I have just finished reading your book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don't read books anymore due to poor eyesight, but with the large font and clear print, yours made it much easier for me.  Enjoyed the chapters on E-base and Corpus, as I guess we all had similar experiences, and the chapters on the individuals, especially Joan.  We single guys didn't know what you newlyweds were going through with travel, housing and eating.  You never complained being glad to be with your brides one more week or even one more day.  It must have been very boring at times for them.

I was curious if you ever knew that on that day, January 30, 1944, when they sounded "Flight Quarters" the whole Ready Room manned the catwalks, because we knew you had been out on a sub-contact for five hours and were low on fuel. Tangas came aboard, and then we saw you go "in" on the base leg, and saw the geysers and heard the explosion of the depth charges.

The next plane was Macollister and when he saw you go in, he kept his 1500' and made an almost "normal" approach and somewhere between 500' and 1000' his engine quit and his prop started windmilling and it got very quiet.   Old Sackett gave him a "Roger" all the way in, but no "Cut."   He caught the third wire and came to a halt.  When his radioman got out he was as white as a sheet and he went directly to Breen and turned in his wings and never flew again.  It must have been harrowing to be in that fuselage with limited visibility when everything gets quiet, the intercom doesn't work, and knowing the plane ahead of you went in the water.

Hope you are still breaking your age on the golf course.   Take care and best to Joan.

Bob

P.S. Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained the circumstances to your readers more thoroughly.

When launching or landing aircraft, a DD (destroyer) or DE (destroyer escort) would move aft of the carrier about 1000 yards and was the Plane Guard, so that when Robbie crashed, they were at the scene within a minute or two.   The seas were fairly calm and as we on the carrier were making about 12 knots to get the maximum wind over the deck for landing, we moved away from the scene very rapidly making it ever more difficult to observe the rescue effort.

We were stunned, and I was sure they were all dead but, as in any emergency, you don't concentrate on things that have happened but on what is about to happen, and here comes Macollister, 30 or 40 seconds later, not at 200' in a nose high position, but at 1500' in a very unorthodox approach so we knew he and his crew were also in danger of losing their lives.  All attention was diverted to his approach.

After Mac landed the Flight Surgeon escorted the three of them down to Sick Bay and a shot of Medicinal Alcohol and Flight Quarters was secured.   We all went back to the Ready Room, a very somber group, when very shortly a message came down from the bridge that the carrier had received a blinker message from the DE, (we always operated under Radio Silence) that Robbie had been picked up but was in critical condition, which elicited a short cheer, but there was no trace of his two crewman, which changed the mood to somber again.  Shortly afterward they told us that Robbie had been picked up still strapped in his seat and that is probably what saved him from being killed by the concussion created by the blast.  Whether this is true or not, I don't know.  We got a couple more daily reports from the DE and then I guess Robbie was transferred to the hospital ship.  It was several months later in some Officers Club that someone told me they had seen him at an air station on the West coast and he was getting around pretty well.