Aviation Mishap Story Time (AMST) 13
Not a Lucky Number at All
“Buddy, you flew that one like Steve McQueen.”
Clark ‘Swab’ Cox wasn’t a man of many words - laconic might as well have been made just for him - so it caught me off guard and I laughed. I had just finished my second landing to the ship and now it was Clark’s turn. I’d had one of those passes around the pattern that if you fly enough, you eventually get: clean and pristine, where you hit every number right on airspeed and altitude, on glideslope and heading, and then you cap it off by just touching the skids down without so much as a bump or scrape. Flying is like golf in that regard: most of it you do well enough, but you keep coming back for the once a flight that goes the way you hoped it would.
We were taking turns whipping around the ship’s landing pattern 2 times each in order to get in as many landings as we could in 30 minutes. Because it was her maiden voyage, the USS Kearsarge’s Air Boss had asked our squadron if we could help them make sure they got the requisite number of landings for some Navy qualification. We were more than happy to oblige by grabbing extra “bounces” whenever we could. I was the Cobra schedule-writer at the time, and circumstances allowed me to finagle Clark and I for an early flight together on a cloudless, pristine day in the Adriatic Sea… Summer, 1995.
This was a bit of a treat for us, not just unique because we were off the coast of Yugoslavia as it was collasing in real time. We didn’t typically fly in the same aircraft - i.e. together - however, we’d been flying “together,” as the two junior guys in a section of Cobras, for most of the last two years together.
Clark and I checked into the training squadron, HMT-303, within 1 day of each other and found out we were going to the same squadron HML/A-269 together. As a consequence, we had been paired together, through training and the Fleet, almost every day. We’d been studying and flight-planning together, rehearsing drills and radio calls, and hanging out with other families in our spare time virtually non-stop. We were both married with kids and became fast friends with his lovely bride Renee and their boys. As I noted in AMST 4, it was Clark flying the aircraft with the AIM-9M Sidewinder missile while I was carrying and dropping the flares. We did our first, live TOW- missile shoots together, went to 29 Palms and fired Hellfires as a section, and the day I crashed was one of the few times Clark wasn’t on my wing or I on his for a flight. Ultimately, we were the two junior Cobra pilots on this deployment… and so we were paired with the two senior Cobra pilots.
So it was a rare treat for the two of us to get to hang out on a VFR, not-a-cloud-in-the-damn-sky day to fly together. All that was missing for a perfect day of Manly Man Camaraderie was beer at the end of the flight. U.S. ships remain “dry” counties while afloat, unlike their British counterparts, with one caveat: if you’re at sea for more than 60 days, Navy Regs allow for 2 beers per man, but no swapping, stockpiling, or selling tickets is allowed. So, Clark and I did get to enjoy that beer eventually on this deployment.
That’s the memory I keep of Clark…
Last Time We Flew Together
In AMST-12, I recounted my part, and my own understanding, of the fatal mishap that killed 14 people during the exercise “Purple Star” in May 1996. I was a member of that Aircraft Mishap Board when I learned I had been selected for the Funded Legal Education Program: if I accepted, I would leave flying - forever - and in August 1996 begin law school. I would still be a Marine officer, a junior Captain back then, and be paid while attending law school, but I would have to intern during the summers at a major installation. Upon graduation, I would also have to pass the Bar examination in some state, and then return to the Fleet as a judge advocate, a 4402 - “Basic Lawyer” vice 7565 “AH-1W Pilot.”
In the meantime, during my last three months, I spent almost exclusively testing aircraft. Clark, and Mike Wood, and other members of my cohort continued on to more training, more shoots, so that they could become the senior pilots with the experience and qualifications sufficient to be leaders the next deployment, which was just a year away. We didn’t fly much together any more, but I would be out testing in the day, much as I had been doing at WTI, so that they could come in and have birds to fly at night.
During this time, we also welcomed another baby girl into the world. We were kinda forced to induce early because we knew we had orders for early August to move north for law school, and we wanted both mama and baby to have some time to recover before we got on the road.
Clark eventually got the itch to become a post-Maintenance Functional Check pilot (‘FCP,’ for short) and at that time, it happened that I was one of the more experienced testers, as well as being the Quality Assurance officer for Maintenance. So I got to put Clark through the FCP syllabus, try to convey as much as I could about how to test an aircraft, tricks of the trade for getting Whiskey Cobras “up,” and make sure he was ready to start signing aircraft off as “Safe for Flight.” It was a great way to end my career as an aviator.
