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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Bruce Mennella
Interviewed by: John Barth
Date: January 28, 2020
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2020 © The Museum of Flight
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Abstract:
Vietnam War veteran Bruce Mennella is interviewed about his life and military service. He
discusses his career with the United States Navy, focusing particularly on his time as an air
intelligence office with Fighter Squadron VF-114 on board the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). He
also touches on his experiences growing up in Washington State during the 1950s and 1960s and
on his post-military career managing a car dealership in Seattle.
Biography:
Bruce Mennella served in the U.S. Navy with Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) during the
Vietnam War. He later operated a car dealership in Burien, Washington.
Bruce Edward Mennella was born on September 16, 1946 in New York City to Vincent and
Madeline Mennella. His father had been a pilot in World War II, flying transport airplanes from
Sand Point Naval Air Station. After the war, Vincent obtained a college degree under the GI Bill.
In mid-1947, he and his family moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked for NCM, a cash
register company. In the mid-1950s, Vincent opened a Ford dealership in Burien, Washington.
He also remained an active pilot in the Navy Reserves.
Mennella attended school in Burien, Washington, graduating from Highline High school in 1964.
He attended the University of Washington’s School of Business. He planned on joining his
family’s car business after graduation; however, the onset of the Vietnam War altered his postgraduation plans. As a sophomore, he went to a Navy recruiter and worked out a deal to enter the
military after graduation. He passed the aviation written exam in order to become a pilot, but due
to his eyesight, he did not pass the medical exam. Instead, he went into Air Intelligence.
Graduating in June 1968, he reported to Aviation Office Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida.
From there, he went to Air Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.
While in Denver, he re-connected with Louise A. Vacca, a woman he had dated occasionally in
high school who was now a flight attendant with United Airlines. They were married in 1969.
Once he had completed his training, Mennella was assigned to NAS Miramar in San Diego,
California, arriving there in November 1969. VF-114 flew McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
aircraft and was reformatting after a WESTPAC cruise. He spent the next 11 months training,
including flying in the back seat of VF-114 airplanes whenever possible. The USS Kitty Hawk,
associated with the squadron, was at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington
for refurbishing at that time.
Mennella’s first cruise was from November 1970 to July 1971 on the USS Kitty Hawk. Operating
in the middle of a bombing halt and in the southern area off the coast of Vietnam, the cruise did
not see a great deal of activity. Mennella worked in the Integrated Operations Information Center
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(IOIC), briefing and debriefing pilots on their targets. Briefings included weather conditions,
rules of engagement, tanking procedures, emergency procedures, and an overview of the area of
operations. In his off time, he traveled in Sasebo, Japan; Hong Kong; and Subic Bay, Philippines,
where his wife was able to visit him.
Mennella’s second cruise, also on the USS Kitty Hawk, began in February 1972. This time, the
carrier operated off the north coast of Vietnam and included missions going into Hanoi. Each
Alpha strike took 35 to 40 airplanes in a three-operations-per-day cycle. Briefings were longer
and more complex due to the area of operations. About five months into the tour, Mennella’s
wife had their first child. Since Mennella’s replacement was on board, Mennella was sent home.
He left the Navy in October 1972. He was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for his first
cruise and earned the Navy Commendation Medal on his second cruise.
Back in Seattle, Mennella went to work for his father’s Ford dealership. He assumed the role of
general manager in 1980 and five years later bought the business. He added Isuzu and Subaru
franchises shortly after. His success brought him on to the Ford National Dealer Council, where
he served for two years. After that, he was elected chairman of the Northwest Ford Dealers
Advertising Group covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.
Mennella and his wife ultimately had three children and seven grandchildren. As of 2020, they
were still living in the Seattle area.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
Interviewer:
John Barth is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent Corps, which he joined in 2016. He
has over 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, including manufacturing, supervision
and management, and research and development.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
2020 © The Museum of Flight
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Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2020 © The Museum of Flight
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Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 6
College years and joining the U.S. Navy ...................................................................................... 10
Air Intelligence School and marriage ........................................................................................... 12
Assignment to Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) ........................................................................... 13
Deployment to WESTPAC and mission logistics ........................................................................ 15
Activities during downtime........................................................................................................... 17
Second WESTPAC cruise............................................................................................................. 19
Discussion about photographs ...................................................................................................... 22
Post-military life and career .......................................................................................................... 26
Advice for young people ............................................................................................................... 29
Discussion about donated items .................................................................................................... 29
Details about air intelligence work ............................................................................................... 30
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Bruce Mennella
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
JOHN BARTH:
My name is John Barth. It is five minutes after 2:00pm on January 28th,
2020. We’re located at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, Washington, and we are here
to interview Bruce Mennella. Thank you for taking the time to participate in the oral
history here at the Museum. Bruce, can I get you to state and spell your name?
