Midway Magic Excerpt

Danger off the Vietnam Coast...
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 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 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. 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 the port side, then starboard)
where they were checked by troubleshooters for "gripes" reported by pilots, refueled,
rearmed, and then cycled back into position for another cat shot toward the enemy. By
2000 on October 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...