by Barrett Tillman
When RADM Paul T. Gillcrist became ComFitAEWWingPac in 1979, he visited each of the 28 ready rooms at NAS Miramar to introduce himself to the troops. Not surprisingly, the most raucous greeting occurred in Topgun's spaces, where Paul was immediately asked, "What's your callsign, Admiral?"
Paul was momentarily taken aback -- he didn't have a callsign. Quickly recovering, he stood his ground and announced, "I'm 'Gator.'"
The JOs loved it; they wanted to know why he chose such an unusual handle. Paul braced his hands on his hips, surveyed the audience with his patented steely-eyed glare and said, "Because a gator is big and ugly, and he's the meanest critter in the swamp."
Very shortly those same JOs learned that a gator was cat-quick and showed no mercy. One of CDR Lonnie "Eagle" McClung's NFWS instructors described racquetball against the new he-bull of the base as a "war without bullets."
Paul grew up in a family of nine children and was influenced by his brother John, eight years older, who earned an appointment to the Naval Academy. After two years in the V-5 program at Gonzaga University, Paul won a congressional appointment to "Navy Tech" from Washington State, which meant he had to be discharged from the Naval Aviation college program.
Graduating in the Class of 1952, ENS Gillcrist set his sights on flight training. He pinned on his Wings of Gold in December 1953 and set about strategizing the best way to get into fighters.
"I made friends with one of the class assignment office secretaries at Corpus Christi," he relates, "and learned that 100 percent of my class was slated for ASW assignment. I had nothing against the VS mission, but I sure didn't want to be stuck in those awful TBMs, so I took some 'emergency' leave to visit my 'dying grandmother.'" By the time he returned, Paul's grandma had experienced a startling recovery, and he pulled one of two VF chits out of the detailer's hat. Life was good.
And it got better. Assigned to VF-191 at Moffett Field, Paul joined one of only two Grumman Cougar squadrons on the West Coast. The skipper was CDR Robert M. Elder, who even then was known as "Mr. Carrier Aviation." Paul still holds enormous respect for his first CO, saying, "Bob was very laid back, but he was a great tactician. He taught us energy maneuverability in our underpowered F9F-6s, and he could tell what was happening to everybody in a 4-v-4 'fur ball.' His situational awareness was amazing."
However, it was soon learned that of the six nuggets who reported to Satan's Kittens, two would remain behind when the squadron deployed. Paul T. Gillcrist worked hard at ensuring that he was not one of those left waving good-bye when USS Oriskany (CVA-34) sailed for WestPac.
Another prominent influence in Paul's AirPac world was a female aviation physiologist at Alameda. He later learned that she was the first female aviation physiologist in the Navy. "A bunch of us were sitting in a briefing room awaiting the lecture on the use of oxygen equipment when this really attractive brunette walked in. We all sort of straightened up and paid attention. The young lady began the lecture by asking, 'How many of you smoke?' Several hands went up. Then, 'How many of you smoke while flying?' Some hands remained raised."
Without a further word, the physiologist strode to a console, inhaled deeply of 100 percent oxygen from a tank and produced a cigarette lighter. "This little gal blew a big breath, flicked the lighter and ignited a streak of flame right over our heads that seemed about six feet long," Paul recalls with a grin. Then she said, "That's why you don't smoke in the cockpit."
"Believe you me -- she made her point! I thought, 'Hmmm ... she's all right.'" Indeed she was. Paul and Nancy Murtagh were married two years later.
CDR Roy "Butch" Voris relieved Bob Elder before the cruise, and Paul acquired more professional education as the No. 4 man in Butch's division. "Butch was 'Mr. Smooth,'" Paul says, "and he taught us all of his Blue Angels maneuvers."
With his first cruise behind him, Paul was assigned to the Fleet Air Gunnery Unit (FAGU) at NAAF El Centro in late 1957. He took an immediate liking to the job: "I had two live-firing aerial gunnery flights before I unpacked." His primary duty was to train weapons officers who would return to their squadrons and impart what they learned at FAGU. Many of his students were O-5s -- PCOs like Jerry Miller, Mike Michaelis, Zeke Cormier and Tom "The Marine" Miller, in addition to Butch Voris, who cycled through en route to his CAG billet.
Of all the memorable flights at El Centro, none compares with what Paul later called "The Sidewinder in the Cockpit." Part of his job between classes was to ferry airplanes to an outlying field for bore-sighting and harmonization. The head of the bore-sighting team was also in charge of the school's desert survival exhibit. He often gave Paul specimens he collected around the gun butts . . . asking him to transport them back to the school. "They were scorpions and horned toads and things like that," Paul recalls with a smile.
