Jim Ruffer

A TRIBUTE TO HEROES
AND
TO THE “RISK TAKERS”
OF AVIATION
Col. (Dr.) James A. Ruffer, MC USAF (Ret.)
Military aviation is dangerous both in times
of peace and war, but the “fair-haired few”
seek their heart’s desire, and they brave the danger;
they always have. Along the way they make history.
I will share some of that remarkable history with
you, as I saw it as a Marine pilot, as a Navy and as
an Air Force flight surgeon.
My father was born in 1921, and took his first
flying lessons at the age of seventeen (Dad served in
the Army Air Forces and in the United States Air
Force). The Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and
Charles Lindbergh were among his heroes. He told
me the story of meeting another one of his heroes,
Howard Hughes, at an air show in the 1930s. The
idea that someday two risk-taking aviators would
fly around the world without refueling would have
gratified my dad. The fact that one of his sons
would stand beside one of those pilots and view the
waving crowd for a few brief moments of history
would have elated him.
My father was a true aviator in both vocation
and spirit. His WWII and Korean War buddies
represented a host of heroes, role models, and risk
takers for my brother, Jack Arden Ruffer and me.
These were men like Airman Bobby Holloway
who leaped from a bullet-riddled helicopter with a
rescued navy pilot, Ensign Ron Eaton, in his arms
or Air Force Captain Wayne Lear who held his
stricken craft steady for the sake of the others until
it became his fate to perish with his aircraft. And
there was Air Force Lieutenant Archie Conners
who died in his P-51 Mustang giving air cover,
to that very event in the Korean War’s deadliest
helicopter rescue mission. These men had not been
spectators, and their stories fell upon us as readily
as nursery rhymes to our little sister, Sue Ruffer.
That we knew these people and their loved ones
was the nature of things in those days, and we, too,
would choose not to be spectators.
I used to frequent a nightclub called The Oasis,
on Mount Vernon Avenue in San Bernardino. One
night in 1962, after a long day at the railroad, I
met a “real” man: an Air Force F-105 pilot named
Bruce Holmes. The encounter would change my
life, and it would later bring a bittersweet end to
the invincibility of my heroes. As I was leaving
The Oasis at about midnight I had encountered a
vandal ripping the radio antenna off a beautiful,
new, 1962 Chevy Impala. I was a pretty healthy
boy back then and a bit overzealous, and I grabbed
the ne’er-do-well by the scruff of the neck and
waltzed him into the nightclub. “Who owns the
white Impala,” I shouted loudly. Immediately, a
handsome twenty-five year old Bruce Holmes
approached. To keep this story short, I’ll just say
that after the police took the offender away, Bruce
Holmes bought me a beer and told me a little about
himself and about his fighter plane. The memory
of that remarkable Air Force pilot has always stayed
with me.
Life takes its turns, or we make it turn, and
my turn to fly came quickly. I chose the United
States Marines because my brother, 2nd Lt. Jack
Arden Ruffer, was already a Marine. So when that
Marine Gunnery Sergeant at the San Diego strip
mall put the correction-key over the forty-question
answer sheet in April of 1966, I was heartened to
hear him say, “You can be a Marine Corps officer!”
With that, I had passed the only test that I would
be required to pass for the United States Marine
Corps; that is, except for the brutal “test” I would
be introduced to at Officer Candidate School at the
Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia.
From Quantico, I went to the Naval Air
Training base at Pensacola, Florida where I was
the only Marine in my Basic Flight Training Class
allowed to enter the “jet” pipeline. Helicopter
pilots were what the Marine Corps needed in
February of 1967. I passionately wanted to be a jet
fighter pilot, and I worked for that “single quota
honor”; that one exception that the Marine Corps
made which allowed one Marine student pilot in
each Basic Training Class to have his choice of
aircraft. Norm Karl Billipp had gotten jets that
way three months earlier; and Bob Bohm, a month
after that: and he was followed by John McIntire.
There were so few, we all knew their names. Now
it was my turn.
After Basic Flight Training at Pensacola, I
would fly from NAS (Naval Air Station) Saufley
Field, Florida (T-34) and from NAS Meridian,
Mississippi (the T2A); then I would be at NAS
Sherman Field, Florida (the T2B) and hit “the
aerial target banner” and hit “the boat” (carrier
qualification) off Pensacola. Finally, I would be at
NAS Kingsville, Texas flying the Grumman F9F.
While at NAS Kingsville, in Advanced Jet
Training, a few of us made a four-plane flight
to NAS Jacksonville, Florida for aircraft carrier
qualifications.
