Gil Erb was one of the men who flew the Navy's first jet, the first carrier qualified jet, the first supersonic carrier qualified jet and the first Mach 2 carrier qualified jet. He participated in two combat tours in Korea and then became a test pilot. He flew 43 different Navy aircraft and suffered a dozen near death experiences. His humorous as well as tragic life episodes are all chronicled in this biography. Gil has, over the three year course of our interviews, enthusiastically opened up about his flying days. The thrilling training, combat and test piloting episodes are interspersed with the humorous after-hours tales that seem to come with the fighter jock turf. The chapters include anecdotes from some of the seven original astronauts such as Alan Shepherd, Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra; as well as Gil meeting Chuck Yeager and spending a day with Charles Lindbergh. Despite the name dropping, the author has tried to tell an honest "every man's" story of what it was like to become one of the first pilots to fly jets on and off aircraft carriers and just how brave these men really were. The author also believes he has included in Gil's biography a little of how this kind of life typically affects a family. Dr. Peter Bartis of the Library of Congress' Veteran's History Project said the biography was "a beautifully documented history of Commander Erb." Dr. Dave Winkler of the Naval Historical Foundation has accepted the manuscript for inclusion in the Naval History and Heritage Command Archives and is forwarding it to several other Navy museums/libraries. Paul Gillcrist, the author of "Feet Wet", "Vulture's Row", and several other naval aviation novels said about the manuscript, "Once I started, I couldn't put it down. Congratulations! You have written a wonderful story."

Where Do We Get Such Men

The Story of One Such ManBy Steven Craig Reynolds

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Steven Craig Reynolds
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-9298-3

Contents

In the Beginning When the Sky was First Calling..........................1Army Days as a Pre-Aviation Cadet........................................16Slats and the Rat in the Can.............................................20Bathing Beauty Bobby Brown and a Hectic Three Weeks......................27Getting His Wings........................................................34Jet Training.............................................................42First Born...............................................................47A "Nugget's" First Near-Fatal Carrier Experience.........................49Inverted in the Dark.....................................................52Oscar's Feet.............................................................62What am I Doing Here?....................................................65Collision! Collision! Collision!.........................................77The Warrior's Humanity...................................................80Scott, the Architect, is Born in a Hurry.................................86They Made Valley Tremble.................................................89Why Modern Aircraft Carriers Have Angled Decks...........................94Flat-Hatting Over Korea..................................................99Gil and Bobby Get Degrees................................................112High Water Pants.........................................................117Your Average Life Saving Judgment........................................122The "Romance" of Test Piloting...........................................127The Breaks of Naval Air..................................................131A CDO's Worst Duty Weekend...............................................141Excitement! Excitement! We're Moving to Florida!.........................147Exhilaration.............................................................162Second Lieutenant Hemmingway.............................................170Alone in the Water.......................................................181Gil Wrecks Doctor's Porsche; Doctor Saves Gil's Life.....................188Life at the Naval Academy................................................196How One Becomes a Developer..............................................207The Bitch Kitty..........................................................221Farewell, My Love........................................................231One More (Hopefully Last) Near Miss......................................235Author's Note............................................................238

Chapter One

In the Beginning When the Sky was First Calling

Charles Gilbert "Gil" Erb came into the world on October 29, 1926 in the city hospital of Santa Cruz, California. He was an intelligent and precocious child unafraid to take a risk whether physical or life altering. Gil's formative years were spent moving back and forth between California and Utah where he skipped a couple of grades which ended up making him always the youngest in his classes and therefore not quite as attractive to the older set as he wanted to be. This catalyst only served to make him try that much harder to "make the grade". The loss of his father at an early age forced a certain self reliance and independence that he carried through his life.

Gil's father, Charles Meredith Erb, was born about 1888 and raised in Harrisville, Pennsylvania. His first wife was a lady named Ada and with her he had two sons, Carl and Ralph. Gil doesn't know why, but for some reason his father left Ada and the two boys in Pennsylvania and moved to Texas. It could possibly have been for financial reasons as the Depression had hit earlier and harder in some regions of the country. The half-brothers were approximately five years older than Gil. He met them once when they came to see their father in Salt Lake City. It was the only time he ever met them and he remembers it as a pleasant enough visit.

