{"id":130,"date":"2026-05-12T05:38:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/du5.us\/?page_id=130"},"modified":"2026-05-12T05:38:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:38:41","slug":"4-anchors-aweigh-becoming-a-naval-aviator","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/du5.us\/?page_id=130","title":{"rendered":"4. Anchors Aweigh \u2014 Becoming a Naval Aviator"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

4. Anchors Aweigh – Becoming a Naval Aviator<\/h1>\nThe darkest hour has only 60 minutes.<\/strong><\/em>
\n-Morris Mandel\n

This was not my definition of water rescue.<\/p>\n

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Learning how to be rescued in water with parachute<\/p><\/div>\n

Being pushed off a rail, high atop a boat, into Pensacola Bay, while you’re strapped into a parachute harness that’s connected to the boat by a cable, is something you don’t forget! Sploosh!<\/em> There’s the impact you make with the cold water, then you’re being dragged along face down in the boat’s wake by an air-filled parachute. Now you simply have to roll over on your back while detaching yourself from the harness.<\/p>\n

Done!<\/em> Now you have to inflate your life vest and start floating, and hopefully breathing again.<\/p>\n

As the world comes into focus again, you realize there’s a helicopter overhead. Its pilot is another cadet who doesn’t know what he’s doing any better than you do.<\/p>\n

A rescue harness drops by cable from the chopper. That’s your next goal, but you must remember to keep away until it touches water, to prevent absorbing the static shock that builds up in the harness from the prop blast.<\/p>\n

Now, you’re on your way to being a bona fide “survivor,” as you swim toward the harness so you can put it on and it can hoist you 100 feet into the air to your helicopter ride.<\/p>\n

But, between this moment and that, the vertical prop blast from above is spreading out horizontally across the water, blasting a stinging blinding spray of water with hurricane force in your face, stealing away what little breath you have managed to take in so far.<\/p>\n

And the harness is still many yards away, the considerate student aviator having studiously avoided walloping you with it on the drop. You swim against the wind and spray towards it, but the unsteady and inexperienced student pilot at the controls above seems to be playing “keep away!” Now the damned thing is even further away, and in the opposite direction from where you were swimming.<\/p>\n

In the spring of 1972, between my junior and senior years at Southern Illinois University, having gained substantial weight while realizing the rigorous physical training I was about to undergo at the Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School (OCS) at NAS Pensacola, I cut my rather lengthy hair, went on a crash diet, and commenced an exercise regimen that included long-distance running, all the time believing that I was in great shape for the Marine Drill Instructors waiting for me at OCS.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t even close.<\/p>\n

At the Navy AVROC Officer Candidate School, they shaved our heads to the bone so fast that many were bleeding from the contusions. I felt I deserved a Purple Heart just for my bald, bleeding head. Then the seasoned Marine Drill Instructors all appeared to derive a sadistic pleasure from torturing officer candidates. They had all served multiple Viet Nam combat tours. They each had numerous combat ribbons that covered most of their khaki uniform shirts. They would bark commands so loudly in your face, I feared physical disqualification from the program after the first week, due to hearing loss.<\/p>\n

After the initial week of severe shock in the indoctrination battalion, which was called “Poopyville,” a term I felt was understated, we transferred over to our training battalion where we endured many room, locker, and personnel inspections that resulted in thousands of punitive push-ups and hundreds of miles of running penances for transgressions of military bearing. I soon began to miss the beatings from the nuns and priests in my old school.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Just one part of running an obstacle course under a prescribed time limit<\/p><\/div>\n

In between punishments, we attended classes that included Naval Leadership, Naval Orientation, Naval History, Naval Pre-Navigation, Seamanship, Math, and Physics, and other courses designed to prepare us to be professional Naval officers in the fleet.<\/p>\n

To add to our “pleasure,” each candidate was required to successfully negotiate, under a prescribed time limit, an obstacle course, a cross-country running course over sand<\/em>, and a swimming course that I swore was the Navy’s best attempt to drown us all.<\/p>\n

We were forced to wear a flight suit and tread water in a swimming pool with tennis shoes adorning our feet for half an hour, alongside a hundred other kicking candidates in the water. We were strapped into the famed “Dilbert Dunker,” a mock-up cockpit which was mounted on a rail about ten feet above the pool, which would slide down the rail and flip upside-down, while you, undergoing these gyrations inside and spatially disoriented, unstrapped your body and swam to the surface. This seemed a rather trivial exercise to me, but some candidates would panic, while other vertigo victims would swim towards the bottom of the pool instead of the surface. This error would qualify them for several “sub-swim” classes in the evening, after our daily classroom instruction, until they qualified to move forward.<\/p>\n

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Learning to survive the Dilbert Dunker while fully clothed in flight suit<\/p><\/div>\n

Next, came the parachute-drop and rescue training, the ordeal I described at the start of this chapter, with the student helicopter pilot keeping the rescue harness ever out of reach as I swam in Pensacola Bay and tried to avoid drowning in the gale-force wind spray.<\/p>\n

Having swum what I felt was several miles in an effort to reach that net, ingesting many gallons of salt water while gasping for air along the way, after my fourth desperate attempt to grab the grounded harness floating ever away from me in the water, I swore to myself this all had to be just another attempt on my life through drowning. I tried to wave the “rescue” helicopter away by motioning to the enlisted hoist operator at the helicopter door above to tell the pilot to move away.<\/p>\n

