MARCAD James O. Atkinson, Jr.

Jimmy Atkinson was a Marine Aviation Cadet, or MARCAD as they were known. As a MARCAD, the Marine Corps had agreed to make him a Naval Aviator and give him the gold bars of a Marine Corps officer if he agreed to stay unmarried for the 18 months of training and then remain in the Corps for another three years after that. Being married might be a distraction from the intense rigors of the program, I guess, not to mention that the pay was only about $98.00 every two weeks, as I recall. Hardly enough for one to live on much less two or three when the baby comes along. Jimmy became a MARCAD in 1964 and was transferred after finishing boot camp at Paris Island to Pensacola, Florida, where he joined other guys in the program like Sonny Vergara, Norm Whitbeck, Gary Shields, Doug Sanders, Larry Bancells and others. We were all bright, brash, very young, and none of us believed we would ever die.

In those days we felt we could learn and do anything and we had the greatest military organization in the world showing us how to do it. Everything was possible and nothing was impossible. Our futures promised a life of living on the edge as aviators in an organization where we were the best of the best. We were filled with exhilaration at the thought of flying and being in control of some of the most powerful and dangerous machines made by man. Dying was just a concept, part of the mystique and thrill of becoming a pilot in the United States Marine Corps. We all knew about the dangers of flying especially military flying but the thought only heightened our excitement. The fallibility of the machine while always in our minds was set aside by our trust in the training of our comrades and our belief that they, like us, were the best on the planet. Besides, we also believed mortality was for humans and the Corps had convinced us we were more than human. We were of teflon and steel and nothing could take us down.

Jimmy Atkinson was a Marine's Marine. Strong, straight jawed, ramrod straight, lean and dark eyed. He could have been a male model and he could have had any girl on Pensacola Beach if he had wanted any of them. He embraced the challenges of the program, as we all did, with energy and excitement at what might next be put before us to conquer. The program was designed to teach us everything we needed to know about flying as well as to train our bodies and spirits to be sharp and ready for the demands and expectations of a Marine pilot. Jimmy did it with finesse.

We all thought it was a bit odd, however, that every Friday afternoon, he would be seen leaving the base in his little black MG convertible, going south and not returning until late Sunday. For a long time we thought he had a girl friend back in his hometown of St. Petersburg, but it wasn't until much later that we learned he was actually married all that time. Suddenly it was clear why this guy would never go out with the rest of us on the weekends to "terrorize the natives" as it was known. He never went carousing, as a bunch of red-blooded young men are prone to do, but was quick to laugh with us when we bragged of our often fruitless but hilarious escapades.

After the Training Command, like the rest of us, Jimmy would be ordered to Vietnam. There he would fly the UH-34 Sikorsky helicopter rescuing recon teams, getting wounded Marines from the battle to the hospital, and getting them resupplied when they ran low on ammo, all of which happened many times under fire from a determined enemy. Jimmy flew hundreds of these missions. Despite the dangers, the MARCAD mentality of invincibility held true and he returned home safely after his 13-month tour of duty.

Ultimately, he stayed in the Corps for 20 years, becoming a jet fighter pilot and going back to Vietnam for a second harrowing tour flying the A-4 Skyhawk. Again, the teflon and steel of the MARCAD credo stayed strong and he returned to his family which by then included three strapping sons. Jimmy subsequently left the Corps and spent another twenty years quietly delivering mail for the United States Postal Service back in St. Petersburg. He never bragged about his past and talked little of his war experiences.

Then, last October he developed a cough and went to the VA to have it checked. It was not good news. When his emails suddenly quit coming, Norm Whitbeck inquired and Jimmy sent us a note saying he had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. He said they had told him he had three to six months to live, without treatment, and maybe a year with treatment. Faced with such prospects, which he said were unacceptable, he headed for Mexico for alternative treatment. He said he'd let us know when he got back.

After a month or so, he emailed us that he was back in St. Pete and feeling better but that he was going to start chemo and radiation treatments soon. We didn't ask him, but it was apparent the Mexican treatments hadn't worked.

Norm went over to see him a number of times and I saw him twice after that. He was much thinner, on oxygen and unable to get around except in a wheelchair. Karen, his wife who is also a nurse, doted on him and it was clearly apparent he was under the best possible care he could have which, I suspect, had been the case for every one the many years they had been married. We took pictures and he told me not to worry because he had already talked to Jesus and was ready to "go vertical" to God.

