11 minute read
My Father, the Navy’s First Helicopter Pilot
By RADM Peter Booth, USN (Ret.)
My father, Tommy Booth, was the number one hero of my life. He was also the Navy’s first helicopter pilot. On the NHA Website you can find a detailed biography of his career as a Naval Officer and Aviator. However, I want to fill in the blanks. For, like most of us, each line of a biography or entry in a logbook leads us to many sidebars of our lives.
Dad’s folks emigrated to America from England in the late 1800s and worked in the woolen mills of New Hampshire. His father went to dental school in Philadelphia and set up practice near his parents in the small river town of Penacook, New Hampshire.
Dad did well in his studies. He was accepted to the Naval Academy, based 100% on competitive exams, and graduated very high in his class wherein only half the class was commissioned in 1931 due to the depression of 1929. In his second-class year, he met my Mom, Peggy, a high school senior from a girl’s academy in Baltimore, on a blind date at the Academy. They married in 1933. Shortly after, Dad was designated a Naval Aviator and assigned to a battleship on the west coast. Here’s the problem they faced: Mom was a senior at Wells College in upstate New York with only two months to go until her graduation, but Dad had orders in hand. Love won, and off they went, heading for the sunsets, arm in arm. Fourteen months later, I came along.
After a short sea tour on a cruiser, Dad spent about one year training to fly in Pensacola where he accumulated approximately 340 flights in three types of aircraft and about the same number of hours. Scanning his logbook, there were numerous days when he would fly five hops, but the time airborne was about fifteen minutes each. Interestingly, for the past 35 years, I have lived only five minutes from the front gate of NAS Pensacola and have visited several times a week, jogging, playing racquetball, and, more recently, visiting my wife’s grave on board the base. All the brick hangars and most of the seaplane ramps are still there, visible reminders of my Dad and the early days of Naval Aviation. This also serves as a reminder of the wonderful marriage my parents shared. With no cellphones and text messages, relying only on the mail from the time of their meeting at the Academy to getting his wings of gold (about three years), Mom and Dad somehow managed to grow the flame. How did they do it?
After this, Dad was ordered to a squadron at Naval Air Station North Island that provided float planes to battleships and fighter planes to carriers. His logbooks are full of many flights during these two years with no long deployments. Here he is with his new family alongside his F4B fighter, LTJG Booth stenciled just below the cockpit. The family, with the addition of my sister, Scottie, then went to Panama where he and many of his classmates transitioned to a twin-engine seaplane patrolling the Panama Canal. During this time, my Mom took lots of home movies documenting laughing with new couples enjoying life and becoming lifelong friends.
In 1937, Dad was selected for three years of postgraduate school in aeronautical engineering, first at the Naval Academy and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his Master’s degree. With war clouds looming in Europe, he was ordered to Fighting Four, a F4F fighter squadron of twenty fighters stationed in Norfolk, VA flying off the old USS Ranger. Here’s Dad, the CO of the squadron at age 33 and a Lieutenant Commander, in the top center, getting ready for a predawn launch with his Lieutenant XO at his side. During this time, we lived in the Larchmont apartments, and I recall a raucous squadron party jammed in with lots of cold beer. On this occasion, the beer was provided by a pilot who recently landed wheels up who had to buy the beer. It was about this time that I began to learn about my Dad and Mom. The three of us kids were brought up to be respectful, don’t put arms on tables, clear the table, and help with the dishes. All of this was led, of course, by my Dad. One memory, when the squadron was ashore in early 1941, was seeing twenty planes in two V formations flying low overhead the city of Norfolk for all to see. Shortly after this, Dad was awarded the Navy Cross for, “Extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of Fighting Squadron Four during the assault on French Morocco, November 1942.”
Dad then went to the new test center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River and was assigned as the head of the Flight Test Division. Here he was responsible for evaluating all Navy fighters, including the first jet, demonstrating the captured Japanese Zero around the country, and delivering the Navy’s first helicopter thereby making him the Navy’s first helo pilot. During this time, we lived in an old summer house right on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay sleeping year round in sleeping bags on the porch. One cold night, Charles Lindbergh was visiting and came out to chat with us. In retrospect, I wish now I had the foresight to have asked Dad about this and many other aspects of his life. In the evenings, my Mom and Dad would play bridge, and later, Dad would softly play Moonlight Sonata on his baby grand piano (one of his favorites). Those two years were a fast-moving mosaic of many moving parts, thoughtful decisions, and trying for a normal family life during the wartime years. Leaving Pax and the piano for the junk heap (it had too many moves), off we went to Coronado where Dad was assigned to a carrier group working up for the planned invasion of Japan. As he was stationed in Hawaii, Mom was up to her elbows in a big house, not much money, and writing letters to and fro mostly daily. After some twelve years of marriage, the war over, three kids, lots of moves, scrimping at times, off we went to shore duty in Washington, D.C., with Dad, deep into many aspects of Naval Aviation, was fighting for the carriers, for the dollars, and, in stark reality, the future of Naval Aviation.
