Brackettville's Naval Aviator

April 16, 2008
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Capt. Gerald M. “Jerry” Weber, USN (Ret.), rode hard and played tough to find his niche in life. But when he found it, Weber seized plentiful opportunities with a bulldog grip during thirty years in the United States Navy.

Retired now for 22 years, Weber celebrated his 75th birthday in March, and remains robust, witty, and sharp, still cherishing the memories of his adventures at sea and in the air, as well as his countless friends and acquaintances. Among them, one stands out: a Naval Academy graduate now aspiring to be president of the United States. Weber and John McCain met at Pensacola Naval Air Station, years before either deployed to Vietnam with vastly different results.

Weber spent four years in the Marine Corps, while he ploughed through a degree in pre-law and studies in public speaking at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., earned with an athletic scholarship from his Jamestown, N.D., high school football record. But Weber had Navy saltwater and military bearing in his blood.

“My father sold insurance,” Weber said. “He was an absolute introvert, but he was in the Navy on the USS Nassau, an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War II. And my uncle was in the Army at the invasion of Normandy, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre [Cross of War] by France and an American Bronze Star with a ‘V’ device for valor,” While Weber was in college, he took time out to join the Marines and was sent to Camp Upshur, Quantico, Va., for boot camp.

“I wasn’t a good student—not at all,” said Weber, but in his personal library at Fort Clark Springs, Weber treasures a complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and a 20-pound tome with a magnifying glass to read the tiny print, as well as a fine collection of nature field guides, and the writings of Winston Churchill. In 1956, after graduating from Northwestern, Weber left the Marine Corps, and signed up for AOC – Aviation Officer Candidate school—an introductory program for Navy flyers.

Weber’s walls are not filled with medals and decorations, but rather with memory-tickling photos of all the Navy and Marine aircraft he’s flown, and—on another wall—all the ships he put to sea. But, before he retired, Weber received the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star with “V” device for valor, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal with “V” device, 17 Navy Air Medals, and 3 Strike Air Medals. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)

Weber’s second aircraft during Navy training was the T-28 “Trojan,” preparing him to fly Navy jets. Instead, he was funneled into helicopters, and, though frustrated at the time (1957), he quickly adopted the lifestyle of low-altitude, high-speed maneuverability. (Contributed photo/US Navy) (click image to enlarge)

The aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard was Weber’s first home on the briny deep on a 1958 Pacific Ocean cruise. He received his aviator’s wings in June, was assigned to a Helicopter Utility Squadron, Imperial Beach, Calif., and almost immediately put to sea. (Contributed photo/US Navy) (click image to enlarge)

Weber’s shipmates pose aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard, in Hong Kong, China, 1958. Weber, front row, second from right, now remembers helicopter launches that were mostly utilitarian missions, sometimes flavored with mischief, others with mishap, all survived. (Contributed photo/Gerald Weber) (click image to enlarge)

 

The switch launched the young sailor on a military vocation that would take him into combat in Southeast Asia, to North Atlantic Treaty Organization prestige, distinguished commands in minesweeping operations, and to the pinnacle of global nuclear weapons security.

In AOC, Weber reversed his slack vigor for academic studies and “making the grade.” Of 72 in his class at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, Weber graduated second from the top scorer. “It was 16 weeks of survival training, academics, military navigation, mechanics, engineering, astronomy, meteorology, code and decryption, and the meanings of various ship signal flags,” Weber said. His years with the Marine Corps earned Weber leadership positions within the class.

“I got my ensign bars [equivalent to second lieutenant in other services] at graduation, and immediately started flight training. I wanted to fly jets,” Weber said. His first trainer was the appropriately named T-34 “Mentor,” followed by the T-28 “Trojan.” He completed carrier landing training and graduated in 1958. Though he’d aspired to pilot jets, he was assigned to helicopters at Ellison Field, Pensacola. His disappointment was quickly dispatched. “Well, you’re flying fast and low, and doing all sorts of interesting things. Once I got into it, it was fantastic!” said Weber. He pinned on his Navy aviator’s wings in June.

