fellow I flew with and Aaron and David, were the uh, the enlisted men in back.

Justin Fenicle: So being with this crew a lot of time, you got to have a strong bond. I mean, you're with them all the time. You're doing these intense situations with them. After service, did you keep in touch with the, with the same guys?

Ed Auble: Well, I'm very much in touch with the pilots I flew with, yeah, I may have, I think I mentioned it to you, I. I've organized 6, I think 6 Squadron Pilots reunions, uh, since, since I left the squadron in 1970. Um. But one of the reunions. Jerry uh, worked with me on it because he lived out in San Diego, and that's where we were doing it. We did that. We did that in uh, with 32, 00:41:002003, it was. 35 years after-- going to Vietnam. Yeah. And the last one was in Philadelphia. In 2015. And know we all have been through the same thing Justin and we've been through the triumphs, the scary stuff, the you name it. And it really was a uh, Band of brothers, I guess. And. You may not be close to somebody, but they had done what you did and you you appreciated that. So, yeah.

Justin Fenicle: It's great to hear.

Ed Auble: And the last one we did in Philadelphia, if. People are interested, 00:42:00and it's in the area here. You go down to uh, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. On Broad Street, right across the entrance from the convention center, you will see an S-2 there. The S-2 is sort of angled in there because they didn't have enough room to put it in its normal position. I met with a fellow who created this display. And the woman who managed it, who happened to be a friend of my daughter and uh (chuckles) Another pilot not in the squadron, he and I gave our inputs to this. And when they had the dedication back in 2015. I don't think nails spoke, but I. They had me speak about, about the plane. It's fascinating to me to have that there. And somebody said it's most it's the second most 00:43:00visited uh, outdoor display in Philadelphia, so I don't know what number one is, but. If you have a chance, they were going to keep it there for 6 months and then take it away. Well, it's become so popular. They've kept it there, I guess. Last time I saw it was before the virus hit. But um. Yep.

Justin Fenicle: It's amazing. And so I want to ask you, we're on the topic of keeping in touch. What was it like keeping in touch with your family while you were away? Was it?

Ed Auble: No, I think I mentioned something about that. Well, cassette tapes. Uh, it now is pretty good. They'd have a cod carrier on board delivery flight 00:44:00that would come in to the carrier, pick up the mail, take it out to wherever it was going and then bring in mail. So, I had a tape recorder. I tape my-- whatever uh, to my wife. Uh, send it out and then she would use the same, cassette, uh, tape just record over it in the back to me. So we were gone for 6 months and the only time I talked to my wife, was when we went to a Japanese uh, I forget the base in that, but we went to the communications center and I had a telephone call with Bonnie for sit, for 3 minutes. That was it, and it was single side band, and I would say, "Hi honey, how are you? Over." And she would 00:45:00respond, "I'm fine, honey. Over." That's how the conversation went for 3 minutes. Um. And now, I guess fellas, wherever they are they had cell phones. So you don't have that. That uh, absence if you will. So. Um. What else here? Um. I guess a couple of stories I could mention. We, we went to Japan 3 or 4 times, one time we took, bus or a train, train, I think, to see the Yomiuri Giants play baseball against the St. Louis Cardinals, who I think had won the World Series 00:46:00that year. And we saw the, all time leading home run hitter, in the world. And I mentioned this to people, and of course, no one knows (chuckles), but that was Sadaharu Oh who played for the Yomuiri Giants. Uh, and um, yeah, he'd beat Babe Ruth and he beat Hank Aaron, um. We went to Nagasaki. And we went to Hiroshima. And I mentioned Hiroshima to people because Ray Fairbank was another pilot in the squadron, and we walked around the site and then we went up by the, The Atom Bomb Museum, and, there was a plaza in front of it and, we, we both felt a little awkward because we were the only Americans there. 23 years before that, 00:47:00we had. dropped a bomb that killed over 100,000-- People in Hiroshima. And I tell this story because, we're standing there and this little girl, 9 or 10 years old. Japanese girl comes up to me and in perfectly good English said, "May I ask you a question?", and boy, I felt uncomfortable. I said "Yes." She said, "Would you sit and speak English with me?" And that's what I did for, I don't know, 10, 12 minutes, not too long. And. She wasn't thinking about the atomic bomb as her parents would have been. She just was thinking about improving her English, and she had an opportunity to do that with me. So we. We can forget 00:48:00some of these, terrible things that have happened in life. But anyway, that was. And I, I would say this the pilot's-- That I flew with we didn't have any personal feeling about the Vietnam War, we were just doing our job. Um-- it was a war that, President Johnson got us involved in. I think he, realized later on he didn't do it right. And we lost 58,000 young, mostly men. Getting involved in 00:49:00this, including one fellow, Bill Heap. I flew with him, flight training. He's on that Vietnam Memorial. And we returned to North Island, in November. Came in, we had practiced it, took 2 weeks for the carrier to sail from, Gulf of Tonkin to San Diego. We had a-- had a 24 plane formation coming into North Island. You came in and landed, and my wife was there and I hugged her and I have a newspaper picture of that. And there was nobody else to say hi to us, or thank us, or what have you. And that was it, that was sort of. That's sort of the way it was with Vietnam. And I understand that. Yeah.