BRUCE MENNELLA:
Bruce Mennella. M-E-N-N-E-L-L-A.
JB:
Can I get you to give us some background on your family? Maybe your grandparents,
your parents, what they did, where you lived, just some good background.
BM:
Surely. On my father’s side, my grandparents, my—so he would be my grandfather—
immigrated from Italy. Born in Positano, Italy, and lived in Long Island City, New York.
Met his wife, Henrietta, who was Irish. And he was a truck farmer. He would grow
produce on Long Island and then take it into New York City to sell it at market.
My father was their only son. So my dad had no brothers. My mother, likewise, was the
only daughter. And her father and mother were Norwegian. My grandfather, as—from
what I’ve learned, was a soldier in World War II. I’m—excuse me. World War I. And my
grandmother was primarily just a housewife. On my mother’s grandmother’s side,
though, what was interesting is my great-great grandmother was a nurse in the Civil War.
We were able to trace that back.
But being both old, single children, we weren’t in the cousins business or anything else
like that. Also interesting of note, my mother’s father was the basketball coach at the
University of Washington for the 1911 and 1912 season when he was a student at the
University of Washington before graduating and going to World War I. He was an
alumni of the University of Washington. My mother grew up on Mercer Island before
they had the advent of the bridges, so to get on and off the island, they had to go by ferry.
My father went to school, was introduced to the Northwest when he was a pilot in World
War II. He came out and he flew transports out of Sand Point Naval Air Base and flew
the Aleutian Chain and Nome and Kotzebue, other cities up in Alaska. Absolutely fell in
love with the Northwest. When he compared New York City to Washington, it was just—
this is heaven. Unfortunately, with the GI Bill after World War II, you had to return to the
same college that you were going to before you went into the war. So he met mom at the
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University of Washington at a party. They started dating. They married. But then after
he—when he got out of the service, active duty, he had to once again go back to New
York and finish his college and graduated from there. So we lived in the—they lived in
New York for a while.
I came along about a year later, was born in New York City. And we were there
apparently for about six or seven months prior to him making arrangements to return to
the Northwest. We moved out here in the early ‘40s. He got a job with NCM, the cash
register company. And then he—then he went to work for Ford Motor Company. I was
born in ‘46. I had a sister that was born in ‘49, a brother in ‘50. That house was—with the
addition of two kids after me, was getting pretty tight, so we moved to a suburb in Seattle
called Lake City. We moved into another house and had another brother in ‘53.
JB:
So by ‘53, you’re seven years old and you’re in grade school.
BM:
Correct.
JB:
What—tell us about grade school.
BM:
Grade school was fun. We walked to school. It wasn’t that far away. Probably the biggest
revelation for me in about third grade was these big, green things that I would pass that
were called trees. I didn’t realize, but my vision was quite poor at that time. And my
mother, at the advice of a teacher, finally took me to an eye exam, and they said I needed
glasses, which I got. And I discovered those big, green things actually had individual
leaves. [laughs] So I—that was—it was quite an impression for me.
Another memorable thing at that time was the first time my little brother and I went
fishing—because we lived right up above Lake Washington—we went fishing, and we
were using marshmallows on a little hook that we could throw out. And my first cast,
instead of a fish, I caught a duck. It came by and it grabbed it. And we kind of didn’t
know what to do. So my brother, at much coaching, grabbed it, held it still, and I had to
open its beak and kind of get the hook out of its mouth and let it go. But interesting times.
JB:
What about junior high?
BM:
Junior high—well, we moved from that house in 1955, so when I was actually about
fourth grade. So you want to jump up—by then I had another brother in 1956. And we
were—my dad had started his business. He left NCR, he went to work with Ford Motor
Company, and he loved the Northwest so much that when he had a chance of getting a
promotion, instead of taking it and maybe having to leave the Northwest, he went from
working from the manufacturer to becoming a retail dealer—or having a dealership,
which we got in South Seattle. And he opened up a previously unoccupied point, so it
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was an additional point. And it was in the town of Burien, which was south of SeaTac—
or just west of SeaTac Airport.
