“Clara Ship” is what A-6 Intruder pilot Duker radioed when he couldn’t even see the carrier. Forget the ball. He couldn’t find the boat.

Duker went from zero stick time to Navy jets through ROTC at USC. In flight school, food poisoning hit so hard his instructors debated flying him home in a baggage pod. Actually, he survived, then tail-slid an A-4 he was never supposed to tail-slide.

In the A-6, Duker and his bombardier-navigator got in a fist fight over a paper chart. However, they still hit the target on time. He also explains how six Intruders’ bombs registered on seismic instruments in Colorado.

How Clara Ship Became Duker’s Favorite Sea Story

As a landing signal officer, Duker graded every landing he waved. He breaks down hook slaps, the barricade, and why LSOs are called paddles. Furthermore, VA-176 was told the war would start when they arrived. Later, General Zinni sent them over northern Iraq with an unforgettable ROE brief.

Then comes a Case III night recovery to the JFK, southeast of Puerto Rico, in a downpour. The wind was so far out of limits the Intruder weathervaned left. He kicked in rudder, the bottom fell out, and he still caught an OK one wire. Consequently, it took him 20 minutes to climb out of the cockpit.

Stay Connected

Duker’s company, Flight Training International, does ATPs and type ratings at FTIRatings.com, and you can use the GI Bill. Our sponsor, veteran-owned DC Artworks, makes laser-cut steel art at dcartworks.net. Use code STIW for 20% off. Grab merch at sothereiwas.us/merch and leave five stars at sothereiwas.us/rate.

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Navy P-3 pilot Derek "DA" Adametz beat a collapsed lung and Hodgkin's lymphoma, then fought the waiver board all the way to squadron command.

F-100 pilot Ike flew 195 combat missions with an iron sight and nerves of steel. He takes us from night close air support to a 50-pound-fuel landing to the 1986 Libya raid.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Tim "Monk" Miller nearly punched out mid-nap over Ramadi, then built the Strike Fighter League, where guns are where it's at.

Vietnam-era Huey pilot RoadRunner joins RePete and Kemo for combat missions, near-disasters, and the Rope Trick — a Thailand R&R story he never fully explains.

A Thousandth of an Inch of Trouble is all that stood between one airline crew and an on-time departure. Actually, it was a worn brake wear pin, measured down to the thousandth, that a mechanic waved off as “technically good to go.”

This week’s episode is a lighter one. It’s just Fig and RePete, no guest, trading stories while juggling schedules and a certain eye surgery on the calendar. Before the flying talk starts, Fig recaps a fundraiser for YL-37, the effort to keep a UH-34 Marine helicopter flying as a living memorial. Vietnam-era crew chiefs, dubbed “Ugly Angels,” turned up to honor thirty-three squadron mates lost in the war. It was, by Fig’s account, truly spectacular.

Then the real theme of the night kicks in: airplanes you keep versus airplanes you refuse. RePete walks through a Low Altitude Tactics qual he pushed through despite a caution light, a Paris battery-discharge light that kept recurring for weeks, and an MD-11 jump seat jammed at a forty-five-degree angle that maintenance wanted to sign off as legal.

A Thousandth of an Inch of Trouble: The Refused Airplane

Furthermore, there’s the coffee thermos that popped three circuit breakers on takeoff roll, and two separate environmental control system failures that nearly cooked Fig alive, once over Camp Lejeune and once out of Darwin, Australia. However, the headline story is the brake pin.

On a 737 preflight, the first officer found no pin sticking out where one should be. Maintenance measured it anyway and found one-thousandth of an inch of clearance. Consequently, that counted as “in limits.” Fig refused the airplane, ate the delay, and bought drinks for the whole cabin. New brakes went on that night.

The episode wraps with thanks to veterans, their families, and everyone still serving.

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Catch new episodes of So There I Was every week, and find us on your favorite podcast app.

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This week's episode honors Coast Guard rescue pilot John "Sticks" Hall with his brother-in-law's eulogy and son Tyler's letter, plus a night-divert tale from Stretch off the USS Midway.

5 Feet — that’s the altitude Roadrunner held on a self-appointed decoy mission in Vietnam, and it’s the heart of Episode 227. It’s also the reason he walked away with a Bronze Star.

This week, RePete and Fig welcome Chuck Howard, callsign Roadrunner. He flew with the 175th Assault Helicopter Company, earning two Bronze Stars and 25 Air Medals for valor.

Roadrunner’s path started on a Jersey City hammock, watching jets land at Newark. Actually, he almost became a commercial artist before the Army got him first.

He walks us through flight school and a co-pilot who froze on short final. Then there’s the Cessna climb to twelve thousand feet that ate an entire afternoon. Consequently, we get one of the funniest bike-to-the-airport stories in show history.

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I Never Exceeded 5 Feet: The Decoy Mission

The Bronze Star story is the centerpiece. Roadrunner grew tired of rules of engagement that only let him fire after getting shot at first. So he built his own workaround.

He stripped down a demilitarized Huey and lit it up like a Christmas tree. Then he flew it straight at the tree line at night. He hovered along the perimeter at an altitude he never exceeded, five feet, daring Charlie to take the bait.

However, the story doesn’t stop there. Roadrunner later flew Port Authority helicopters and was first on scene for Sully’s Hudson River landing. He also worked the water recovery after TWA 800, marking wreckage while FBI agents jumped aboard his aircraft mid-hover.

Furthermore, he shares two separate tail rotor failures. In one, he saved a multi-million dollar helicopter by nursing it into a drainage ditch. His book, Tales from the Cockpit, covers even more of this.

This episode is also brought to you by DC Artworks. The veteran-owned laser-cut steel shop is keeping gift-buyers out of the doghouse this season.

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Got a So There I Was story of your own? We want to hear it. Follow the show, leave a review, and tell your hangar buddies.

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