When "Charlie", Gil's father, came to Texas he worked at whatever he could but somehow managed to never really work for anyone else. He had some mechanical savvy and was also somewhat of an entrepreneur. At one time he was charged with keeping the engine in tune on the first automobile to go over 100 mph. This car was driven by none other than the famous Barney Oldfield.

Charlie, working as an independent wildcatter, learned how to drill deep wells for oil. This is where he learned the trade that turned out to be his last, and most economically rewarding, entrepreneurial venture.

Charlie ended up in Utah around 1922 where he met but, apparently never married, Novella Turnbow, Gil's mother. Since Charlie had never divorced Ada, Gil is sure either he's a bastard child or his Dad was a bigamist. It was Novella's practice to save every picture and document having to do with the family's life. No marriage certificate could ever be found.

Charlie and Novella moved to Seacliff Park, California, near Santa Cruz, in 1923 where they teamed up with Bert and Blanche Wible. Bert had inherited 20 acres of artichoke fields and, since Bert was a fair carpenter but terrible farmer, the two relatively young entrepreneurs decided to build houses on this land. The first two houses were built next door to each other, one for the Erbs and one for the Wibles. Evidently they did a good job on these houses as it led the bank to loan the young men enough money to build more. Charlie and Bert were now developers.

While the houses were being developed, so was Gil. It is a tribute to either Gil's father's sense of humor or his enduring friendship with the next door neighbor Bert Wible that gave Gil his name. Bert's full name was Gilbert. Charlie asked Novella if he could use Gilbert as his son's middle name and she said yes. That's how our hero got his Charles Gilbert "Gil" Erb moniker. Gil laughs when he tells this story and says he got the name Gilbert because he looked more like Bert than Charlie. Gil remembers the Seacliff Park area quite well and describes it as follows: "The artichoke bushes featured bright purple blossoms surrounded by vicious fiber spikes. The symmetry of each plant, together with its regimental layout, gave the impression of a cemetery for green aliens. These 'cemeteries' were located on the California coast near a beach settlement called Seacliff Park. Seacliff boasted a three-mile stretch of pure white linen sand backed by a 100 foot high cliff. This made it the most secluded and desirable beach between Santa Cruz and Monterey. The view from the sea rivaled the white cliffs of Dover, topped with purple blooms."

There was an old hermit named Paul living in a cave down by one end of the beach. He had been there longer than any of the other locals and was considered quite mad. He built a platform in front of his cave and subsisted on artichokes he could filch and seafood he could catch. Gil thought the hermit was probably "healthy in body if not in mind." Old Paul also owned a shotgun and would bring it out when the weekend beachgoers would get too close to his digs. The sheriff would then come around and admonish him but no single incident ever took on a serious tone. After Charlie and Bert's housing development was well underway word got to them that Paul, the hermit, was planning on firebombing the development for the intrusion on his privacy. Charlie and Bert called the sheriff who, with his deputy, headed to old Paul's end of the beach.

Sheriff Trafton and his deputy, Dick Rountree, crept cautiously up the path to Paul's platform. Paul was ready with his shotgun in one hand and a .38 in the other. Paul fired first. Gil, who was about five years old at the time, was digging for sand crabs and had six or seven captured in a saltwater pool when he and his Mom heard the shots. They looked up the cliff and saw several men running up the steep path to the hermit's cave. When the dust settled, Paul had six bullet holes in his body and was covered with blood. He was quite dead. The sheriff had blood gushing out of his chest and died within minutes. The deputy had a bullet hole through his neck and would die on the way to the hospital. On his platform Paul had the makings of 13 firebombs.

The number of firebombs is significant in that Charlie and Bert had 11 contracts, and were in the process of building 11 homes in addition to their two. When the news of the tragedy got out, all 11 contracts fell through and "Artichoke Acres" was out of business. The bank allowed them to finish those 11 houses which were then sold at auction for a fraction of what they were worth.

Charlie and Bert didn't give up being entrepreneurs though; they bought a seagoing oil tanker.

