In this article:
Roger Ball!
He was the second of two children and born on 25 January 1940 in Shandon Baptist Hospital in Columbia South Carolina. He, in every way, gave the appearance of a normal, healthy, well-developed kid of average height, slender but not skinny. History would show that he was anything but normal.
His name was John Monroe Smith, and “Roger Ball!” is his story—a tale that should be told. It intertwines the true, firsthand accounts and experiences of a fighter pilot with the significant developments in the fighter community and historical events in which Captain John Monroe Smith, USN, call sign “Hawk” was a part. Finally, it speaks to the men who laid their careers and sometimes their very lives on the line for their shipmates and their country.
Hawk was a legend in the fighter community. During his thirty-year career, he forged a reputation as a skilled and lethal aviator in the air-to-air combat arena, a natural tactician, and consummate leader. To many, he was one of the most essential pathfinders in the modernization of the naval air war arts.
He was just a man, but his story, his life adventure, is a high-fidelity history of personal achievements for naval tactical aviation, devotion to a cause, and service to his nation. It was a time during and shortly after the Vietnam conflict that America became ideologically divided. The military was disillusioned with the intrusion of nonwarriors in the White House over the conduct of the war, and tactical aviation of all the services was struggling to catch up to the realities of the war’s hard lessons. It was a time when the Navy needed leaders and tenacious thinkers to set things right again. It was Hawk’s time!
In the Hot Seat
Hawk and Buckshot were reveling in the last week of their three-week adventure in the land of wooden shoes and Tulips – Netherlands and just when Hawk believed nothing could make life any better, he received a telegram from Cobra: TO LIEUTENANT COMMANDER JOHN MONROE SMITH. STOP SCREENED AND SELECTED FOR COMMAND; STOP WILL RELIEVE LIEUTENANT COMMANDER RULIFFSON DECEMBER 1976; STOP.
CONGRATULATIONS HAWK. STOP
COBRA SENDS. STOP.
Hawk first suspected that their hosts were involved in a poorly timed hoax. The Dutch pilots, just like their U.S. counterparts, sometimes had an overactive sense of humor and sometimes, just like their counterparts, they devised mischievous pranks. But a check with all the likely suspects failed to discover any hint of trickery. Buckshot acknowledged the cunning of the ruse but knew of no conspiracy. The only plausible explanation was that the telegram was genuine.
Interestingly, that was the last explanation Hawk considered. He had no idea he was even being considered for command. The XO had never fleeted up to CO at TOPGUN before and there was no hint that things would be different this time.
A tenuous phone call to the TOPGUN duty office confirmed what he avoided even considering; he had been screened for command and selected for Commanding Officer, Navy Fighter Weapons School. Hawk’s change of command was scheduled for mid-December 1976.
Assuming Command
The rest of the detachment and the return trip from Amsterdam was mostly a blur. Hawk didn’t let the euphoria of the surprise interfere with the job they had to do, but try as he might, the thought of command never strayed far from his mind.
Selection for command bestows upon an officer special official authority and certain legal responsibilities. It acknowledges special trust and confidence that senior leadership place in that officer. Inherent in that recognition is a belief that the officer has an exceptional capacity for leadership.
Command opportunity was not among the many issues weighed when Hawk made his decision to join the Navy in 1963. Hawk heard the call of adventure, felt a stirring to serve his country, and was lured by the thrill of naval aviation. A chance to command his own squadron never entered into the
calculus.
But the primary requisite for command, that single most important element in exercising successful command, had been evolving and gestating within Hawk for years—leadership. Hawk had a natural instinct to lead. Not for the selfish or prurient reward of being called a leader but because he had an affinity for people and seemed to be on an eternal quest to accomplish something. It was still a bit of a puzzlement to Hawk why the Bureau took the unprecedented step of promoting him to the commanding officer position.
For as long as TOPGUN had been in existence, the commanding officer had been ordered into the position directly. What Hawk did not know was that many senior officers in the fighter community believed that the best man for the position was already in the squadron—the executive officer.
Operation “Mongoose:” TOPGUN soft-wing A-4E Mongooses
Advancing Hawk would put a man well known for shepherding over his people and completing the tough missions into a position where he could do what he did best—lead.
At the behest of key members within the fighter community, Commander Ruliffson wrote a special fitness report and submitted it to the annual command screen board which met in late fall. The president of the board, Captain Smoke Wilson, ensured that it received a fair look. The rest was history. On 13 December 1976, at a ceremony on the NAS Miramar parade ground, Lieutenant Commander Cobra Ruliffson passed responsibility for seventy enlisted personnel, eleven officers, twelve aircraft, a multi-million-dollar budget, and the most treasured brain trust in the navy to Lieutenant Commander John Hawk Smith, the sixth commanding officer of the Navy Fighter Weapons School.
It was a whirlwind event. He had little time to prepare before the ceremony and no time to savor the accomplishment after. He had a thirteen-year list of things he wanted to do, changes he felt were necessary in the interest of the fighter community, and no time to waste.
One of the first projects on Hawk’s to-do list was Operation Mongoose. This entailed turning TOPGUN’s four hard-wing A-4E Mongooses into soft-wing Mongooses by unbolting the slats.
