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Sandra Spieker (Ringo)
On this day, I remember my father, who was a veteran. He died on January 29, 2008 at age 92. He wrote a few stories about his life in the years just before his death. Most of those stories I had read at the time, but could not bring myself to look at them again until recently. There is somethimg about them that invokes his voice, his manner that brings him back to life to me. I can read them now in a better light and understand than I could right after he died. The following are excepts from two of his articles, Biography and Judas Goat, written 10 months before he died. When he mentions the hospital, it was from a few years before he passed away. He had several health issues.
Definitons and background:
My father was discharged honorably from the Naval Service on December, 1945 with the rating of Aviation Chief Radio Man. And according to his biographical timeline:
"I am entitled to wear the gold wings of a pilot, torpedo bombers, from the belly seat, radar directed, but never wore them."
In addition he states:
"The only clue to service at sea appears as ‘VF16’.
VF16 is the fighter Squadron Sixteen, part of Air Group Sixteen which served in the Pacific Ocean area during WWII serving aboard several aircraft carriers.
Air groups were independent fighting organizations always temporarily assigned aboard a ship and required to do the actual fighting. Carriers are not battleships, and are regarded by the air groups as no more than fueling station and rest stops. This rivalry is suppressed in every respect to preserve the romantic appeals of ships to recruit crews."
THE JUDAS GOAT, Marinus Spieker
It is Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 1:30 in the afternoon. Opera time, the Metropolitan Opera in New York broadcasts it’s matinee performance live, and if I know the opera I will tune in to WRR 101.1 MHz. Last week it was Rossini, the Barber of Seville. The “Largo al Factotum” was priceless.
What is on this afternoon is noisy crap. I turned it off. I looked at the index of my ‘book notes’, found: ‘The Bronze star ‘and re-read it. I got a guilty twinge, and resolved to write a tale I frequently told while in the hospital, and medicated to a fare-thee-well.
I start out by asking (usually, it is either a nurse or an orderly), “Do you know what is a Judas Goat”? Most never heard of the term, one did, talked about it briefly. He was old and in the hospital doing volunteer duty. Worked in a slaughter house as entry-level job as a ‘boy’. He looked at me, looking kind of ‘not funny’ when I said that I was a Judas Goat. He left.
I sometimes approach the same subject from another direction. I ask a military question. Such as “Do you know how a battle group defends itself against a torpedo attack made by airplanes”?
The answer usually is massive ack-ack from forty millimeter quads in sponson blisters welded on the sides of the hull. The sponsons are welded on after the ships pass through the Panama Canal.
I squatted on the flight deck at the port catapult after everything we had was up and we had nothing left that would fly. We could smell Japan, we were that close.
They were coming at us, very low, skimming the waves, smoke thick from the exploding ack-ack. Exhilaration, that is what I was feeling. I read later that Churchill said that absolutely nothing was more exhilarating than being shot at without effect.
Why did I feel that way? I was a Judas goat, a soothsayer, sera, sera!
I read from my flight log for the month of November, 1942. The day is the 23rd of November. I made fourteen ‘test’ flights in TBF-1 type bomber airplane made by Grumman at Bethpage, New York during that month.
TBF-1 serial 06038 is on the line. Ensign McGurk will pilot, Radioman Spieker is crew. I never met McGurk before this, never saw him again afterwards. This is standard behavior.
There is virtually zero conversation between us. I do not even say ‘hello’. It is his first time to test and check out a TBF-1 radar assisted torpedo attack. His instructions, I guess, amount to “listen to the radar guy, do what he says, watch your ass.” I do not attend briefings unless ordered to be there.
The radar is primitive, almost nothing predates it. The antennae are 515 MHz Yagi one on each wingtip. The autopilot is ‘SBAE’ bombsight. I have a knob that controls the rudder and enables me to make skid-turns. If we make a ‘bank-turn’ the antenna will see the moon, not a target.
Skipping the techno-babble, I ‘see’ the target; we are zipping along at 180 knots at about forty feet altitude, bomb doors open. “Bombs away” and McGurk is back in control.
He hauls back on the ‘stick’ and we climb almost vertically as I turn around in my seat to charge the fifty caliber stinger, behind me.
Floating below, a tattered looking raft appears to receive the short burst from the fifty. I got no more than about a dozen rounds in the clip.
Rat-tat-tat, they are gone, and we are all done, testing. We head back to base.
Back on the flight line, as we climb out of the plane, we stand facing each other.
“Stay low” I say. “Ack-ack is not your problem. Artillery is what is going to kill you”.
On one occasion, while at this point, I told that pilot we were ‘lucky’ that we do not carry torpedoes on test flights. Not even dummies. They might bounce and try to climb back into the bomb bay if you go too low!
Air Groups and Carriers desperately need each other, but there is low regard and no love lost between them. Carriers are regarded to be floating gas stations, mini-market motels. They are big fat targets. Carriers are not ‘battle ships’.
I love ships and once dreamed of serving, perhaps even commanding one of those big guns. I do not regret having served on carriers. Not even a moment.
Back on the flight deck, squatting behind the sponson with the forties going pm-pm-pm-pm. Astern, an old battlewagon escort lobs her sixteen inchers into the water.
BLAM BLAM BLAM. Huge waterspouts appear; mountains of water rise in front of the attackers. The attackers have vanished.
I had never been asked before. “Did YOU ever……”
“No”, I answered, “I was an instructor, I never actually attacked. I was too valuable”
Torpedo Squadron Eight sank four carriers at Midway and won the war, but nobody, not even one of VT-8’s attackers came home.
I volunteered into a Fighter Squadron, and joined VF-16. The Marianas turkey shoot bunch.
Like that Judas Goat, leading the lambs to slaughter, I ducked into that escape door when the opportunity was offered to me.
Que sera, sera, I did not arrange it, I could not prevent it, I could only make it worse. Mea culpa.
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