Dear Folks, While editing my Navy stories this afternoon I was reminded of a memory I never wrote down and frankly almost forgot. It happened in 1956 while I was stationed at Naval Air Station, Oakland, CA. Being an air station, all of us who were involved in aviation had been taught well about aircraft and the dangers involved in their flight, especially on takeoffs and landings. One weekend when our Reservists were aboard for weekend training, the pilots were either flying our planes or up in our Link Shack where we/I put them through their paces in flight simulators. All of us were absorbed in what we were doing that afternoon when we heard the sudden urgent blare from the PA system, "Crash on runway, Crash on runway! Crash crew man your stations!" I no longer can remember if those were the exact words but I'm certain you get the point. Within a minute or two we could hear the sirens of the fire truck racing toward the plane. It was such terrible thing to hear. One of our aircraft had crashed on the runway and from where the black smoke was billowing up, we knew it was a crash on takeoff. We could also see the outline of the plane and knew it was a large P2V Neptune patrol bomber with two propeller-driven engines. We all wanted to dash down the runway to help but we knew the crash crew knew what they were doing and a mob of us wouldn't be welcome. However, we knew most of the pilots and crew members and we didn't know whether there were any casualities. It was a tough afternoon to get through not knowing. When we were finally given the report that there were no injuries, it was such a relief knowing that they all had been able to evaculate the aircraft before the fire had gotten out of hand. The crash crew had certainly done their job well. Actually this was a painful memory for me to write down this evening. It brought back what we all knew could eventually happen. We never wanted to face such an eventuality but that one afternoon we came face to face with it on a personal level. We could see the billowing black smoke. vee