So we lived there. He was very busy working. He stayed in the Navy Reserves, continued
to fly. And my grandfather on my father’s side passed away in about the late ‘50s. So my
dad went and got my grandmother, brought her out from New York to Seattle, bought her
a house about two miles from our place, and she kind of became our permanent babysitter
and we got to grow up and spend a lot of time with her.
Junior high—grade school, junior high was a wonderful time. We were very fortunate.
We got to say goodbye in the morning, jump on our bikes, ride all over the South End.
You know, put 15, 20 miles on the bikes going to see friends and girls’ and guys’ places.
And you could go up into town, buy ice cream or something, and you’d get back home
eight hours later and Mom would say like, “What’d you do?” “Nothing.” You just—we
had a lot of freedom. There wasn’t the concern and restrictions that younger kids face
today because of society.
It was a growing time for my family. We were very active. Lots of sports. I was on swim
teams in the summer. We skied a lot in the winter. My dad just really got into Northwest
living. Fishing, bird hunting, skiing. My folks were quite strict in terms of studying, and
they always kind of told us our job was to get good enough grades that you’d be able to
go to the college that you wanted to go to. So starting in junior high, we had study tables
and you had to get your work done before you could play.
JB:
Your dad was still in the Reserves.
BM:
Stayed in the Reserves. He, in the late ‘60s, had a—he flew transport planes, DC-3s and
then the DC-4, which was called an R5D.
I remember particularly in high school—because it was my 16th birthday and he wasn’t
there to help me get my driver’s license—he was in Africa. He took an entire squadron
on a two-week—in the Reserves, you do two-weeks active duty. So he would fly—he
took everybody to Africa, and they were based out of Morocco, and they flew to Tunisia,
Libya, Egypt, and did a lot of movement of personnel and supplies. He reached the rank
of captain, retired in the ‘70s, I believe, after 30 years of active and then reserve duty.
Loved the service.
JB:
Your high school years, what were they like?
BM:
They were pretty nice. [laughs] They were fun. It was ‘61 to ‘64. A lot of things were
happening in the world. I remember Sputnik. I remember going to a friend’s house and
watching TV during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was active still swimming. We had a
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group of friends that just kind of ran around together. We all started driving. We were
pretty good. We stayed away from the drinking and the smoking. And we were—I was in
government. I was the Student Body treasurer one year. Just a lot of good times.
Took a lot of—we got some elective classes. I’d always take a business class because it
was—I was very interested in business. Graduation—summers—graduation ‘64. And
before I went into college, three of us went to Hawaii for a week. We got on the way far
back of a Pam Am flight from Seattle to Honolulu. And the three of us apparently looked
like we were 21, so the flight attendants liberally enjoyed some champagne—gave it to
us. Not with us, but—we were having a good time until the airplane came down, and we
were kind of going up, if you know what I mean. [laughter]
JB:
‘62 was the World’s Fair here. Did you go to it? Did you go to the World’s Fair?
BM:
Actually, this World’s Fair here, I did not go to. Yeah. ’61, too [sic]. No. But I did my
senior year—my dad had a friend who had an airplane, and he let my dad use it. And my
father took all of us, the five kids and my mom, and we flew from Seattle to New York
City, and we went to the World’s Fair in ‘64 in New York City and had a great time.
Flew over Mount Rushmore going back, circled that, went to Green Bay, Wisconsin. On
the way home, we went to Washington, D.C. It was a fun time.
In ’61—so I guess, actually while I was still in high school, going back, we also used that
same airplane. We went—he took us to the Rose Bowl when the Huskies went, I guess,
the second year in a row. And what was memorable about that was I always got to sit
next to Dad. He was flying, I’d be next, I had a brother, and then the rest of the family in
the backseat. We were coming out of Los Angeles, and he had told me—you know, now
picture it. I’m 16. He said, “Okay, now kind of watch these gauges when we take off.”
And we were taking off and climbing out of Los Angeles, and the gauge on this one side
kept going worse and worse and worse. And I said, “You want to take a look at this
gauge?” And the oil pressure was gone.
