As to ejection from a CRUSADER, the F 8 had quite a lurid record. Except for one single month there was at least one F 8 ejection each and every month during the 13-year period from June 1957 to May 1970. The real problem was that for those of us flying the F 8 prior to the mid 1960s, the ejection scenario had a very discouraging glitch. If you had less than 1,500 to 2,000 feet of altitude when the time came to part company with your aircraft, the chances of surviving such a  "low level" ejection ran the entire gamut from nil to zero.

My roommate, Chuck Ramsey had confirmed that ugly reality as I prepared for my CRUSADER'S debut with the barricade. I watched in horror as his F 8 touched down on deck and WHAM! His port main landing gear disintegrated. Unfortunately, this was an all too common occurrence at this stage of the CRUSADER'S career. It was even more distressing because the landing gear struts also served as the reservoir for the hydraulic fluid necessary to operate the CRUSADER'S flight controls. Chuck poured the coal to the crippled CRUSADER.

He was trying to nurse it up to speed and to get to an altitude high enough to eject. The F 8 staggered up to about 700 feet when one of the control officers on the ship apparently mistook the streaming hydraulic fluid for smoke--to him this meant only one thing, FIRE! He frantically squawked over the radio "BAIL OUT-BAIL OUT NOW!!" Before I could even key my mike to warn Chuck otherwise, he ejected. He was just able to unstrap and disengage himself from the ejection seat. He tumbled in free fall and his parachute streamed. But the chute did not have time to blossom. He dropped like a sack of rocks and hit the water at terminal velocity. The chopper was busy trying to pick Chuck's body out of the sea as I was turning on final approach.

For me, the suspense of my predicament was now further heightened by the realization that, because everyone was operating in new and untested territory, fatal mistakes like Chuck's abortive ejection were more than a remote possibility.  And Hell, I had never even seen a picture of a barricade before this flap I thought,

"Watch out Buster or you'll be next!"

As I came onto glide path "in the groove" aft of the ship I saw my first barricade all right. But, what I DID NOT SEE was the mirror, the pilot's only guide to a successful carrier landing. I finally realized that the mirror was obscured behind the huge port barricade stanchion. In the few instants that it took me to figure this out and to get to a point where I could see the mirror I was both off alignment and VERY LOW, not a pretty picture! I was correcting as I skimmed a couple of feet over the ramp end of the ship. I drove the F8 into the net at about 150 MPH. Everything seemed OK until the force of the engagement with the lower horizontal load strap of the barricade suddenly tore off my port landing gear. The F8 instantly pivoted on the wing tip. I hit the burner but it wasn't doing any more flying that day-I was well and truly snagged-hooking and skidding to the port edge of the carrier deck. I was on my way to an unanticipated and highly unwelcome salt-water immersion.