Tomcat RIO: A Topgun Instructor on the F-14 Tomcat and the Heroic Naval Aviators Who Flew It
Dave “Bio” Baranek. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020. 161 pp. $27.99.
Reviewed by Commander Graham Scarbro, U.S. Navy
Former F-14 Tomcat radar intercept officer (RIO) “Bio” Baranek, who previously chronicled his early career and tour as an instructor at the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) in the memoirs Before Topgun Days (Skyhorse, 2016) and Topgun Days (Skyhorse, 2014), returns with Tomcat RIO, part memoir, part primer on the legendary F-14 Tomcat and those who flew and fixed it.
Baranek’s book covers a transitional period in naval aviation through the lens of his own transitions. Fresh off a tour as a TOPGUN instructor, Baranek returns to the fleet as tensions with Iran threaten
to boil over into war. He describes deploying to the Persian Gulf and operating in the Strait of Hormuz in the days when sending an aircraft carrier to the Middle East was a rare occurrence. Baranek and his squadron mates faced the uncertainty of complex geopolitical forces that have become part of the everyday fabric of post-9/11 carrier aviation.
As the Cold War winds to its bloodless end and the 20th century closes, Baranek moves from the cockpit to the Pentagon and back as the United States, and the world, transition to a time of police actions and no-fly zones. Baranek provides a ground-level (and cockpit-level) view of how quickly the Tomcat morphed from long-range interceptor to reconnaissance and attack aircraft, and of his own growth from a hotshot TOPGUN instructor to a “dinosaur” as a squadron commanding officer, learning new lessons from his professional descendants.
Baranek fills the book with anecdotes and episodes that can be read sequentially or reread in any order, like a serialized TV show. The tone is fast-paced, confident, enthusiastic, and self-deprecating. Along the way, he provides technical glimpses into the Tomcat community’s manning, training, equipment, and operations. Throughout it all is the self-assured, can-do spirit that gave the Tomcat community its reputation for excellence and bravado.
Particularly enjoyable are the large-format color photos from this pivotal time in fighter aviation, thanks to the book’s coffee-table-size printing. The photos start with the brightly colored, brash, in-your-face designs of the late 1980s, but slowly yield to the dark grays that characterize modern tactical aircraft. Many of the photos are by Baranek himself, captured during a photo exercise during a deployment at sea.
Baranek, like all sailors, bounces from sea to shore on a constant rotation, detailing the intricacies of a squadron’s training and deployment cycle and the post–Cold War shakeups that changed the way the Navy operated through the present day. Along the way, he reaches into what must be an encyclopedic memory or an exceptionally detailed logbook to recall the names of dozens of shipmates, fellow aviators, and friends who helped make his own career a success. Like in the best aviation memoirs, Baranek tells his own story but also carefully highlights the teamwork that is fundamental to a Navy career.
Baranek’s look into his career as a RIO, a role popularized by the character “Goose” in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, also sheds light on the question faced by naval flight officers (NFOs) for decades: “What do you actually do back there, anyway?” Baranek has the answer, giving a look at the intense coordination, teamwork, leadership, and levity that come with life in a two-seat fighter jet. His look at how pilots and NFOs collaborate for success makes the book enlightening for anyone whose only understanding of the NFO community comes from Hollywood.
Baranek’s book highlights naval aviation as a team sport, with shoutouts and praise for attack aviators, airborne early warning crews, ship’s company, and even staff “PowerPoint rangers,” but always with a slight touch of the “best of the best” swagger that made the Tomcat community famous (or infamous). Tomcat RIO is a good read for those looking for a nuts-and-bolts exploration of fighter aviation at the closing of the Cold War and the complex changes faced by the Navy in the years following.
CDR Scarbro is an active-duty naval flight officer and the 2019 Proceedings Author of the Year.
Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found Titanic
Robert D. Ballard and Christopher Drew. Washington, DC: National Geographic Partners, 2021. 335 pp. Images. Notes. Index. $30.
Reviewed by Captain Don Walsh, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This memoir is like a personal conversation between author and reader. According to end comments by coauthor Christopher Drew, the book was an effort in which individuals researched and wrote drafts of the chapters—the primary sources of Ballard’s life story are 200 hours of recorded interviews and his extensive personal archive.
A better subtitle could have been “Inside the Life and Mind of an Explorer.” Though the dust jacket states he was the man who found the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard is no one-trick pony. Though the Titanic discovery was important, it did not define him. He has had many “lives” as adventurer, distinguished marine geologist, and respected educator. In addition, he has been an extraordinarily effective media celebrity, engaging the lay public with his ocean-related stories.
As to methods and means for his work in the depths, Ballard describes extensive use of advanced manned and unmanned underwater vehicles. These include diving in the manned submersibles Alvin and Trieste II. His description of how he helped develop unmanned submersible systems is particularly interesting. Along the way, he also worked at sea from 60 vessels. And now, through his Ocean Exploration Trust foundation, he has his own ship, the Nautilus, that gives him even greater freedom to pursue his interests.