Weber’s first assignment was to a Helicopter Utility Squadron, Imperial Beach, Calif., but he was almost immediately deployed aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard, an aircraft carrier named after the Continental Navy frigate honoring Benjamin Franklin with its name, “Good Man Richard” (after Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac). “I wasn’t in the squadron for very long, and then—bam! I was at sea,” Weber said. For nine months of 1958, Weber plied the waters of the Pacific Ocean, acquiring at least a pair of memorable anecdotes.

Once, while coming in for a landing on the carrier, Weber’s co-pilot activated a loud, jerry-rigged Japanese siren, fastened below the aircraft. The unauthorized noise startled everyone on deck, particularly when Weber turned on his address system, ordering, “OK, Bon Homme Richard, pull over!”

Larger, louder, and certainly more authoritarian speakers blared back, the voice of the ship’s commander, Capt. David McCampbell, Medal of Honor winner for shooting down 16 Japanese aircraft in World War II’s “Great Turkey Shoot” in the Mariana Islands, including Saipan and Guam: “Angel 24, you’re Signal Charley!” This was Navy lingo for “Land, and report immediately to the bridge!” Weber still laughs at the episode: “That was the worst ass-chewing I ever got! I was in ‘hack’ [shipboard equivalent of house arrest] for a long time.”

On the same maiden voyage for the young pilot, Weber struggled to regain control of his helicopter while lowering mail by cable onto the deck of the USS Rowan, a destroyer. “My engine failed, and I crashed onto the fantail of the ship, missing a rack of depth charges by 12 inches,” Weber said. The incident was anything but funny, but the Rowan’s captain used it to good humor, sending a message to McCampbell: “Send no more aircraft. My flight deck is loaded.” (There had been no “flight deck” on the Rowan until Weber created one). Then, according to Weber, the Rowan flew a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, depicting a hovering helicopter instead of a rattlesnake.

In 1959, Weber became officer in charge of a trio of detachments on Pacific aircraft carriers, searching with the H-34 “Seahorse” for survey benchmarks placed around the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand). The mission was launched from a platform aboard the USS Maury, a cargo ship modified as a hydrographic survey vessel named for famed 19th century Navy oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. Weber’s task was to find locations –reference-sited by benchmarks laid down by the French – for LORAN (Long Range Navigation) radio transmitters. “As a result of this assignment, I managed to learn about 500 words of Thai,” Weber chuckled.

Weber also reunited with Marine Corps traditions, using the H-34 to haul an unplanned shipment of beer to deployed marines in the jungles of Thailand. “We landed in kind of a soft, grassy field. The beer was to help them celebrate the Marine Corps birthday, November 10th,” Weber said. A Marine offered a jeep ride back to his helicopter; Weber declined until he was told cobras had been spotted slithering in the grass around his landing site. “I jumped up on the jeep, and said, ‘OK, take me.’”

From the Pacific, Weber was assigned back to Pensacola, this time as instructor for all four types of helicopters he’d mastered, 1960-1961. For six months, he and another lieutenant wrote a leadership manual, after which Weber was transferred to basic Naval Flight Officers school to instruct bombardiers and navigators in the principles of flight.

“There was where I met and started running with John McCain, the ‘Silver Fox,’” Weber recalled with a smile. “Going on liberty with John back then was like joining a train wreck. He was a pretty wild lieutenant. I flew up to his home at Virginia Beach and stayed with him and his folks. His dad [John S. McCain Jr.] was an admiral, and they lived on base. And his mom is now in her 90s and still sharp as a tack.” Presidential candidate John McCain III is, of course, U.S. senator from Arizona, and is also the grandson of World War II Admiral John Sidney McCain Sr. “The last time I saw John was in 1963 when we were both instructors, but, you know, while John was imprisoned in Vietnam, his dad was commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet.”

In ’64, Weber attended anti-submarine warfare school in Rhode Island, mastering the H-3 “Sea King” for instrument flight to find subs: “It’s basically the same helicopter the president flies in,” Weber said. He was assigned to crews using the same helicopter to pick up astronauts and capsules from the Gemini VI-A and VII missions. Weber flew Navy Seals to place flotation collars around the capsules at splashdown sites in the western Atlantic Ocean. In 1967, Lt. Cmdr. Weber became desk officer for all helicopter operations in the North Atlantic Fleet Command, Norfolk, Va.