En route to base, Paul set his boxed specimen on the Cougar's port console, neither knowing nor caring what it contained. But entering the break, the cardboard box came open and its occupant emerged -- an 18-in. rattlesnake, "mad as hell and coiled to strike!"
In an adrenaline surge, Paul instinctively sought to escape, but doubted he could pull the ejection handle before the sidewinder struck. He did the only thing he could do: loaded six g's on the airplane, himself and the viper. A series of nose-high maneuvers quickly bled off his energy, and Paul remembers seeing El Centro from directly overhead with his nose pointed straight down. With the tower operator watching with horror and demanding to know Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Paul found that the rattler couldn't strike with a load on the airplane. "He'd obviously never fought in a high-g environment before!"
Taking momentary advantage of the situation, Paul grabbed the 'winder, stuffed it in the box and sealed it with a piece of masking tape. He then managed a shaky landing at El Centro.
Meanwhile, Paul's application for Test Pilot School was accepted beginning a four-year tour at Flight Test Division that was far beyond the expected tenure. Of that time, 16 months were spent in Bethesda Naval Hospital following a high-speed, inverted ejection from a T2J-1 in May 1959. Long story short: Paul sustained 29 fractures that included his pelvis, eight breaks in his right leg and all the fingers of one hand. He was offered a 100 percent disability retirement but opted to return to flying. His boss, former skipper Bob Elder, held the slot for him against pressure from BuPers. Elder and a senior flight surgeon, who overruled a prissy junior colleague, allowed Paul to return to the cockpit.
Paul joined the sea-going Boomerangs of VF-62 in the spring of 1962 flying a Med cruise from Shangri-La (CVA-38), where the Approach Power Compensator virtually saved the F-8 program. Paul concludes, "Landing 'Saders on a 27-Charlie at night is the hardest thing I've ever done." But he did it extremely well. The squadron LSO, now-retired CDR John Nichols, was asked by the skipper why Paul had two collapsed nosewheels in a row. "Pirate" investigated and found that the bottomed-out oleo had struck the PLAT camera fairing in the deck, smack on the centerline, in two consecutive traps. "I told the CO that Paul hadn't done anything wrong -- he'd made perfect passes." Today, from his retirement digs in Florida, Nichols says, "Paul Gillcrist was an aviator's aviator, and he's a man's man."
In 1964-'65 Paul used his enforced shore time to complete a degree at American University, writing a thesis titled "Limited War and American Foreign Policy." LCDR Gillcrist's conclusions proved prophetic over the next decade: He concluded that the French couldn't hold Indochina with a half-million troops, and U.S. requirements would be even greater.
Paul joined VF-53 in 1966 for an XO/CO tour, returning again to his beloved Crusaders. He joined the squadron late in its cruise on Ticonderoga (CVA-14), rode the boat back to San Diego and continued for a short time as exec for CDR Bill Gureck. Along the way he logged his second ejection, seven and a half years after the first, when his F-8E's engine flamed out. "I almost drowned this time," Paul explains, but he suffered no serious injuries. In eight months CVW-5 was headed back for the Tonkin Gulf, where Paul became Firefighter One in an at-sea change of command.
The Hancock (CVA-19) cruise was the payoff -- Paul's first real exposure to combat after 14 years on active duty. It was a deployment of mixed fortunes. The break-in period on Dixie Station off South Vietnam was "almost leisurely." Entering the big league off Yankee Station was not.
With his injuries, Paul knew that prospects for another safe ejection were minimal, and becoming a POW was not an option. Therefore, he carried three sidearms on the theory that "I wasn't going to let anybody come between me and a rescue chopper!"
Paul learned just how bad things could be in the course of one maddening mission on 10 May 1967. Flying ResCAP for the downed CAG-5, CDR R.A. "Dutch" Netherland, Paul's section was jumped by a trigger-happy Phantom that hosed a Sidewinder at him. Angry and frustrated, he returned to the "19 Boat" to learn that Netherland was not rescued (he remained MIA), and Paul never had the opportunity to visit Enterprise (CVA(N)-65) and slug the F-4 driver who tried to kill him.
Following a six-month turn-around, in January 1968, CDR Gillcrist took the Iron Angels back for a third cruise, relinquishing command while aboard Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31). He had orders to Washington -- ordinarily an onerous chore -- but this one offered many intriguing prospects.
At Op-05W, Air Warfare Analysis, Paul had a dream assignment: running the Navy side of the MiG-17/-21 evaluations "somewhere in Nevada." He got 10 flights in a -17 courtesy of the Army, which wanted to learn the parameters of its Redeye anti-aircraft missile against such targets.