Hawk wrote a Personal For message to his boss, Rear Admiral Eugene Tissot, Commander, Fighter and Airborne Early Warning Wing, Pacific, also known as Fighter Wing. In it Hawk explained, “The A-4, with the slats bolted up represents no known threat in the world today. With the introduction of the Block 90 F-14A, our A-4s are unable to engage them effectively in slow-speed simulated combat. This alone has reduced both our credibility and the level of realistic training we provide.”
Tomcat Versus Mongoose
Hawk cleverly stated in the last paragraph that, “… unless otherwise directed, NFWS intends to unbolt the slats and return them to original manufacturer’s design specifications.” Hawk wasted no time waiting for a directive he believed would never come. About the same time the admiral’s staff was trying to decide on an appropriate response, TOPGUN maintenance had removed the bolts, verified proper operation of the slats, and painted over the red section of the leading edges of the wing to match the camouflage pattern of the rest of the airframe. Unbolting the slats might have appeared to be a small executive decision, but it caused an enormous resurgence of interest in flying the Mongoose. With the slats now operating, the soft-wing Mongooses were a force to be reckoned with.
Shortly after the bolts came out, Hawk was scheduled against VF-124, the F-14 RAG, in a dissimilar air combat training sortie two-versus-one: two F-14s against Hawk’s Mongoose.
Lieutenant Commander Mike “Mauler” Gunther was the instructor pilot of the F-14 section. Mauler was scheduled to fly with a student RIO in the rear cockpit and lead a second F-14 flown by “Shifty,” a student pilot.
Mauler was the kind of character most people imagined when they conjured up an image of the standard fighter pilot. He was five feet eight inches tall, boisterous, somewhat abrasive, opinionated, and built like a wrecking ball. He had been a TOPGUN instructor, but the experience hadn’t done much to knock off the rough edges. Social graces aside, the call sign “Mauler” was awarded to him for a reason. He was held in high esteem as a magnificent airborne, bar room brawler, a spectacular flight leader, and one of those fearless combat leaders nuggets naturally flock to when the shooting starts.
Mauler
Mauler was assigned to TOPGUN during the days of the fixed-slat Mongoose and was unaware that Hawk had made the slats operational again; Mauler briefed the flight. It was a standard RAG air combat maneuvering training sortie. During the brief, Mauler made several overtures that the Mongoose was the designated piñata for the Tomcats. He referred to the large performance disparities between the Block 90 Tomcat, and the Mongoose and suggested that even if the slats weren’t bolted up, the outcome of the engagements would not change appreciably.
Hawk started to set the “slat” record straight several times, but Mauler’s bombastic assuredness convinced Hawk to keep the news to himself.
Hawk manned up and checked in on their base freq. Mauler explained that they’d run into a small problem and would be a little late departing. Hawk took off well ahead of the Tomcats and casually made his way into the training area southwest of Miramar. He climbed to thirty-five thousand feet; he wanted to meet the fighters at high altitude. The Tomcats would have no trouble getting to thirty-five thousand feet, but when they did, they would be short on airspeed.
Hawk arrived at the southernmost boundary of the operating area just as Mauler’s flight checked in on the operating frequency. Both fighters completed their combat checks and by the time they were on the northern station, they were ready for a vector.
Fight’s on!
“Fight’s on!” the controller announced. “The bogey is one-seven-two degrees at thirty-two miles.”
Hawk punched the clock just as Mauler’s RIO transmitted, “Radar contact. Judy!” “Judy” indicated to the controller that the fighters had a radar picture and that no further radar information from the controller was needed. That made it a bit more difficult for Hawk who had no radar and relied on the radar calls to determine range and reciprocal bearing. Hawk would use instead the “auto direction finding” (ADF) mode of the backup radio.
Just as the fighters keyed the mike to transmit, Hawk rotated the function knob to the ADF position. The number one needle on the compass card indicator rotated to the source of the transmission. Hawk had two ADF hits showing the fighters bearing 352 degrees from his position. Determining range was somewhat rudimentary. At a nominal closing rate of fifteen miles per minute, Hawk would be a mile closer to the Tomcats every four seconds. In all, he had less than two minutes until he merged with the fighters.
TOPGUN A-4E Mongoose a small, dark speck against a dark blue background
A milky-white haze layer hovered just above the ocean. Having just departed Miramar Hawk reckoned the fighters were probably low and climbing up. If that were the case, they would be backlit by the haze layer below. Conversely, the A-4 would appear as a small, dark speck against a dark blue background. This was precisely the wrong place for the fighters to be and precisely where Hawk hoped Mauler and his section would appear.
Hawk turned slightly to the northeast. This would give the fighters more aspect angle and make the Scooter a bit larger to the eye and therefore slightly easier to see, but it would also put the threat sector on one side of the nose and vastly reduce the area Hawk needed to scan.
Another transmission, Hawk flipped the rotator switch to the ADF position. The needle swung to 345 degrees. Hawk scanned that section of sky and almost immediately had a tally on one fighter at nearly ten miles, just as he had hoped, low on the horizon. His search pattern collapsed around that fighter. He was rewarded with the sighting of the second F-14 two miles west of the first and stepped down about three thousand feet—that had to be Shifty, the wingman. It was important to know which was Shifty and which was Mauler. It was important because Hawk wanted to engage and kill the high threat first—Mauler. If he gave Mauler any quarter, any time to maneuver, Hawk would be dog-meat.
Photo credit: U.S. Navy