So he had to feather the engine, and we had to declare an emergency, turn around, go into
the airport. And, you know, they always ask you how many people were on board. Well,
you really weren’t supposed to have seven people, five kids and two adults, in this
airplane. So they said, “How many souls on board?” And he said, “Five.” And Mom
yelled from the backseat, “Tell them it’s seven.” [laughs] And he was not really—we
didn’t get in trouble. But anyway, that was my first aviation incident.
JB:
What aircraft was that?
BM:
It was a Twin Bonanza.
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JB:
Oh. So you got to know Seattle quite well. What was it like? What was it like here in
your high school—your junior high and high school years? How would you describe it?
BM:
We lived in a community that—it was the suburbs. We were about six—10 miles south of
Seattle. We had everybody from T. Wilson [Thornton A. “T” Wilson], who was the
chairman of Boeing at the time, down to the janitors of Boeing. Our high school, there
were probably 2,200 kids in the high school. It wasn’t built for that, but we were the
leading edge of the baby boomers. And so our class was 700-plus and both classes
behind.
You know, you could walk anywhere. You could ride your bikes. We had friends all over
the place. A lot of water activities. We were above the water, but my folks had a boat, so
we did a lot of waterskiing out in Puget Sound. You could go into town. Little League
football, Little League baseball. Didn’t go downtown a lot except for the time that my
mother thought it would be great for all of us, about four of us altogether, to learn
ballroom dancing. And every Friday night we got to go downstairs—downtown and go to
these ballroom dancing classes. And we met all these other kids from all over Seattle,
which was really fun. It actually had been a pretty good experience.
00:16:30
[College years and joining the U.S. Navy]
JB:
After high school, what’d you do?
BM:
My folks made it very clear to me in about ninth grade that I was going to college, so it
was a—and do the work, get the grades so you could go to the college of your choice. I
would have been third-generation Washington. My grandfather, which I mentioned
earlier, my mom, so I would have been third generation. My best friend and I, because
my dad was in the car business, he gave us a car, and we set out on a two-week trip. Now,
we’re 18. So we take off for a two-week trip down the West Coast to visit every, at the
time, Pac-8 college. It was before it was the Pac-12.
So we went—we picked the car up in Colorado and the—our dads knew where we were
supposed to be. And we were visiting all the schools. And one day we got bored and we
kind of said, “Well, let’s just get from here to here.” And we drove all night. They’ll
never figure it out. So my friend calls his dad, he says, “Where are you?” And he said,
“Well, we’re in Los Angeles.” “How’d you get there that fast?” “Um…” Oh, we have a
problem. His dad was a pilot, and he could figure it out, as well as my dad figured it out.
So, anyway, we did this whole tour. I decided to go to Washington after the tour. I liked
the West Coast. I didn’t like Los Angeles that much. Went to the University of
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Washington, pledged to a fraternity my first year, which was a good decision in
retrospect. It really helped me make that transition from kind of the control and guiding
that you get in high school to the free will, professor-doesn’t-care-if-you-show-up-or-not
in college. So it helped me get through that first year. I went into the School of Business
with the idea of getting an accounting degree. While I was in high school and even in my
beginning college, I worked—I spent all my summers working at my dad’s business, the
car dealership, just sweeping lots, washing cars, just doing all the grunty stuff that you do
when you’re beginning entry level. And I started loving the car business. So when I went
to Washington, it was with the intent of going into the car business when I graduated
from college.
Vietnam was starting to become a little more prevalent in everybody’s minds, and draft
regulations are in—requirements were changing. So in my sophomore year, guys were
getting picked off. First, if you were married, you were exempt. Then if you were married
in education, you were exempt. So I had fraternity brothers get married, go into
education. It just was a snowball. But anyway, they kept changing the rules. So at midpoint in my sophomore year, I said, “I’m just going to cut a deal.” So I went out and I
talked to the enlisters and said, “If I volunteer now, will you leave me alone until I
graduate? And then I’ll go into the service upon graduation.” So they said, “Okay, well,
let’s—what do you want to do?” And I said, “Well, I want to fly.” Because I—my dad
was in aviation, and we were—and I just loved it.
So I took the aviation exam, and I passed it. And then I took the physical and didn’t pass
it because my—I had—my eyes were not good. So I couldn’t be a pilot. So, man, I was
crushed. And then they talked about two-seated airplanes, where you could be a weapons
system officer or a bombardier/navigator like in an A-6 or you could be a radar flight
officer—RIO, R-I-O, radar intercept officer, in an F-4. And I said, “Well, I’ll do that.”
