Navy vet Fred Barthe: ‘I’m OK. Check on the pilot’
They were the last plane in the pattern, so low on fuel another go-around would have plunged their aircraft into the Taiwan Strait. The heaving carrier deck of the USS Yorktown was home base and, honestly, the last hope between Fred Barthe’s crew of three and a watery grave.
They came in high and fast. Too high, and too fast. Fred was sitting below the pilot in the radar operator’s cubby hole with only a tiny port hole for visibility. He could see the deck flashing past as the ungainly, single-engine propeller aircraft swooped beyond tail hooks to arrest the landing.
He could hear and feel the nine tons of steel and aluminum of the AD4 Skyraider tearing through the safety net, and through the port hole, Fred could see “The Island,” which is, in effect, the enormous control tower for an aircraft carrier. The aircraft, with a will of its own, was swerving.
“We are going over the side,” the 20-year-old Navy air crew man recalled, vividly as yesterday, the events of nearly 70 years gone by.
At the last possible instant, with the aircraft nose buried in the deck, he heard the “Hot Papa,” an aircraft carrier deck chief getting his hatch open.
“I’m OK. Check on the pilot,” Fred said, clambering out of the up-ended crate. He wanted to kiss the pilot, because they were on the deck, not in the drink.
“It was a combat mission,” Fred remembers. “We were covering evacuation of Nationalist Troops from China in the vicinity of Quemoy.”
Long ago, Cold War tensions got hot, soon after the Korean War. Fred Barthe’s ball cap denotes Korean War service, with silver combat aviation wings.
The man is about more than his hat. And what he told the “Hot Papa” on the Yorktown sums up Fred’s approach to life. Make sure the other guy gets helped.
Spend enough time in community civics and you grasp the reason that unsung heroes are unsung is because they are not singing their own praises. A week or so ago at the Vets4Veterans 12th annual Car and Motorcycle Show in Poncitlan Square, some community volunteers got out the hymn book and sang a little praise for Fred Barthe.
Vets4Veterans President Gerry Rice, on behalf of the outfit, conferred the Richard Trygg Award for faith and fidelity. It’s a big deal, named for one of the organization’s original donors.
If there’s a veteran to help, Barthe, a retired Coast Guard Reserve lieutenant commander, is likely to be there. That he is 89 does not deter him, much. When we met 10 years ago he was volunteer driving a van for Disabled American Veterans. He didn’t consider himself to be a disabled vet, but that’s not accurate. Navy aviation will crash your hearing, even if you don’t crash. Crash landing on an aircraft carrier in a rough sea is trauma defined. In wartime, it is combat trauma.
Fred can be found doing errands for veterans. He volunteers with Honor Flights Kern County, which flies elder veterans to Washington for all expenses paid visits to military memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.
Just this week, Fred is working on getting a 101-year-old veteran aboard the next Honor Flight.
He is always at the Vets4Veterans meeting. He serves on the Coffee4Vets board. He recruits tirelessly for Honor Flights, a cause to which he was devoted.
“We wanted Fred to understand that we really do know, and we really do appreciate everything that he does,” said Megan Hilzendeger, surviving spouse of Tom Hilzendeger who founded the veterans service non-profit.
If Fred were asked if he deserved recognition, he would probably tell you to go check on the pilot, and see if he’s OK.
Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran who covered the Iraq War for the Antelope Valley Press, he serves as Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s appointee on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.