Once ashore at NAS Jacksonville I watched a
section of visiting Air Force F-105s get ready to
“light” their engines. I took the opportunity to talk
with one of the Air Force pilots before he strapped
in, and, after some talk about his impressive jet,
I ask if he knew my hero and role model, Bruce
Holmes. He did! But this aviator’s demeanor
became somber. Yes, Bruce had survived a tour
flying the F-105s to “Down Town” Hanoi, but he
had perished, while still on active duty, in his own
home.
Bruce had a house he called “The Ranch”
near George AFB, California, outside of San
Bernardino where I had first met Bruce Holmes
six years earlier. There had been a house party,
and, afterwards, everyone had left the “Ranch”
to go to town. Bruce had stayed at the ranch to
sleep, and a fire that night destroyed the ranch with
Bruce Holmes inside. I had lost a hero, but not
the role model. I would lose more. Norm Billipp
died in aerial combat in Vietnam, John McIntire
had ejected from a jet, never to fly again, and
Ward Briggs had ejected from a stricken F9F and
had plummeted to earth. We had each been the
lucky “number-one” Marine who had gotten his
jet. They were the handsome and the decent, the
boyish, “fair-haired few.”
My father followed closely the military careers
of his sons once he had retired from the United
States Air Force in 1961. He watched one son
and then another go to Southeast Asia and the
war in Vietnam. Brother Jack returned wearing
the Silver Star, the Bronze Star w/Combat “V,”
and the Purple Heart among many other medals.
His career would be full and distinguished in the
United States Marine Corps. Our mother, Ruth
Ann Ruffer, would remain in continual distress
until both of her sons were out of harm’s way.
I left the active duty Marine Corps late in 1971
to become a physician. It had been my other dream,
a dream that was every bit as life changing and
riveting as piloting jets had been. It was something
that I had to do, a life I had to live. As it turned
out, I would not have to give up the fighters, after
all, because I would shortly reenter the military
service as a military doctor and flight surgeon, and
rejoin the Marine Air Wing.
As a Naval flight surgeon I was able to rejoin
my former Marine Corps squadron, the Black
Sheep of VMA-214. What exaltation when the
commander (a former squadron-mate, flying those
single-seat, Skyhawk “Super-Scooters”) said to me
“Ruffer, back in the seat. You’re going to fly with
us again!” And what a thrill to one day become
assigned to join the Navy’s premiere “Pacific Fleet
Adversary” (Top-Gunners) out of NAS Lemoore,
California. Between flying with the VA-127
“Adversaries” and enduring twenty-four hour,
hospital, emergency room shifts (where I also did
the hospital’s medical/surgical admissions
and obstetric deliveries) I had a full life for
any doctor/aviator.
I had been fresh out of my medical
internship when I joined the Navy as a
general medical officer. In those days we
could “do it all” in our medical practice,
but a doctor had to learn all things well and
he had to take care. Confidence never failed
me as long as I took my patients as seriously
as their medical condition required.
But time marched on, and I found it
desirable to accept an inter-service transfer
to the United States Air Force in December
1985. I donned the “Air Force Blue”
with dedication and honor, and I arrived
at Edwards AFB shortly after the Space
Shuttle Challenger explosion on Tuesday,
January 28, 1986. The whole base was in
mourning. It was a time of thoughtful,
courageous, recommitment for every
American. Edwards AFB was the place of
risk-takers, heroes, and their heroic missions.
I became the Officer-in-Charge of Flight
Medicine at Edwards AFB, and before the next six
months had passed a new opportunity and challenge
would settle upon our flight medicine clinic. A
group of aviation pioneers had asked to use our
15,024 foot long runway in their history-making,
pioneering flight to circle the globe unrefueled. Our
mission became to get to know the Voyager pilots,
Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager, their mission, and
the aeronautical and environmental hazards they
would be facing during their nine-day flight. We
at the flight surgeon office at Edwards decided to
conduct physiologic studies of the Voyager pilots,
hoping they might contribute something scientific
to our knowledge of atmospheric endurance flight.
Our efforts and our enthusiasm were halted
almost from the beginning as the Voyager pilots
had little time to waste on our schemes. They were
kind, but not “open for business,” not our business
at least. They had no use for our needles and pins,
urinary volumes, or weights and measures of any
kind other than those of aviation petroleum and
gross weights at takeoff. We barely got to meet the
crew, and our plans and preparations were mostly
directed at the recovery of their bodies if they
were to crash and burn at takeoff, which almost
occurred.
But there was actually a redemption that
followed these events, and I will close my tribute
to heroes, role models, and risk takers with it.