And my eyes weren’t even good enough for that.
So I said, “Well, what else can I do that’s aviation related that will keep me—and I want
to get into Navy Air.” And they said, “Well, you can go into air intelligence.” And I said,
“Well, what’s that?” And they said, “Well, each squadron has one officer that’s primary
function is to do briefings on threat—like, if you’re in a fighter squadron, like, give them
information about threat aircraft, their performance, their characteristics, limitations.
Also, defenses. And then when you went on—” So I said, “Well, fine. If that’s as close as
I can get, I’ll do that.” And they said, “Okay. I just want to let you know nobody’s been
selected as an air intelligence officer out of Washington in 10 years.” I said, “Okay.
That’s no problem.” So I said, “I’ll take that gamble.”
So it was about a month of downtime, and it came back, and they said I’d been accepted
to go into the Air Intelligence Program upon graduation. So I spent two more years
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finishing my education. I graduated in June, and then in August of ’68, I reported to
Pensacola for the Aviation Officer Candidate School, AOCS, and became a 90-day
wonder, as they called them. And we went through basic training, and then the pilots
went off on their career path and then the navigators and backseat people went off to
another squadron. It was called VT-10. I went to that school and got some training on
how to navigate and navigate an airplane from Point A to Point B.
But then I went to Air Intelligence School. And Air Intelligence School was in Denver at
Lowry Air Force Base. And it was a combined school of Navy and Air Force people, and
we were taught the air intelligence trade. I was there for six months. I was there from
March to October. Perfect time to be in Denver to go skiing during the winter, and I get
there from March to October.
00:23:51
[Air Intelligence School and marriage]
JB:
So you had a social life during that time. You had other activities. What was it like? What
percentage of your training time was classroom and what—describe that training a little
bit better, if you would.
BM:
We were pretty busy. It was a combination of, like I said, Air Force and Navy. We were
at school in class at 6:00 in the morning, and we got out about 1:30 in the afternoon. So it
was an early day, five days a week. I lived out in a suburb of Denver called Aurora,
Colorado. The apartment had Air Force nurses, a bunch of stewardesses and flight
attendants. You had a bunch of Air Force air intelligence guys like myself. And when we
weren’t doing school, we would tour the mountains, go up to Aspen, go to Vail. Just a lot
of party time. But, I mean, it was a lot of prep work. It was pretty serious working.
Prior to getting to Denver, I had re-established a relationship with a girl that I had been
taking out in high school. And when I was coming out of—just before I went into the
service, we went to a waterskiing party and we saw each other. And we had kind of dated
casually on and off, so… We kind of talked and chatted, and, you know, let’s get together
and let’s talk and everything. So she went off to be a flight attendant for United when I
was going down to AOCS. So I went down to Florida. She went to Chicago. And at
Christmas, just after I had gotten my commission, I was supposed to fly from Pensacola,
Florida. I had this beautiful route all through New Orleans and Dallas and Phoenix, and I
was going up to Sun Valley. My family had another house there where we skied every
winter. And my dad’s final comment to me was—when I told them my route on how I
was going to get there, his final comment to me was, “Well, good luck.” Just of all the
winter connections and everything.
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So we had a big party the night before we were all going to get out of town. And
Pensacola is not big, so the airport at Pensacola is pretty small. So if you missed your
flight, you’re in trouble. Well, I missed my flight. So I didn’t know what to do, so I just
started calling. So I said, “Louise is north. She’s in Chicago. I’ll call her and see if she’s
there.” And she was. And I said, “You’re going to be there for a few days?” She said,
“Yeah.” I said, “I think I’m coming up. I’ll call you later.”
So I called the—you know, the airline or whatever you could do at the time, call and I
said, “Can I get to Chicago from here and then to Sun Valley, Idaho?” She said, “Yeah.”
I said, “Do it.” So we flew up, and I got there about an hour before a snowstorm. And I
don’t know if you’ve ever lived through a beautiful Denver—I mean, excuse me,
Chicago snowstorm. But what I thought was going to be about a six-hour layover ended
up being a two-day layover. And so we spent a lot of time together, and that kind of
started the relationship. So when we got down into Denver, we were—we had gotten
engaged, and we got married while we were in Denver. So part of our married life started
out in Denver.