In 1969, Weber shipped out to Vietnam, as a flyer in the Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron 3—the famed “Seawolves.” “It was the most decorated Navy squadron of any kind in Vietnam,” Weber said. “You were there for a year, flying Huey gunships, and the average Seawolf pilot flew 320 missions in that time.” His first five months “in country,” Weber flew “slicks,” unarmed Hueys for transportation of logistical materials and men.

But then he was assigned as officer-in-charge of a small detachment of helicopter pilots and crewmen at the South Vietnamese fishing village, Rach Gia, on the Gulf of Thailand in Kien Giang Province. Rach Gia was and is a port town and fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand at the southern tip of Vietnam. “They had a fish market there, and if you could walk by it and not get sick, you’d already been there too long,” Weber reluctantly recalled.

At the edge of the U Minh Forest, a coastal swamp of mangroves and other densely-grown salt-tolerant trees and shrubs, Rach Gia served as a staging area for support of Vietnamese and U.S. troops in the surrounding “free fire zone” with its latitude to fire at will at well-identified targets of opportunity. It was a dangerous place. “I went to Vietnam with six lieutenant junior grades, and only came home with three,” said Weber.

His first air mission in the UH-1B “Seawolf” Huey from Rach Gia illustrated the 300 missions Weber flew in his last seven months in Vietnam, flying above the U Minh forest in support of U.S. troops working with and ingratiating villagers, while staunching the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers into South Vietnam. His unit also flew air cover for Swift Boats and PBR (Patrol Boat River) watercraft of “The Brown Water Navy.”

“April 8, 1970. I will remember that day forever. We were scrambled at 3 a.m. to support a MAT (Military Assistance Team) in the forest. As we got near, we could see tracer rounds being exchanged—50 caliber machine guns, AK-47 assault rifles, M-16s—with both Viet Cong and NVA (North Vietnam Army) advancing on the MAT [of South Vietnamese ‘regulars’] team along the river. They were running out of ammo, and calling to us, ‘buster, buster, buster,’ which means ‘hurry, hurry, hurry.’

“We flew in at 1,000 feet, and then turned our noses down—at 80 knots—and when we did, all that blanket of fire aimed at the MAT turned up to us. But we stayed there and fired for 20 minutes before we had to return to Rach Soi [another air base about 20 kilometers from the fire-fight] to refuel and get more ammo. Frankly, we were hoping we wouldn’t have to go back, but our relief, Army ‘Copperhead’ helicopters came in. They were all ‘cowboys’ who had gone in at 300 feet and got all shot up [aircraft disabled],” Weber explained.

So the Seawolves returned, expended all their ammunition again, and finally returned to Rach Soi. “We know we killed more than 60 people that night. I thought the missions would get worse, but from then on they were all pretty much the same.”

But he still laughs about a team of Navy Seals who woke Weber up in the middle of the night, during driving monsoon rain and wind, to announce they were going up a canal. Later the Seals radioed to Weber for help, and the Seawolves flew upriver—only ten feet off water surface—as he repeatedly asked for directions to their location. “Can you hear us yet?” “No,” came back a strangled reply. Again, and again the same response. Finally, Weber asked “Why are you whispering?” “Because we’re surrounded, you asshole!” said the Seal, as his men finally ran for their boats, firing in 360 degrees. “They fired a flare, but straight up, so we still couldn’t tell where they were.”

After Vietnam service, Weber was promoted to commander’s rank (equivalent of lieutenant colonel in other services) and was named operations officer for the Navy’s duties in the Manned Space Flight Program. At Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., he was elevated to chief of the Recovery Division for the Department of Defense (DOD) Manned Space Flight (1972-1973), reeling in the Apollo astronauts and Skylab from the southern Pacific.

Next, Weber’s career took a turn to highly specialized weapons systems. As commanding officer of the Mine Countermeasure Unit Bravo, Weber served in a dozen major fleet exercises. Unit Bravo included six H-53 “Sea Kings,” six mine-sweeping boats, an explosive demolition unit, and a team of Navy Seals. “Our mission was to pack up and deploy within 72 hours of being notified of a problem, sometimes calling in the Air Force with C-5 ‘Galaxies’ to carry our helicopters,” Weber said.