An article from the front page of the “Antelope
Valley Press” dated November 27, 2007, reported
on a Rotary Club event where it was my honor to
be at the podium with Dick Rutan, now one of the
greatest aviators of all time. We spoke from the same
podium, and it was possible to get to know Dick
Rutan somewhat better than I had before. It had
been quite an experience to be with Dick Rutan
and Jeanna Yeager during the Voyager’s preflight
months and after the history making flight. There
is a story or two I should relate regarding this, for
they will not be heard elsewhere.
In my ambulance after their final landing,
Dick had said “Who are all those people out
there?” My reply was, “Dick, you are famous;
the whole world has been following you, and you
are in every headline. Those tens of thousands of
people out there are here for you. You did the
impossible!” And Dick literally cried out in his
state of total exhaustion and disbelief, “Here for
me?”
No, I have never been much of a spectator.
If something is worth watching then it is worth
doing; and I'd rather do it myself. But, I could not
do what Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager did; yet I
ended up with the best, front-row seat available,
and, ultimately, I discharged Dick and Jeanna from
the Edwards AFB Hospital. It was a near debacle.
It went something like this: After the “World
News Conference” in an Edwards’ hangar, the
pair balked at going back to my hospital with
me. There we were, at odds with each other in
an isolated intersection in mid-desert on Edwards
AFB. Their Audi automobile would not budge
towards its required destination, which was to be
my hospital. I approached on foot to the passenger
door where Dick sheepishly said, “Well, Doc, we
don't like hospitals, and …….. well ……. we don't
think we’re sick.”
Now it was my turn to speak, and I said,
laconically, “So?” with an added look of quandary
imposed upon my face. But I knew darned well
what was coming next. Dick Rutan replied, “Well,
we don't want to go back to the hospital.” Now
this was the voice of the world's newest, greatest,
celebrity; a combat pilot with an incredibly, heroic,
career; a guy with a “strong-as-steel, devil-may-care”
personality. So when it was my turn to speak
again, I already knew I was defeated, and, after
all, they were actually in incredibly great shape for
what they had been through. So, I faced defeat for
I was an old, combat pilot myself, though, on this
day in 1986, I was an Air Force flight surgeon.
“Dick, you cannot leave this hospital, which
you have been properly admitted to, until you have
been properly discharged,” said I, with an added
sense of authority. I looked proud. He looked glum.
But I quickly continued, before he could take the
“lead” from me, as he surely would do. “So” I said
“I am discharging you right here and now, at this
intersection, in the middle of nowhere.”
We bid farewell with no particular fondness
or intimacy, for there had been none before. They
were “driven” people, and lucky to be alive, and
they knew it. They were brave souls who had
struggled for an ideal and found fame along the
way. They were risk-takers and aviation heroes. I
was proud to speak from the same podium as Dick
Rutan on November 27, 2007. My Dad wasn’t
there for that one. And I wasn’t a spectator when
I spoke, along with Dick Rutan, on that day in
2007.
I have had my own single-seat, ride-for-life,
into the cannon’s mouth. I am not accustomed
to watching, but doing: It’s the aviator’s way,
the physician-and-surgeon’s way, and it's my
way. But I’ll always remember the day I watched
two of the world’s greatest aviators complete the
“impossible” flight. That was the
day that my Dad saw his son touch
a moment of history. Dick Rutan
and Jeanna Yeager had indeed been
triumphant, but there have been
many other aviation pioneers and
aviation warriors who did not come
home. I make special tribute to
them with these, tragic prose:
“Go from me: I am one of those
who fall.
What! Hath no cold wind swept
your heart at all,
In my sad company? Before
the end,
Go from me………”
Lionel Johnson
I salute the fallen heroes and I
salute the wives who waited in vain
for their return. Their poignant
stories will fill many volumes of heroic tribute,
such as those of Mrs. Della Lear, Mrs. Frankie
Connors, and Miss Dorothy “Dolly” Sharp
(fiancée of Ensign Ron Eaton) whose husbands’
and betrothed’s heroism is mentioned above. All
three of these women waited in vain for their
loved one’s safe return.
That other great aviator, who I mentioned
in this story, is Major Victor Jack Ruffer, USAF
(Ret). He is my father, and he died in 2000. I
cannot pay a high enough tribute to his service
to his country (1939–1961) and to his aviator
skills. He was of that generation of aviators who
had to fly through the buffeting clouds and had
to navigate the humps whereas, later, many of
us became accustomed to just pointing our jet
toward the heights.
I concluded my military career with
retirement in 1995. I had served in the Vietnam
War, in the Invasion of Panama, and in the
Persian Gulf War. It was my privilege to have
done so.
[Col. James Ruffer is retired and lives in Las Vegas,
Nevada]