The book details several of his important deep-ocean explorations, ranging from early success with the Titanic to the unsuccessful end of his search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. Among those described are searches for the battleship Bismarck, Lieutenant (and, later, President) John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, the nuclear submarine Thresher (SSN-593), and ancient shipwrecks in the Black Sea. Not all were successful, and he has often taken on projects knowing that failure was a likely outcome. Clearly, successes have soundly outnumbered the failures.
Ballard has been a prolific creator, with more than 100 print articles, 29 books, and 29 film and television specials produced over his lifetime. A decades-long association with the National Geographic Society has helped popularize his stories of ocean exploration and discovery.
As a man of science, oceanographer Ballard has published a number of scientific papers, with most in distinguished journals. The source of his remarkable publication history, both popular and scientific, has come from the 157 expeditions that he led or in which he participated.
In telling his personal story, Ballard does not hold back on either the good or bad. His highs and lows are all here. For most of his life he thought he was mentally inadequate in his educational studies. With extraordinary hard work and dedication to his love of exploration, he was able to find success. Still, the question lingered, was he intellectually challenged? Then, late in life, he discovered he was dyslexic, a problem that also affected immediate members of his family.
There are raw moments, such as the dissolution of his first marriage, as well as the great happiness that a second marriage brought into his life. The most touching revelation is his description of how his 21-year-old son Tod died in an auto accident and its influence on Ballard’s work after that time.
At age 78, Dr. Robert D. Ballard is still a person looking for new challenges and opportunities in the world of exploration. So stay tuned for more!
Dr. Walsh is a marine consultant and retired naval officer and oceanographer. In January 1960, he became one of the first two human beings to explore the deepest point in the World Ocean, Challenger Deep.
Valor and Courage: The Story of the USS Block Island Escort Carriers in World War II
Benjamin J. Hruska. 203 pp. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2021. Photographs. $54.95.
Reviewed by J. M. Caiella
On the surface, Benjamin Hruska’s Valor and Courage has all the promise of a very interesting read. It claims to be the story of one crew that fought on two ships of the same name—Block Island (CVE-21 and -106); one ship with combat in the Atlantic and the only U.S. aircraft carrier sunk in that theater, the other in the Pacific. Further, this is a story about a class of ships that has received little of its due. Added to this promise is the fact that the author did significant research investigating the men, the ships, their operations, and their combat.
The author has a PhD in public history. Such historians use their training to meet the needs of a community, be it a museum, city, business, or other entity. They use history for a purpose, not as an end in itself. This is the book’s primary weakness. Virtually every event depicted in the lives of the sailors and their ships is translated into social terms for the reader to link back as far as the Phoenicians.
Because of this, the gestation of the CVE ship type is a confused presentation that spans seven chapters, broken up to highlight the author’s particular points. This ranges from Hollywood’s role in crafting the general public’s image of aircraft carriers and carrier warfare to the thoughts of the ship’s prospective commander on future operations. It is confused because snippets of details of the class’s genesis are spread across 43 pages. Amid this expanse are his definitions of the base hull for the Bogue class, which are certain to confuse the reader. They had me reaching for my reference books.
At times he properly identifies the C3-S-A1 as a “cargo hull”; however, Hruska’s most common identification is that of “merchant hull.” This would not be incorrect if the adjective indicated a civilian or commercial use. But that is not how it is used. He further confuses the identity by describing the initial CVE conversions as being based on “cargo tanker hulls,” which they definitely were not.
Sometimes the author’s history fails. He states that all 11 of the Bogue-class escort carriers, of which the first, the Block Island, was one, were constructed at the Todd Pacific Shipyards in Tacoma, Washington. At the time of their construction, however, the company was the Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) Shipbuilding Corporation.
The stories of the veterans and their ships are relegated to a few passages that have little more weight than the surrounding verbiage. Communication of the prime stories is lost. For this the blame must rest with the editor.
This is not a seamless read. In many paragraphs identical phrases or significant words are repeated and, at times, on the very next line. A reader quickly gets the sense that the author is more concerned with emphasizing points than a narrative. The sense becomes one of the book being more of a lesson than a tale.
Writing of a Block Island veteran suffering from the effects of asbestos exposure, the author, after describing helping him “use the bathroom,” informs the reader, “With each breath, microscopic slices reduced lung capacity.” The author’s frequent use of hyperbole should have been flagged in editing; it is beyond allowing a writer “his voice.”
The whole narrative of CVE-21 and her crew’s experiences in the Atlantic, much like the description of the CVE type, is spread over most of the remaining chapters. This diluted arrangement has little historical continuity but is based on apparent social points the author wishes to make. The second Block Island (CVE-106) gets barely 40 pages, and few of those are to a focal point of the book’s promise: the same crew together on a new ship named after their sunken carrier.
There are interesting stories in this book, but they are lost amid the clutter of public history. The sailors’ stories are sadly diminished, squashed by too many unnecessary thoughts, observations, and linkages. Also buried are the interesting parallel stories of the ship’s two seminal captains, Logan C. Ramsey and Francis M. Hughes, both of whom rose to the rank of rear admiral. Their common tale is worth a book on its own.
Mr. Caiella is a journalist of more than 45 years of experience He has worked as lead editor of scholarly publications for the Naval History and Heritage Command, senior editor of Proceedings and Naval History magazines, and writer-editor for the U.S. Marine Corps’ History Division.