Instead, much to my relief, I was finally able to reach the harness, after which I was hoisted aboard the helicopter. I felt death by strangulation was appropriate for the student aviator at the controls, but I exercised proper military bearing by envisioning a possible court-martial in my future. I just sat back and gasped for breath.<\/p>\n

I felt I had passed more than one test with this exercise.<\/p>\n

Besides physical training, we were taught good order and discipline as a cohesive unit in the blazing summer heat of Florida through repeated practice of dreaded drills with our M1 rifles. Everywhere our class schedule took us, we marched as a unit, with a candidate class officer calling cadence at the rear of the formation.<\/p>\n

Candidates suffering heat exhaustion and colliding with each other were not uncommon. Drill instructors would hide their smirks or sometimes smother their outright laughter as they instructed the class to “take a rest in the grass.” This euphemism meant we were to lie on our backs, with our heels six inches off the ground, until our stomach muscles were bursting with pain. If even one candidate dropped his heels to the ground, the rest of the class had to continue with their heels up until the entire class was equally in pain. Teamwork and support of our fellow classmates was stressed throughout training. We were all being pushed to our prudent limits of physical endurance and beyond, which taught each of us a little more about ourselves and our human potential for excellence in all areas of training.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, among the many courses taught I very much appreciated the knowledge imparted by Lieutenant Commander Ishol during our Naval Leadership Training course. If he said it once, he repeated it one thousand times, “Gentlemen… take care of your people and they will take care of you.<\/em>” He explained to us that great leaders do not command others to be leaders, but lead by the example they set for their subordinates. This included all aspects of military demeanor, including professional appearance, mannerisms, fairness, justice, ethics, military bearing, and concern for the welfare and professional development of each and every sailor in our division.<\/p>\n

We were taught that, although we each deserve proper respect as an officer by enlisted personnel by the sheer virtue of our rank, true leaders gain respect by their honest acts of integrity and personal concern for the welfare of their enlisted men and women. It was only during my fleet tour as a junior officer that I would fully recognize the validity of his assertions and continued to embrace these successful leadership principles throughout my entire adult life.<\/p>\n

Major emphasis was placed on the rich history and traditions of Naval service as an officer and a gentleman representative of the U. S. military service paying due respect with dignity for rank and privilege of seniors while honoring our fellow servicemen with the same. The following time-tested honor code was hallowed amongst candidates:<\/p>\n

“I will not lie, cheat, nor steal, nor will I tolerate those amongst us who do.”<\/p>\n

Any infraction of this cherished rule was grounds for shame and immediate expulsion from the program.<\/p>\n

By the end of the eight-week summer session, more than a few AVROC candidates “dropped on request,” referred to as a DOR, due to physical and\/or academic disqualification. This did not relieve them of their military obligation; on the contrary, they were quickly whisked onto a bus to be shipped to the enlisted training facility in Orlando, where they spent the remainder of their duty outside the cockpit, but, perhaps, chipping barnacles off a destroyer somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I survived training, but I lost more than 40 pounds over the summer and found myself in the best physical shape of my life. When I returned home to Belleville, my family did not recognize either my appearance or my personality. With my hair closely cropped, a golden tan, rock-hard body, and infused with steely resolve, the seeming nightmare experience of officer candidate school, I felt had indeed changed me, but mostly in positive ways. It took me several days to “depressurize” in my transition back to civilian life.<\/p>\n

Commencing my senior year, while continuing with a full load of mathematics classes, I continued to work full time, unloading quartered beef for shipping until graduation. It was no more enjoyable than before, but now it seemed a little easier.<\/p>\n

In the spring of 1973, with my higher degree now in hand and both the Midwest Rubber Reclaim residue and the trailers of bloodied quartered beef behind me, I was excited about the prospect of returning to full-time flight training with much higher pay.<\/p>\n

But before I could even “eyeball” the cockpit of a Naval aircraft, I still had to survive eight more weeks of officer candidate school the following summer, before being commissioned as an Ensign and commencing primary prop training in the T-34B Mentor aircraft at NAS Saufley Field in Pensacola. Conversely, I dreaded returning to the tender mercies of those Marine drill instructors, dressed in their spiffy, military-creased khaki shirts, dark olive trousers, highly-polished black shoes, and “Smokey the Bear” hats.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Naval Aviation Officer Candidate, Dan Hanley<\/p><\/div>\n

Yet the second summer under Marine Corp drill instructor duress seemed a breeze compared to the previous summer. After eight more grueling weeks, on a bright summer day, our class, in our white chokers, proudly marched in review in a field of bright green grass before the senior brass in the stands to the Navy band rendition of “Anchors Aweigh” as our class officer commanded, “Eyes right!” and we saluted. We were now commissioned Ensigns as we raised our right hands to solemnly swear the rich, traditional oath of office as a United States Naval Officer:<\/p>\n

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I<\/p>\n

Our white choker uniforms emblazoned with large gold buttons still lacked one important article… the Navy Wings of Gold. We would soon discover over the course of the next year, that these Naval Officer emblems of distinction are not freely given to slackers.<\/p>\n

At the time, I already imagined myself to be an aviator. I did not yet realize just how little I knew about flying airplanes. I would soon discover that, unlike civilian flight training, the rigor of the Naval flight school syllabus was akin to drinking from a fire hose.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4. Anchors Aweigh – Becoming a Naval Aviator The darkest hour has only 60 minutes. -Morris Mandel This was not my definition of water rescue. Being pushed off a rail, high atop a boat, into Pensacola Bay, while you’re strapped into a parachute harness that’s connected to the boat by a cable, is something you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-130","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/130\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/du5.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}