Justin Fenicle: Yeah, and you said at the beginning that you weren't too wild about the military and then you just said you were just kind of doing your job. You had really no feeling on Vietnam. Did anything change from pre to during to post about the war or just about the military in general?

Ed Auble: No, we were. We were, we're in a squadron, we were called to do our duty. There were people, yeah, back in the 60's, uh. Protesters. 60's, it was a very turbulent period of time, Justin, very. And um. So there were plenty of 00:51:00people that protested against the war in a way I, I was isolated from this. Uh, I flew out of the Naval Air Station. I lived about 4 blocks from the air station, I could bike into work. Um. No, we weren't-- In that crowd, let's say, the anti-war crowd. So. But it was not a popular war. You know, so you make the comparison. You've seen pictures of-- mostly fellows coming back, in World War II and huge parades and so on. There weren't nothing like that when we came back. Nor, nor did we expect it, I guess. It's OK. We're called to do something 00:52:00we were professional about it.

Justin Fenicle: And we're talking about your return home, um, what was your reception like from your family? How, how was that for you getting to come back and, and see everybody?

Ed Auble: Justin, I've been away from a wife. That I have been married to, for about 6 months. We didn't have kids. I think you can imagine what it was like to be back.

Justin Fenicle: Had to have been amazing for you. Definitely.

Ed Auble:(Chuckles) Yeah.

Justin Fenicle: Um.

Ed Auble: (Inaudible)

Justin Fenicle: Oh, go on.

Ed Auble: No, my wife is good, she was a good trooper then and later on, so. You 00:53:00were going to say.

Justin Fenicle: I wanted to talk about. You come home. What some of the first things you did, how was it coming back?

Ed Auble: Oh. Well. I. In a way, we were isolated from the greater, community, I suppose. Um. Oh, I. We, we probably got a newspaper, Navy Times. I don't know how much I read that, but. No, I think we just. We just. Sit in. We had some 00:54:00friends there, and um, you know life went on. Um. I. I was 68, I stayed in the squadron through 69. And. Then, because the war was, I guess starting to wind down. Uh. I was transferred to a transport squadron there on the same base, so for 6 months before I left active duty, I uh, I was, flying planes S-2's. From one place to another around the country mostly around the coast. And that's what I did. It was. It was-- OK, duty wouldn't wanted to do it for a career, wasn't 00:55:00career building, but I wasn't looking to make make a career I was ready to get out. Although I did stay in the reserves, I retired in 1981 with 20 years. In the Navy. I appreciated the professionalism of the guys that I uh, flew with. That's. That um. This is my finest memory I think.

Justin Fenicle: Sure. And you stayed in the reserves, did any of your fellow Skrewbirds join the reserves do you know?

Ed Auble: (Chuckles) Well, did any? Uhh, you know Larry probably did. I. Yeah, 00:56:00that's a good question, Justin. I had 9 years active duty. And so I thought, well. I stay in for another 11 years, which is OK for me I'll, I'll get a pension, I'll retire with a pension, and it was little, different because, when I got, in 70, I uh. I applied for graduate school. In uh, in international management, this is Thunderbird Graduate School in Glendale, Arizona, near Phoenix. And I got, I got my masters in, in uh, January of, of 72. And shortly 00:57:00thereafter, I was with AIG, I was working overseas. And so, getting reserve duty was, very difficult because some of the places I was at, and so much of this, I had to do by correspondence courses and um. So. It wasn't that I was going to make a great career in the, in the reserves, but. But um. But I completed 20 years, I was a Lieutenant Commander when I got out. Oh, by the way. You there? Are you there? (TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY)

Justin Fenicle: Yeah.

Ed Auble:Wait a minute, I don't see you. Where's my cursor? Uh. I don't see you, 00:58:00but.(RECORDING PAUSES) All right. This is a. I can't remember when this was taken, but somewhere around, 1968.

Justin Fenicle: And do you know, happen to know when the the second picture was taken?

Ed Auble: Oh, that's a professional photo, that's probably, 15 years ago, I had more hair and. And it wasn't gray, so we might as well show the gray hair. Um. 00:59:00Yeah so the military there I was probably whatever I was. 30 years old, I'm not sure. Time goes by Justin, I'm, approaching 83. It seems hard to believe, but.

Justin Fenicle: So you, you spent a lot of time, in the Navy. When you came back, did you receive any medals or awards for your service?

