As a member of VAAW-35 in San Diego we deployed as VAN team 55 in Hancock around February 1958. We had a few thrilling events during the cruise, but one sort of stands out in my memory.

Around 1300 on August 28, 1958, the Hancock shot me and my AD5N off the catapult in the South China Sea. We had been called out of Hong Kong on emergency orders to fly patrols over the two small islands of Quemoy and Matsu, west of Taiwan. At that time the Chinese were firing on the islands and we were to patrol to watch for any movement toward Taiwan by the Chinese.

My wingman LTJG Harry Thibault and I were rolling along smoothly at 5000 feet doing about 180 knots and had gone about 100 miles out from the ship. Our patrols were to be flown at around 15,000 feet, an altitude I didn't like anyway, which meant we had to switch blowers on the AD5N when passing through 10,000 feet. As I shifted my blower there was a loud explosion and I lost all oil pressure, the prop stopped and the hydraulic pressure was also gone. I did have a radio and I immediately screamed for help.

My wingman said he would take over radio duties so I could handle the few chores I had in the cockpit; it took about two seconds to decide to land instead of jumping. (The reason being that every friend I had that had jumped from an AD had broken some bone part on the tail assembly.) Besides I had landed many times before and I knew I could do that. There just wouldn't be much roll out.

The sea was relatively calm with only about 5 knots of wind and with some difficulty I managed to get the nose pointed into the wind. We were at about 7000 feet above the water and dropping like a rock, so I concentrated on finding a sink rate that would let us land relatively soft, but not stall in the meantime. During this time I was also talking to the two crewmen and explaining what I was going to do. One of them suggested that I should probably blow the canopies, which seemed reasonable so I immediately did.

By this time we had reached about 5000 feet and I had set a sink rate of about 600 feet per minute which kept my air speed at about 105 knots, give or take a few knots. At this point I concentrated on keeping the nose toward the wind and across the waves.

At around 1000 feet I dropped my hook and told my wingman we were about to hit the water. As we passed through 500 feet I told everyone to cover up and brace for the landing. When the hook hit the water I let everything go and covered my head with my arms into the console.

We hit the water and after a couple of bounces, seemed to stop almost immediately, upright with hardly any water in the cockpit.

I turned to tell the ECM operator, J.W. Stroud I believe, who sat next to me in the cockpit, to get out, but all I saw was his rear end on the wing about half way to the tip. The radar operator behind me crawled out and I started to climb out but found I was trapped. Then it occurred to me that if I lifted the seat lock, both the belt and shoulder harness would release. With that done I managed to get out and walk to the wingtip rather hastily.

All three of us popped our rafts and paddled away from the plane. As soon as the plane sank we circled and tied our rafts together. Now all we had to do was wait for a ride home. My wingman was still circling above.

It was about two hours before a helicopter arrived and retrieved us from the water. The ride back to the ship was uneventful, if such is an apt description of a ride in a helicopter.

At the debriefing on the ship, I was asked how long after we hit the water did we have to get into the rafts and I estimated about 1.5 minutes. Harry Thibault, my wingman, told them that from the time my hook hit the water until the plane disappeared was 45 seconds. Seems you can do a lot in 45 seconds if you need to.

I realized later that I really never seemed to be scared during the incident, but that night I couldn't sleep. All I could think about were things that might have gone wrong but didn't. My log book records a landing as "other land or sea" with a note in the remarks column "ditched S. China Sea."