00:27:48
[Assignment to Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114)]
JB:
So after your training is over, what’s next?
BM:
Well, when I graduated, I had to wait for orders. And in the Navy—probably like in the
Air Force, I don’t know—but if you’re a pilot or if you’re a backseat in an A-6 or an F-4,
everything is based on how well you do in your class—your class ranking allows you to
pick the assignments that might be available. It was always the needs of the Navy first.
But if they had X number of jobs and you were the number one guy, you got to pick. And
I think I was the number two guy in my class, and when it was my turn, there was an F-4
squadron billet available in San Diego at NAS Miramar. And I said, “Perfect. It’s a twoseat airplane.” Which I really wanted to get a two-seat airplane. A-6, A-7. I mean, excuse
me, A-6, F-4.
So I got to—I picked that. I left school in November, reported to the squadron in
December. The squadron had just returned from a cruise in WESTPAC on the Kitty
Hawk, and the Kitty Hawk was going up to Bremerton to be in the yard for about a year.
So there was—it was a—when I got to the squadron, there was a lot of new blood and a
lot of junior officers coming in, a lot of turnover. The squadron was being reformulated—
reformatted. So we spent 11 months ashore training. Crews were—you know—they were
looking to find the best possible combination of pilots and NFOs that would fly together
and work well together. A lot of training, a lot of education, a lot of learning. And being
the only intelligence officer in a squadron, you’re kind of the ugly ducking—or duckling,
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or you’re the odd guy out. Everybody else has got pilot—I mean, everybody’s got super
testosterone and everybody’s, “I can do this.” Everything that a fighter squadron is
known for.
So I said, “Well, if I’m going to make it in this, I’m going to have to cut my teeth and I’m
going to have to try and do things beyond what I’m normally expected.” I really made a
concentrated effort to learn how to fly in the backseat. I had a very willing skipper or CO
of the squadron. And the ops officer, they were very agreeable to letting me fly. And I
took every chance to get on a hop that I could. When pilots had to go out and bounce,
which is just fly around the airport and land and go—do touch and go’s, simulating
carrier landings, and the guy in the backseat didn’t want to go, I said, “I’ll go. Just give
me your airplane.” I learned how to work the radios. I learned how to work, you know,
lots of different switches. Guys even taught me start—gave me an—you know, how to
work the radar.
So I worked really hard and built credibility within my squadron of learning how to fly
and honing my skills for when I was briefing and teaching the air crews what they needed
to know in terms of enemy defenses, tactics, systems, and giving briefs about Vietnam.
Because we knew where we were going to go. It helped build me credibility. We
certainly enjoyed it. One of the highlights before our first crew, the—somehow,
somebody worked it out that we could take all 12 airplanes at the same time—and it was
labeled a low-level training mission. So we took 12 planes, and we flew from San Diego
to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and then up to Denver. And the goal was to never get
above 200 feet. We did that pretty well.
And I remember we were below the rim of the Colorado. We were coming around a
corner, and we were like—I think I was—we were in like the third airplane. And we
came around this big steep corner—we’re down in this canyon—and you come around
the corner, and there’s the dam and it’s above us. And so guys were just having to pull.
And the guy I was with at the time, he pulled, and as we just got—instead of just going
up and over, he rolled and we rolled over the top. And you could look down like this.
[looks up] And here all these people are looking up taking pictures and not knowing that
there’s nine more behind us. They must have had a pretty good, fun afternoon watching
all of that.
So that was really—but that was the kind of stuff that we got to do. We really bonded.
We did everything hard. We played hard. We worked hard. We drank hard. Just—it was
hard. And we got really good, good enough that we were awarded the “E,” which was
the—a Navy competition award for being the best fighter squadron in the Navy for that
year.
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00:34:03
[Deployment to WESTPAC and mission logistics]
JB:
That’s the VF-114?
BM:
That’s correct.
JB:
Did you have a nickname?
BM:
Aardvarks.
JB:
Why? How’d you get that nickname?
BM:
I should know that. But it’s Zot, the aardvark from B.C. comic books. And just this big—
and our stripe and our—and Zot was orange. So he’s got these big ears, and he’s got this
long nose. Just ugly looking thing. But it was on the airplane. And our sister squadron
was the Black Lions, which was VF-213.