While still in the five-sided funny farm, Paul got an even better Good Deal. CAPT "Gorgeous" George Watkins let it be known that prop-experienced aviators were sought for the filming of "Tora, Tora, Tora." Mandatory leave time had to be taken to participate, but that was a no-brainer; the studio was paying top dollar for qualified pilots to fly replica Zekes, Vals and Kates. As a senior VF guy, Paul was designated the Zero squadron commander and strike leader under "CAG" Watkins.
Filming in California and Hawaii in 1969-1970 offered some rare opportunities. Two that stand out in Paul's memory were dissimilar but for their vividness. Leading a 31-plane gaggle from El Toro to North Island to go aboard Yorktown (CVS-10), he struck upon the concept of a flyby at Miramar. "It was real hazy," he recalls, "and we couldn't see Runway 24. But I thought I knew where it was, so I called the tower asking permission for a low pass." When the controller asked composition of the flight, Hikotaicho Gillcrist couldn't wait to respond, "I have thirteen Zekes, nine Kates and nine Vals." Overflying the air station, Paul eased down to 500 feet with most of his Rising Sun air group stacked down. "It must have sounded pretty awesome when we broke out over the O' Club," he laughs.
Filming the predawn launch aboard Yorktown also provided some drama. Paul was to lead the Zeroes off the deck, settling off the bow as described by Minoru Genda, the film's technical advisor who had done most of the original Pearl Harbor strike planning. Paul -- still flash-blinded by a photographer -- found that his SNJ/A6M was ready to fly long before he reached the bow, so he pulled off a handful of throttle. But he overdid it and his plane staggered off the deck, settling dangerously low before Paul recovered airspeed.
Today he laughs, "Back at North Island, Genda came up to me and gave me a big hug, saying 'That was exactly the way it looked!'"
Paul's last cockpit assignment was CAG-3 in Saratoga (CVA-60) beginning in January 1971. As Battleaxe -- which he regards as the best callsign of all -- he flew F-4s and A-7s during the Med cruise while logging plenty of six-hour hops in the right seat of S-2s.
"Super Sara" was selected to introduce the CV concept, with ASW squadrons sharing deck and hangar space with the VF, VA and cats and dogs. It made for a frantic period, especially with Saratoga's engine room casualty. Paul launched no fewer than 53 birds in "flanchor" ops at Athens, despite "a big port list . . . we were ashore for 30 days, with airplanes spread all over the damn Mediterranean."
A stint as CO of NAS Cecil Field was highlighted by his unannounced appearance at a base air show as a wing walker on performer Joe Hughes's modified Stearman.
From there, CAPT Gillcrist went to CinCLantFleet as J-3, "The best job in the Navy." The triple-hat position (Atlantic Command, CLF and SACLant) ruined the health of Paul's predecessor and successor, but he thrived under his bosses Ike Kidd and Harry Train.
Selected for flag, Paul became ComFit at Miramar and made sure that his JOs saw a lot of him. The high point of that tour was becoming the first flag officer to trap in a Tomcat. It happened on Kitty Hawk (CV-63) at age 51, and was, he relates, "a real kick in the ass!"
Subsequently Gator returned to the Pentagon to serve as Assistant DCNO(Air) in the political swamps of Washington. Even there, however, he managed to log some quality stick time. He flew the prototype Hornet, Northrop's YF-17, in 1980, and the same company's sensational F-20 in 1984, as well as the Air Force's F-15 Eagle and three different models of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.
At his retirement in 1985, Paul Gillcrist had spent 33 years in the Navy, including 27 years in the cockpit. He logged some 6,000 hours in 71 aircraft types with 962 traps aboard no fewer than 16 carriers.
Accepting an offer from Northrop, Paul ran the F-20 requirements desk, with emphasis on the adversary role. Sadly, the company's $1.2 billion program never got its gear in the well despite the Tigershark's demonstrated suitability.
Since his no-kidding retirement in 1990, Paul has embarked on yet another career. With a seabag full of terrific stories, he has written two memoirs ("Feet Wet" and "Vulture's Row"), plus histories of his most cherished birds, the F-8 Crusader and F-14 Tomcat. All have received critical acclaim.
But unsatisfied with four books, Paul has turned to screen writing, producing two scripts for the "JAG" television series. Other projects include a feature film script called "Eagle in the Sky" and a TV documentary on LSOs. In his "spare time," he teaches creative writing to gifted 7th and 8th graders.
Whether as Battleaxe or Gator, Paul Gillcrist is still pushing his limits, finding new challenges and meeting them head-on.
Ed. Note: This article marks author Barrett Tillman's 100th article for The Hook.