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Jim Sawyer could hardly believe his luck as he hid under a Navy hospital bed in Danang.  The mattress above him shook each time a pre-dawn Viet Cong rocket landed nearby.  Dust drifted in the darkened night air.  Between blasts, he ached from a newly set left arm that had been shattered only hours before.  His leg throbbed where 158 stitches weaved sinew and muscle as one.  Toughened by a Texas oilfield childhood, he knew the pain would ease in time.  He wondered how many Midway shipmates weren't as lucky as Sawyer.  He wondered who had died the night before 100 miles off the coast of Vietnam as a light rain dressed Midway's flight deck. October 24, 1972 had been another long day of flight operations aboard Midway.  For nearly 12 hours sorties of aircraft cycled off and back onto Midway after completing bombing, SAM suppression, and photo reconnaissance missions.  The brutal routine repeated every 90 minutes as one raft of aircraft shot off the bow

shortly before another group settling into the landing pattern for recovery.  Flight deck crews barely caught their breath from one launch as they turned to see Corsairs and Phantoms, Crusaders and Intruders inbound off the stern at incremental elevations of 1,000 feet.  They reorganized to direct the aircraft to the bow (first along the port side, then starboard) where they were checked by troubleshooeters for "gripes" reported by pilots, refueled, rearmed, and then cycled back into position for another cat shot toward the enemy. By 2000 onOctober 24, more than a dozen aircraft had safely made it back aboard.  Sawyer, Vic Wood, Tony Dennig, Dave Coats, and others were exhausted from what had been a long day and night. Only one aircraft remained in the air, an A-6 Intruder on its final approach.  Most focused on securing aircraft with tie-down chains, refueling, or securing weapon and ejection systems inside cockpits. Tony Dennig, though, looked back as the A-6 approached.  He had been struggling with a panel under an F-4 Phantom when he heard "in the ball" in his headset, the indication the pilot was about to land.  Just as Dennig looked astern, the A-6 seemed to dip slightly to his left.  As the plane came over the deck, the stern rode up over the top of a swell.  The plane's right wheel slammed down onto the deck ahead of the rest of the aircraft.  Instantly it snapped off, spraying sparks as the broken strut grabbed an arresting wire for an instant before breaking free. The Intruder careened into a sideways slide straight down the flight deck toward more than 50 men and their planes.  Dennig stood square in the path of the sliding monster...