I came back into New River on my last flight from the Water Tower 5 miles south of the field, from a test hop with a mechanic in the front seat. He asked me about and I remember being content - and happy to be alive. And not 20 seconds later, later someone on downwind missed a radio call from Tower, mistook my clearance for theirs, and cut in front of me in the pattern. I had seen it happening and both slowed and hooked right to create space for the other aircraft before Tower could call with a raised voice, trying to intervene: “Four-Two, Tower COME RIGHT behind-”
“This GunRunner 42, Tower, I see him and I’m sliding in behind.”
“Everyone just take it easy,” I said over the ICS to the Corporal in the front seat, who laughed.
“DAMN, SIR! It’s like they’s tryna kill you on your last flight!”
“Not today, stud warrior. Not today.”
First year of law school was a pain in the ass. Interestingly, the firehose of information I had learned to consume in flight school - and the habits of discipline that accompanied - made law school much easier than it otherwise would have been. Fatherhood with 3 daughters did provide its challenges. I interned as a military prosecutor at Camp Lejeune, right across the New River from my old squadron, and even managed to go by the squadron and get a flight in the back of a Huey to take some pictures of a house for an important search and seizure case. Very few of my old mates were around when I went by the squadron: Mike and Clark were already chopped down the road to HMM-263 again for their upcoming Med Float - what would have been my second with them - so I said a few hellos, but Life Goes On in a gun-squadron.
I got the call from Mike Wood late at night - go figure - a day after I had returned back home to begin law school in a week. I knew instantly; there was no dodging it this time.
“Hey, Barney, it’s Woodman.” The tone of his voice told me everything I needed to know.
“Is it Clark?” I asked, already knowing the answer. There was a brief pause.
“Yeah. Off the back of the boat. Low-light NVG’s coming back in for a recovery. hairball was lead and they just never checked back in after switching up from approach to Tower.” Pause. “Nothing definitive yet… I… I thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Mike. I’ll- I’ll… does Renee know yet?”
“Yeah. Working through it now.”
There wasn’t much more to say. We talked about flying, and about Clark’s co-pilot, a guy we had given his callsign, Jerrell “Cletus” Boggan. We were actually trying to nickname him after the character in “Dukes of Hazzard” who had the big truck that always helped the Duke Brothers out of trouble - “Cooter” - in part because of the duel rear-wheel truck Boggan drove, and he was from Oklahoma, but we were shitfaced and mis-named him “Cletus,” which was actually the name of the sheriff’s cousin in the TV show. But whatever, it stuck regardless. Cletus handled it like a champ.
So Mike and I talked about possible causes, and two of the nicest guys we’d ever known, until the conversation faded.
Causes
In one of those strange coincidences that I no longer believe in, a few years later I got to know a Marine officer who was on that same deployment and was privy to the Aircraft Mishap Board for Clark. He explained what the Board had found, but the truth is I don’t even remember anymore. I don’t even remember if there was a definitive cause, and it doesn’t matter. The best answer of all might be as simple as what an astute reader might have gleaned from this entire series: flying military helicopters generally is a dangerous business. Doing it off of ships at night and on night vision goggles may be routine, but it routinely results in dead troops and pilots. As I discussed in AMST 8, Clark and Mike had watched Jim “Jinx” Jenkins and myself come within feet, and moments, of smashing into the water in a perfectly good helicopter.
Every year, no matter what, no matter what procedures are changed and how many safety stand-downs are held, no matter how many faux-surprised, angry and sad generals posture to the Media, we just keep training and flying these missions and people die - world without end, Amen. The margins are just that tight and human beings and mechanical failures happen, even to the most conscientious pilots.
After my last flight, I’d felt relief. Gratitude that I was still alive. I understood then why Tom “Q-Ball” Stone didn’t care about filming the AIM-9 shoot and wanted to get back. When I left for law school, my mind tricked me into thinking that I had escaped that, but Clark’s death was a sharp reminder that as long as I had friends in naval aviation, I would always have a chance of getting the phone call.
So, this time of year, every year, I raise a glass to Clark “Swab” Cox and Jerry “Cletus” Boggan, they were Good Men and True. I say a prayer for their families, and some thanks that I was blessed enough to have served alongside them.
probably why I don’t ’golf & nobody asks me anymore anyways ..
.. aint even read yer ‘report yet.. but about ‘to auger in .. & get ‘hurt.. amen eh 🦎🏴☠️🎬
Thank you for your service to our country, such as it is currently. 🫡