A very well earned thank you for your service Gordon.

A very well earned thank you for your service Gordon.

Welcome home and OK no comment from a Cold War Paddles.......Arv Chauncey did my Winging in Beeville in '83...maybe you knew him-

Punch the timer and shove the T2A throttle to the stops. Wait, wait, wait, OK- there's 100%, punch the timer-15 Seconds? OK, good to go. I think it took all the way to Philadelphia, MS to climb to 10,000' on a hot day.

Now, after formation in the A, transition to the Charlie. Idle to 100%-how fast can you shove the throttles forward? I swear we were turning to the op area at 10,000' and were looking down at the upwind end of the runway! Talk about elbows and assholes trying to catch up, that first Charlie hop was it.

What a hoot! And then, back at Pensacola for gunnery and Carrier Quals in the Bravo, first time they allowed us to grow a moustache, shooting real bullets and they even had student NFO's riding in our back seats! Man, we might just make it to those gold wings after all!

Heading off to Kingsville for advanced in the A4 was almost anticlimactic. The Skyhawk couldn't climb or accelerate as fast as the T2Bs and Cs. Great memories!

They must have de-tuned those C's after you left then
The T-2C was a great first jet to learn in but I saw no comparison between the T-2Cs I flew and the TA-4Js.

My experience was like Steve's, flew the T2A through formation then 5 flights in the B for transition, then to Pensacola for guns and the boat. The B actually had a little more thrust than the C as I remember, and they may have been quicker to accelerate to 200 KTS or so, but after that the TA4 just kept building. 450 to 500 just wasn't that big a deal and again as I remember the T2 only did something like 380?

Due to some previous problems with the T2 holdbacks, the boat had to use F9 holdbacks on the Cat shot. The F9 was much heavier than the T2, so those first shots with the stronger/heavier holdbacks were the most violent thing I've ever experienced in an airplane.

Going downwind for my 2nd trap I'm thinking "hell the traps are a piece of cake, but sum-beach, I'm not sure about the launch.

The "squirrel cage" gun pattern was something that had to be seen to be believed: Spacer Pass, high reversal, perch, low reversal and the payoff . . . Guns tracking with the twin .50's chattering away.

Yeah, Burns, the B had a bit more thrust but the faster spool up rate for the C seemed to make up the difference.

My first trap on Lex in the B I forgot to lock my shoulder harness and the glareshield put a nice divot in my visor. I was dazed and taxiing all the way up the deck to the cat I'm thinking I don't know if I want to be doing this day in and day out. Finally figured out what happened when I went through my pre-launch checklist behind the JBD .

Oh, well. I was chagrined and relieved at the same time.

And yes, the Skyhawk would outrun the Buckeye and had a higher ceiling but I don't think it was close to jumping off the deck to 10,000' as that T2C. Either way, RIP to an old friend.