Free War of the Whales by Joshua Horwitz

arms and legs. Coral sliced his feet and ankles. It was the kind of work that only a masochist, or a man in flight from his mainland life, could tolerate. If it felt a bit like working on a chain gang, that suited Ken too. He felt guilty for making a mess of his family life and for being an absentee father, as Blue had been.

    While bird banding on Swain’s Island near American Samoa, 1966.

    Then, in August 1966, when his ship was crossing the equator precisely at the international date line, a message came over the ship’s Teletype from Dale Rice: “Sorry, Ken, the draft board rejected your deferral. Report for immediate induction at first US landfall.”
    When he returned to Berkeley, Ken crashed with his half brothers, Howie and Rick. In the year Ken had been at sea, the Bay Area had become the epicenter of the antiwar movement. Flower power was in full blossom. Rick had joined the US Navy reserves in college, and Howie, also 1-A eligible, was moving to Canada to escape the draft. But Ken didn’t want to run away to Canada. He wasn’t antiwar or antimilitary. Rather than waiting to be drafted into the infantry—which seemed to him like a death trap—Ken decided to apply to the same Naval Aviation Corps that the colonel’s son had served in before his fatal crash. Despite the colonel’s scorn and abuse, Ken still wanted his stepfather to think he’ d amounted to something.
    Ken showed up for basic training in Pensacola, Florida, with long, raggedy hair and a beard, looking like an island castaway crossed with a Berkeley hippy. They gave him the standard issue high-and-tight crew cut, then sent him through the
Top Gun
indoc routine: break you down and build you back up to fit the mold. By the seventh day of indoc, he was ready to quit. Then he started to notice that he was doing better than his classmates, who were mostly three or four years younger. The push-up and sit-up drills were nothing compared to what he’ d endured during his year of bird banding. And he could still clock the fastest mile in his squadron.
    In flight training, Ken learned aviation and aeronautics and how to shine his shoes. He grew to appreciate the Navy’s merit system. You learned your shit and did your job, and you got recognition. After 12 weeks, he graduated first in his class.
    Every Navy flyboy worth his salt had to get himself a blonde and a Corvette after being commissioned an officer. Ken had no quarrel with that directive. As a connoisseur of vintage cars, he passed on the Corvette and bought himself a ’57 Mercedes Gullwing. He never loved a car like he loved that one. Blondes were even easier to come by. It seemed that every girl from New Orleans to Tallahassee would show up in Pensacola on the weekends to try to snag a flyboy. Julie Byrd was from Mobile, Alabama. She followed Ken to advanced flight training in Corpus Christi, Texas, and they got married in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was assigned to the air group at the naval base. Julie didn’t want kids, which suited Ken just fine. She was a go-along-get-along kind of girl, a useful quality in a Navy wife.

    Ken’s second wife, Julie, pinning on his naval aviator “wings” after graduation from flight school in Corpus Christi, Texas, August 1968.

    After he completed advanced flight school in the top 1 percent of his class and got his “wings,” Ken submitted his “dream sheet” for his first assignment. He wasn’t keen to pilot bombing runs over Vietnam. His first choice was to fly research aircraft, either as a hurricane hunter or to supply expeditions in Antarctica. His second choice was fixed-wing antisubmarine surveillance.
    So what assignment did he draw? Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, what he considered the most boring flight job in the sky! You take off from a carrier and fly racetrack ovals while the guys back in air traffic control look for bogies on your radar screens. He’ d flown AWACS for a week during flight training, and it