Due to the steel shortage brought on by the World War I, the government contracted with San Francisco Shipbuilding to build an oil tanker hull out of reinforced concrete. Gil says, "This sounds like trying to float a cinder block but, as any naval engineer will tell you, if a ship displaces more water than it weighs, it will float. And it did." The SS Palo Alto was completed and launched in 1920; but the war was over and it was deemed impractical to put the ship in service. It couldn't be sold as scrap since the hull was concrete. The Palo Alto became a burden to the shipyard. A decision was made to tow it out to sea and sink it. Charlie and Bert heard about this and contacted Mr. Elroy Connors, the Shipyard Superintendent. They pitched the idea of towing the ship to Seacliff Park, resting it on the bottom, building a pier to it and creating an amusement park. Mr. Connors liked the idea and had the ship towed to Seacliff Park at the expense of the shipyard just to be rid of it.

The duo then went looking for backers. Charlie's contacts back in oil well and gambling country, better known as Nevada, proved more than adequate. The problem was these backers found other backers for Charlie and Bert that were unknown to them. Charlie's friend Al Tamblin, the Mayor of Ely, Nevada got in touch with Stan Evans, part owner of the Last Frontier Casino in Las Vegas and Jim Lockhart, owner of the Calvada Investment Company. They had more in mind than just an amusement park. Charlie and Bert didn't catch on until the wheels of progress were spinning out of their control.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in January 1930 the SS Palo Alto was towed stern first to within 200 feet of the beach. The seacocks were opened and she settled nicely to the bottom. The conversion to ballrooms, dance floors, restaurants, arcades and staterooms was nearly complete when Bert was approached by Stan Evans to convert the vacant engine room into a gambling casino. Bert was appalled and quit the project. Charlie felt he was in too deep to quit. Although he and Bert were not threatened by Stan it was assumed there may be dire consequences if this project didn't proceed. Charlie decided to go along and the Concrete Casino was born.

Charlie ran the amusement park portion of the ship and Stan ran the casino. Big Bands played there and the Concrete Casino was a huge success. Then Stan disagreed with his business acquaintances in Las Vegas about whether he was skimming profits and got himself killed. After some serious violent debate, Ed Gillette, one of the Last Frontier's managers was sent to oversee the gambling portion of the ship. Ed and Charlie got along fine. Everything was coming up roses until December of 1931. A sudden terrible storm caused the Concrete Casino to be abandoned just before she broke in half. She's still there today. Deteriorated to the point that no one is allowed aboard her now, she sits as a reminder of one of the biggest things to hit California since the gold rush. The pier has been rebuilt many times and is still a good place to fish.

The Erb family stayed put during the housing development/ Concrete Casino period which got Gil through the first grade. Then the moving started. Gil's second grade was spent in San Jose, California where Novella, for some inexplicable reason known only to mothers, insisted that young Gil take tap-dancing lessons. You must assume she meant well but Gil hated it. Novella was one of those Moms who could kill you with "smotherly" love.

It was also in San Jose where Charlie Erb was part of a crowd that lynched two men who kidnapped and killed the son of the owner of Hart's Department store. It was a different time and there were fewer lawyers.

They were only in San Jose for about a year when the Erbs moved to Mt. Pleasant, a typical small town in southern Utah. Charlie had made a deal with a company back in San Jose called Campbell and Budlong that manufactured heavy duty water pumps. Charlie was going to Utah to sell their pumps but, in the mean time, also came up with the idea to use his deep well oil drilling experience to invent a drivable deep drilling machine. He then actually drove the new "roadable" deep well drilling machine to Utah. The country was in a drought in the early thirties and Utah was very hard hit. Charlie's wells went hundreds of feet deep and produced copious amounts of water. As the water flowed so did the money and Charlie saved many farmers from going broke.

While Charlie was making a small fortune, Gil started the fourth grade. They lived in a boarding house along with Gil's teacher, Miss Fontella Langlois. Gil was learning more than ABCs while in the Mt. Pleasant boarding house. It was located next door to Ursenbach's Funeral Home. Gil played with young Deena Ursenbach and they discovered the difference between men and women in the mortuary.

Miss Langlois must have given little Gil special attention as he was allowed to skip the fifth grade with the family's next move to Salt Lake City.

