Holy smokes, did you fly the Skyraider???? I love that plane...reeks of power and ruggedness...
No, I didn’t. VT-30, the Spad training squadron in Corpus Christi was decommissioned in early 1965 when I was about halfway through VT-3. I was devastated, of course! A lot of my buddies just quit the program when that happened; I elected to stay with it. Got my wings in November, 1965 and was ordered to VAW-111 to fly the E-1B “Willy Fudd.”
The best part of all of it was the carrier “work.” In the course of my active duty flying around the boat (1965 - 1973), I accumulated a total of 365 CVLs (103 night) in the left seat and probably 1,000 or so in the right seat as an IP/co-pilot. We multi-engine pukes had to share CVLs with our co-pilot, which cuts the number of CVLs in half.
Landing on an aircraft carrier is the most fun a mortal can have with his clothes on!