In December, when Norm and I heard the news, we were terribly saddened but in full belief that Jimmy did not break the MARCAD code of invincibility. Like any good MARCAD and Marine jet fighter pilot would do under such circumstances, he just waited until the time was right and pulled the nose of his aircraft straight up into the noon sun, hit afterburner, and went vertical to God.

Semper Fi, Jimmy.

Santa Ana Flat Hatting

After I returned stateside from Vietnam, I was assigned to HMMT 302 at MCAS Santa Ana which was located next to El Toro Marine Airbase in southern California. One of my duties was to be an in-flight maintenance test pilot performing system checks on H-46 helicopters that had just received some form of repair. The repair might have been due to a minor sound or vibration that made a pilot nervous enough to “down” the aircraft and require a maintenance check, or it might be the full testing of a bird just out of complete overhaul. Test pilots always took the repaired aircraft up first to insure it was ready to be placed safely back into regular service.

For our test flights, we had a section of airspace assigned to us from 1500 to 10,000 feet along a narrow path north of El Toro between the airbase and the low mountains on the eastern side of the Los Angeles basin. In this space, we were allowed to perform any maneuver necessary to demonstrate that the helicopter had been properly repaired and was now ready to be returned to the flight line. This might mean testing any or all of the bird’s hydraulic, electronic or control systems. When we weren't flying test hops, our mission was to take pilots just out of the Training Command (newbies and FNG's) to those same mountains for some “real world” training and try to prepare them for the flying they would experience in Vietnam.

Southern California is essentially desert, and the heat on the mat where we parked the helicopters could be blistering. Some days, the smog from L.A. would be so thick it would burn your eyes when you looked west directly into the wind. On those days, I yearned for the crack and boom of those 4 0’clock summer thundershowers that always cooled the afternoons and scrubbed the air clear back home in Florida.

Pre-flighting an H-46 requires climbing and crawling around the fuselage and going over in detail with the maintenance crew the tests you were going to carry out in flight. Maintenance flights always required a more detailed pre-flight, some taking 30 minutes to an hour. A normal preflight can be done in about 20 minutes. There were days when I would have to pre-flight and test ten aircraft in temperatures that reached well over 100 degrees. On days like that, the thrill of flying abandons you. It was a hot and greasy job and that’s when it felt too much like real work. So, sometimes, just to get a break, I would finish my testing, leave the test area and fly over to those mountains just to see what I might see and feel what I might feel.

Even though the H-46 Sea Knight is required to have two pilots in the cockpit for normal operations, test flights were typically flown with only one well-experienced pilot and a crewchief. I was always amazed that even though some of the crewchiefs were not much older than 18, they were given full responsibility to maintain those machines. They were skilled and truly dedicated young men you trusted with your life, and did so readily. On those hot grinding afternoons, I’d occasionally invite my crewchief to join me in the cockpit. Sometimes I'd give them the stick and let them fly the aircraft. Giving them the controls always brought a wide grin of excitement. On other occasions, I'd just tell them to strap in and hold on, and we’d go “flathatting.”

Flathatting is strictly forbidden but it's why pilots fly. It is flying on the edge, defying calculated danger with nothing but your own talent, training and judgment. Out of Santa Ana, flathatting in an H-46 meant flying at maybe 50 feet above the terrain at maximum cruise speed which, I think, was around 150 knots (which is maybe about 180 MPH. Not sure now) ... maneuvering between mountain peaks and whipping along turning valley floors, pulling up sharply to clear mesas feeling the pull of the increased G's, then dropping power to idle and going weightless to return to the valley floor, “splitting the needles,” meaning your engine was no longer powering your rotors and only the downward force of descent and the upward force of air through the rotors were keeping them turning fast to enough to maintain flight.

During those moments, my heart would swell at the way the huge powerful bird would respond to the lightest touch of the stick and collective and the excitement of flying would return. Any fear would be ignored and I would think, this must be how the great-winged, soaring birds of the mountains or the predator hawk in chase of its prey must feel. During those moments, I would feel release and my spirits would soar with them once again.