In 1976, Egyptian-laid mines in the Mediterranean Sea, intended to destroy Israeli vessels attempting to land at Port Said, were a nettlesome problem following war between the two nations. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was advised that the United States should offer to sweep the mines. So Weber, aboard the USS Inchon as a platform for the H-53s to sweep the five lines of mines along the Egyptian coast, was the on-scene commander of the operation. “It was really a pretty good deal for us, because we didn’t know a damned thing about the Russian-made mines, and the Egyptians gave us a lot of intelligence we wanted,” Weber said, adding that the Soviets were less than pleased with the bargain.

Weber was notified of his pending promotion to captain (equivalent to colonel in other services) while on a mine-sweeping exercise off Villegas Island, Puerto Rico, in 1979, though his actual date of rank came Oct. 16, 1981. “My boss at the time was Admiral Roy “Old Goddammit” Hoffman, the guy who was behind the swift boat exposé of John Kerry,” Weber said. “He was very fair, very honest, had the highest integrity, and Kerry hoodwinked him, and he never forgave him for it.”

Weber’s minesweeping command also included North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercises with the British, French, Spanish, Greek, Italian and Turkish armed forces at –among many locations – Cadiz, Spain, Toulons, France, and La Spezia, Italy.

In 1978, Weber took command of the Navy’s Mobile Mine Assembly Group (MOMAG) designed to train – with ten units around the world – how to assemble and deploy mines at all assembly points for mine deployments, as well as to 27 Naval Reserve commands. His responsibilities included 12 mine depots in Crete, Sicily, Scotland, New Jersey, South Carolina, California, Virginia, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and Japan.

Weber became director of inspections for the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. in 1981, serving there until his retirement, June 1, 1986. In this challenging assignment, Weber inspected nuclear weapons systems for the United States all over the world, from missile silos in North Dakota to nuclear warheads aboard Navy submarines. “Our mission was to check on the safety, reliability and security of every nuclear weapon in America’s arsenal.”

“I was constantly gone,” Weber said, adding that the complexity of the task—when he directed it—was prior to any nuclear arms limitation treaties that might have reduced the huge inventory. For five years, Weber flew nothing but commercial aircraft around the world. “A typical circuit over five days would include Hawaii, Guam, Hawaii again, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, N.M., JKF in New York, Frankfort, Germany, Scotland, and Erzurem, Turkey. I did a lot of writing in the air. And I always carried a [radiation] dosimeter, and routinely got more radiation from flying back-and-forth at 40,000 feet than I did from any nuclear weapons.”

His Personal Reliability Program gauged the usefulness of all workers, weapons technicians, and security personnel, including status and examination of personnel records, even birth and death certificates. “President Clinton would probably not qualify because of his use of drugs and other things in his background. Hell, for that matter, I don’t know if Bush would have, either.”

After retirement, Weber settled in New Mexico for awhile, attending the University of New Mexico for coursework in photo-journalism, launching a small town writing career with the East Mountain Observer, East Mountain Telegraph, and the East Mountain News. One of his favorite articles – considering Weber’s experience in nuclear issues – was entitled “Estancia Valley and the Superconducting Supercollider,” published June 12, 1987. In addition, Weber got involved with the acclaimed, Albuquerque-based Southwest Writers Workshop, serving as chairman twice.

In May 1992—in the center of yet another Weber “career” with the Violent Crimes Division of the Albuquerque Police Department—a ski buddy introduced Weber to Marian Killion, now his vivacious wife and golfing companion since their marriage. She was a surgical nurse, but, when Weber met Marian she was a professional model, a producer of fashion shows, and a buyer for an upscale boutique retailer.

The couple lived in a large home at 7,000 feet above sea level with a great view of the ski areas in the Sandia Mountains, until their move to a home nestled on the edge of Fort Clark Springs, Brackettville.

His resume—unchanged since he was looking for something to do after retirement—declares, “Seeking hands-on management of analytical positions in a people-oriented, forward-looking organization.” But Weber is not really looking for anything now, other than an agent and the time to finish his book on his Vietnam experiences, shining a bright light on crew members, valorous companions, and the characters of war in Southeast Asia.

The stories, ranging from the hilarious to the horrific, will give credit where Weber believes it’s been scant. “You know giving can be a pretty selfish undertaking,” Weber said. “You’re usually going to get something in return, and, at the very least, it’s going to make you feel good. But here’s my favorite aphorism for living: ‘You can get anything done if you don’t have to get the credit for it.’”