Ed Auble: Oh, well. Yeah, I for-- for flying a certain number of flights over Vietnam I have an air medal. Um, and I have, I think I have four or five other 01:00:00medals, one I got Expert Pistol. I guess I had a steady enough hand I had to qualify 3 times for that. I can't remember, one of them.(Chuckles) One of the medals was the Vietnam. It was a ribbon, I don't know if it had a medal connected with it. And that was, simply being in the vicinity of Vietnam was probably a lot of people think about that um. It was affectionately called the geydunk. Geydunk, I guess, kitchen or the cafeteria. So.

Justin Fenicle: And so. You, see America before Vietnam and then you come back, 01:01:00did you see any changes or notice any changes in America after, the war.

Ed Auble: No, I mean, we're only gone for 6 months, it wasn't. It wasn't bad. Um, you know, if we had lived in San Diego. Coronado was sort of isolated, uh look at a map you'll see is on an isthmus. And. I don't know some some ways I feel like we were isolated from, the the general population in some way. Not that we, opted to have it that way we can get out and travel around, so I, I 01:02:00can't say that I saw-- Any big changes, but it was a time of turmoil to college students and uh, those 10 years younger than I was. Um. Oh, and it was a time, of LSD, OK? And drugs and a lot of that was coming in Haight-Ashbury, up in uh, in San Francisco, so. Yeah, but it didn't affect me. I wasn't going to be touching any (chuckles) drugs.

Justin Fenicle: And then I know you wanted to speak, towards the end of the 01:03:00interview, is there anything you wanted to say?

Ed Auble: Yeah, I wanted to, I talked to you about this. Um, because it does relate to my time in the military, and I don't know how other people feel about this, but I think it's worth mentioning. Robert Bly was a poet, and he he wrote a book, he he died last year. He wrote a book called Iron John and being a poet, he could say in 200 words, what you and I might say in 10. But I distilled the 2 main points out of the book, uh, to me, I thought were, were important and. He-- refers to the American Indians and the father in an Indian tribe and his son or 01:04:00sons. We're basically talking about the male side of the family and uh, the young, soon to be warrior. And, what the father provided for that young fellow was mentorship. He taught that child how to hunt, how to fish, how to shoot a bow and arrow, or how to make the bow. Uh, how to protect themselves, how to make a leather vest, uh, how to make a quiver. How to, how to go out in the woods and survive for a period of time and. So that, that child was-- very well qualified by the time he got to be 15, 16 years older, and now was the initiation right to get into manhood because they had to go through a gauntlet, 01:05:00had to go through some rite to be accepted as a man in the tri, tribe. Compare that today with the young fellow. The, where's the mentorship coming from? The father is no longer close to the son as it as it would be in an, in an Indian tribe. The father may be working 40-50 hours, gets home tired in the evening. He may be out traveling. My father traveled. He died when I was 11, so I could speak of this to some degree. I didn't get all the mentorship that I probably should have, would have gotten from my father uh, if he had lived longer. And. And then, so. So what does the young fellow nowadays get in the way of 01:06:00mentoring? For me, it was looking at the strengths of other men around me and trying to pick out the best aspects and trying to emulate them. And then what is the initiation rite that young, the youth go through, the young male. Not too much difficult. It's uh, you don't have an initiation, rite, when you're on a, website or doing Minecraft or, or you're on your cell phone for hours a day, nothing challenging about that. So. I, I say this because I had limited mentorship from my father, because of his early death. And initiation rite for me was probably I played, baseball and basketball in high school, and so there's 01:07:00some challenge there, but. But what my initiation rite, was in flying. Especially in the time around the aircraft carrier. And some other challenging times in flights where, it was sort of a life or death situation I had to, I had to perform because nobody else was going to do anything for me. So, my, my initiation rite was my flying in the Navy. And I, wasn't as I said before, the best pilot, I wasn't the worst. I was good pilot. I was very professional. And what that has led to for me is the confidence in my abilities, plus the 01:08:00recognition of, areas that I'm not that strong in. So I know myself. And that's what you get out of an initiation, rite, and. It's something. I learned later on. Maybe 10 years later than uh. Than I might if my father had stayed alive. But the Navy flying was that, and I'll always, Appreciate the fact that I had an opportunity to do that, so that's, that's my little sermon here today Justin.

Justin Fenicle: Thank you for sharing that.

Ed Auble: Now. This, I don't know where this, video will go years from now, but. Some young fellow picks up on it or some, father who, needs to do a little more 01:09:00mentoring. It'll be worthwhile spending your time doing it.

Justin Fenicle: Will definitely be worthwhile. And I just want to say, thank you for coming out today and sharing your experiences and passing these on to, to others. It's greatly appreciated and thank you for that.

Ed Auble: Well, I thank you, Justin, you've been uh, we had that meeting last week and you've been very conscientious about what you're doing with this and uh. I know the uh, folks back in the history department there at West Chester will appreciate it. And if anybody wants to ask me about your value to this I'll give you a 10.

Justin Fenicle: Thank you.

Ed Auble:I thank, I thank you for your efforts.