In Washington, we lived in a two-story modest triplex just off Wisconsin Avenue. Dad would go off to work in the Navy’s headquarters downtown, usually carpooling. We had a green Dodge four-door fluid drive sedan, replacing the old 1938 Buick which gave up the ghost on the trip from Coronado near Yellowstone. In the evenings, we would most always sit at the dining room table for a full meal with Dad and Mom at either end. Us kids were expected to mind our manners, clean our plates, drink our milk, clear the table, and do the dishes. I do remember Dad working with me on his slide rule and figuring out the stresses on a bridge, attempting to make me understand logarithms and plane geometry and getting a bit upset when I did not. On many Saturdays, off we would go for a picnic. On Sundays, we all went to church at St. Albans followed by an afternoon big meal and cereal for dinner. Most of these years, I had a paper route delivering the Washington Post very early in the morning. Two points: Mom was always up to fix me breakfast, and, when it was snowing, or raining, Dad would drive me. These four years, deep down, were much the same as most families at the time: not too many frills, hard-working, taking care of the family, setting the standards, yes ma’am, no sir, and enjoying a normal late 1940s lifestyle.
In later years, as a midshipman, I flew with Dad off and on for around thirty or so flights while at Pax and later in Hawaii while he was still a Captain. He was a consummate aviator and always totally in control and it was fun to fly together. How I wish that I could chat with him now and recall those many flights.
Dad continued to move up the Navy ranks. As a Captain, he commanded a large composite squadron in Atlantic City, N.J. which supplied all-weather fighters, both jet and the F4U Corsair to the Navy’s many aircraft carriers. I worked both summers (digging ditches) ostensibly to help defray the cost of my schooling but really to take flying lessons with the wife of one of his many pilots in her airplane. Dad continued on a fast track with two years as Director of Electronic Test at Pax, a student at the National War College (his thesis: A Christian Muslim Rapprochement), command of an escort carrier, and, eventually, the first CO of the super carrier USS Ranger. Here’s a quote from a portion of Dad’s remarks at this August commissioning of the fourth of the super carriers, “She has been built, and she rides under us today, for great purpose - to help protect the United States, in war and along and across the seas if necessary, and to be, wherever she sails, an expression to all of the dignity and purpose of our nation.”
As a Rear Admiral, he spent two years as the head of Naval Research and Development. A photo, taken while I was in postgraduate school in Palo Alto, tells a tough story as Dad had just visited the nearby Lawrence Livermore Labs in 1964. There he was briefed on the massive buildup of nuclear weapons for the carriers, Army, and Air Force. there he is holding and proudly smiling with my two daughters, Laurie and Renee, as a normal, happy grandfather. This photo, with his family nearby, epitomizes their closeness. Over the years as he, Mom, and the three kids moved, we would often visit the low country to see family. He and Mom would climb into his pipe smoke filled, old four-door Volvo and go for a drive, and spend a few days together, talking about whatever. He had a workshop in his garage and built a magnificent grandmother clock along with nurturing bonsai plants. Lots of travel to faraway lands, many trips to see the family, deeply involved in their church, weekly happy hours with friends, and golfing occupied his time. How I wish now, I would have gone one-on-one with him, kept notes, and asked him about all sorts of things. Why the Naval Academy? Why aviation? What about religion, world events, politics, growing up memories, early years with Mom, flying the helo, jet, and Zero at Pax long ago, and his postgraduate experience at MIT? Wish, wish, wish.
When I pause, and look back, one thought springs forth. The family! For the many years of Mom and Dad’s marriage, they were two peas in a pod and joined together for life. The tough times, joyful times, and happy stretches make a family history spark with life. Enmeshed in their lives was the constant happiness fostered by their extended family, no matter the distance. Phone calls were few but many letters and cards were the norm back then.
My Dad was universally admired throughout his life. Never one to brag, to embellish, to parse, he was enormously respected by his many friends, his seniors, and the individuals he commanded or with whom he interacted. And, always, it was his country, his Navy and his family that stood the test of time. He is buried in the Columbarium at the Naval Academy with my Mom; two Americans who made a positive difference in the world.
A final snippet from Captain Wendy Lawrence, Naval Aviator, Helicopter Pilot, and Astronaut: "For the many Navy helicopter pilots who followed in his footsteps, then LCDR Tommy Booth blazed a trail. As the first Navy helicopter pilot to fly in space, it was a distinct privilege to bring VADM Booth’s log book with me on my first space shuttle mission in 1995.”
