Upon being called up for active duty during the Korean War, my initial duty was in ordnance and working with items related to this. Because of my love of flying, it wasn’t long before I began trai...voir plusUpon being called up for active duty during the Korean War, my initial duty was in ordnance and working with items related to this. Because of my love of flying, it wasn’t long before I began training and flying as an air crewman with a squadron in aircraft destined for antisubmarine warfare. There was much excitement, thrills and cherished experiences encountered and yes many close calls which sometimes made you wonder if you were next. However, being so young at the time we did not waste much time thinking about the dangers of carrier operations or the exceptionally low attack altitude of 50 feet during daytime and 300 feet at night and relying only on the radio altimeter to keep us from plunging into the ocean.
There were numerous items that were worthy to remember and upon being discharged I began jotting things down with the thought that maybe someday I would write about my experiences. Being a professor for more than thirty years, I found myself writing class notes and technical books for use by students in the University and even writing the text for an Audio Tutorial Training Course for a technical organization. I became the Journal Technical Editor and News Letter Editor for a professional organization and a Contributing Editor for another global technical magazine. Upon retiring, I served as the Editor for an American Legion Post News Letter that won the Best American Legion Computer Generated Publication Award in Pennsylvania three years in a row. Writing had become fun to do and a rather interesting and worthwhile pastime.
Realizing that Veterans are now dying off at the rate of 1,800 a day and having the thought that some Veterans or other individuals and perhaps my children might be interested in reading about some of my experiences encountered while on active duty during the Korean War, the decision was made to write and publish my memoirs. I suspect that having attended my first service related reunion this past year gave me the extra push to assemble all of the notes and put the various stories in writing so that everyone could read some of the events that happened in VS-931 antisubmarine squadron.
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