It was when they were living in Salt Lake City that Gil experienced the first of about a dozen near death experiences he would live through during his exciting existence on or over this planet. He was spending his summers on a dairy farm in Beaver City, Utah with Novella's relatives, John and Geneve Joseph. John and Geneve had four daughters; Helen, Elaine, Bonnie Lou and Ruth. Gil had a "cousin" crush on Bonnie Lou. Bonnie Lou and Gil were the same age and played together having the fun and adventures youngsters do during summer's break from school.

During Gil's second summer there he started showing off for Bonnie Lou by climbing up a tree in the old pig pen. To Gil's shock and dismay, the branch he was on broke and gravity took over. As misfortune would have it, he landed on a spike of the stump from a tree that had been broken during a windstorm. The wooden spike penetrated his left hip, hit the hipbone and came out through his waist. This spike was about as thick as his thumb on the pointy end where it came through. He wasn't satisfied with lying there impaled by this spike of a tree stump and began to struggle. This didn't help the situation at all so Bonnie went screaming up to the farmhouse and pretty soon Uncle John ran out and tried to lift Gil off the spike which was about two feet long. He couldn't budge him without serious pain and blood loss so Uncle John ran to the woodpile, got his axe and chopped the stick off the stump and carried Gil into the house.

The local country Doc's nurse said over the phone that she would attempt to roust him out of Slapsie Maxie's Bar and Grill next door and they should get to the office as quick as possible. The slightly inebriated Doc pulled the stick out and did his best to clean out the hole left behind. Gil went back to Salt Lake City to recover. Several days later it became apparent that his sickingly stinking wound had become infected. The wound had to be reopened, cleaned and a drainage tube inserted. His extremely high fever made it touch and go for a few days but Gil did manage to recover. The recuperating powers of youth be thanked. Antibiotics weren't readily available yet.

This same lack of antibiotics led to the first tragedy of Gil's young life. Gil's Dad, Charlie, had become ill with flu like symptoms and an incredibly sore throat. One of Charlie's men drove him to a doctor in Saint George, Utah near where one of his crews was currently drilling. At this time his business had grown to three drilling crews in southern Utah. Dr. McGregor, who had previously performed a tonsillectomy on Charlie, was one of the only living legal bigamists left in the state. When Utah became a state, bigamy was outlawed, but if you already had two or more wives, you could keep them. Dr. McGregor had two identical houses next door to each other. They say the wives were friendly but didn't associate much. The Doc spent his time equally between the two houses. The old Doc must have had too many worries from too many wives as he preformed a less than sterile job on Charlie's tonsils and this resulted in an infection developing at the base of Charlie's brain. Charlie began having seizures and would lapse into what could best be described as a state of shock. The family had to move back to San Jose so they could be near the medical treatment Charlie needed in San Francisco. In spite of all medical attempts, at the end of six months Charlie succumbed. The medical treatments had taken every nickel the family had. Gil was 12 years old.

It was during the two month period after the funeral in San Jose where Gil had another near death experience. He had lost his father and was at a loss to figure where life would lead him now. Maybe he went into the wrong end of the swimming pool on purpose. To this day Gil can't tell you. He jumped into what he thought was the shallow end of Roosevelt Jr. High School swimming pool only to discover it was the deep end. Gil couldn't swim. He was lying on the bottom in the deep end semi-resolved to his fate when an alert young boy pulled him to the surface. The lifeguards worked on resuscitating Gil for several minutes until he came around. Spencer Snapp, Gil's rescuer was a year older, but in the same grade. Gil felt "the Snapper" had given him new life and new hope. They became best friends in high school, went separate ways during WWII, got back together in college and pledged the same fraternity. They kept in touch over the years and have remained the best of friends throughout their lives.

A year or two after Snap had pulled Gil out of the pool they had another water-related adventure. School was out for the summer and both boys had paper routes in the morning. This left their afternoons free to entertain themselves in any manner they saw fit. City Creek meandered about on the outskirts of San Jose and naturally they found the deepest, widest spot to go skinny dipping. Several other kids had found the spot also and it was almost crowded sometimes. They had a rope tied to an overhanging tree and it was great fun to swing out over the swimming hole and drop into the cool, refreshing water on a hot summer day.

(Continues...)

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