I wasn’t qualified to do anything with a search light except to illuminate something in the water. I did confuse an ‘Alpha Delta’ pilot one pitch black night over the Tonkin Gulf. We were paired up as a Hunter/Killer Team, I guess you’d call it. Or was it “Hunter / Scrapper”. With the AD-4Q (or was it some other mod?) at altitude, and the Stoof low (at about 500 feet). Any, we had only been ‘on station about 45 minutes or so, when the AD pilot (Damn, I wish I had a memory) came up on the radio and said “hey Kass, my operator back aft says there’s oil seeping inside from some opening in the skin around the dive brakes. I have no indication of low oil up here in the cockpit on the gages”. But will you come on up here and see if you can spot anything that might be an oil leak”? I said “no trouble, vector me to your posit”.

climbed rapidly (you all know what terrific ‘climbers Stoofs are”) When I was aft of him and slightly below, I suggested that “he go on the gages and stay steady…..that I was going to illuminate him”. He came up on the horn very quickly and in so many words said that he “didn’t want to risk being blinded by my candle”. I said ‘me neither”…. I explained that I was going to light up his tail area with my nose taxi light……and I did. His operator was correct, he did have a lot of engine oil drifting back to the dive breaks, especially on the port side. Very quickly, the pilot said he was “returning to Judo”. He did and made an uneventful landing aboard.

When I finally did recover aboard at the end of my scheduled flight, he had sent word to the ready room that the nose light worked quite well, and thanked me. I remember hanging on my props trying to keep my nose stuck … almost in his tail.

Anyway, Searchlights are great…..but the taxi lite was better. Damn those were good days!

Dave Kassebaum, LCDR, VS37