But 12 airplanes, 35 officers. And in November of ’70, we left on our first cruise to
WESTPAC. That was a nine-month cruise. We got home in July of ‘71. For most of us, it
was our first time in a theater of operations. And we were primarily the—there wasn’t
much activity up north. In fact, there was hardly any. That was in the middle of a
bombing halt in one of the pauses. So everything we were doing was down south. My job
when we were on cruise, because I was an air intelligence officer, was—I really was
almost assigned to ship’s company, and I worked in what was called the IOIC. And that’s
Integrated Operations Information System. And we were in the center of the ship, and all
of the flight activity was briefed through there.
So our job in IOIC—and it became my job—was prior to an—what we called cyclic
operations. You’ve probably heard that. During the day, each cycle was scheduled to be
an hour and 45 minutes, and we would have so many cycles. And the ship would fly. It
was a 12-hour workday. And we either went from noon to midnight, midnight to noon, or
eight to eight. But anyway, within that framework, you were constantly having airplanes
leave—the next set of airplanes leave and the first set recover. But I would, as part of the
information system, to advise the air crews what they were going to be doing and where
they were going to go, we would have TV briefs from IOIC that would go into every
ready room, where the air crews from each squadron could watch the brief. Because we
had two F-4 squadrons, two A-7 squadrons, one A-6 squadron, and there would be an E-2
for early warning radar, and then there was a RA-5C or a Vigilante that was used for
post-strike photography to see how we did on a strike.
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Again, most—everything was cyclic operations. We would tell the air crews what radio
frequencies—first, we’d start off with a weather brief, let the guys know what the
weather was around the ship, what anticipated weather there was around the target areas
or different parts of Southern Vietnam. Then we would tell them who we thought they
would be assigned to with a call sign and radio frequencies. We would cover Rules of
Engagement. We would cover tanking procedures, emergency procedures, and give them
an idea of everything that was going on. If there had been, from earlier strikes, any
defensive activity, Triple A—normally there weren’t SAMs in the south, so that wasn’t
much of a target threat. But there could be a lot of different Triple A envelopes that might
be encountered. We would let them know about that.
JB:
Can you explain the Triple A envelope?
BM:
Well, there were different calibers of weapons. There was a 23, a 37, a 57, and then
larger. But the smaller the number, the shorter the height or the caliber of the weapon that
was—could be employed. And we normally in cyclic operations down south would send
the air crews—we knew they would go out and would be dispatched to a forward air
controller. And that would be an Air Force guy flying around in an OV-10, maybe an O2. And he was low and slow and was just looking for activity. And if he saw something,
then he would call airplanes in and would request—normally he would shoot a rocket
down and mark the ground. And it was white phosphorus. “Willie Pete,” as we called it.
And then he would tell the crew, okay, 500 yards in front, to the left, and kind of indicate
where he would like ordnance dropped.
On the A-6s and A-7s, which were more accurate than an F-4 in ordnance delivery, they
might do multiple runs and not drop all of their ordnance at the same time. In the F-4s, in
our squadron in particular, we were of the three that you make one pass only. One of the
things that we preached was if everybody kind of makes—if everybody goes down
exactly the same way and delivers their ordnance in the same path, the fourth or the fifth
guy down that shoot might—if there’s something down below that’s going to shoot back,
might have a pretty good bead on you by that point. So we always taught not to use the
same dive angle or approach. So our rules were everything on one pass. The A-6s and the
A-7s might make multiple passes. And that was normal operations. You would take off,
tank, go in country, try and expend your ordnance, and then come back and recover. You
might do that for 35, 40 days. Our longest line period—the Kitty Hawk was number 63.
That was the number of the boat. Our longest line period was 63 days of operations. That
gets pretty long.
JB:
And you’ve got 12-hour shifts.
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BM:
Right. And then after they do an event or a cycle, the air crews would come back and
then instead of briefing, we had guys like myself—and it might be me or it might be
somebody else—who would debrief the crews. And the debrief was to find out what
happened. Where did you go? What did you hit? And they were always looking for
explosions, secondaries, fires, smoke. And then we’d always ask, were there—did you—
any defenses? Was there any flak? Any Triple A? You know, what did you find? And it
became pretty—I don’t want to say routine, but on the large part it was not nearly—it
was—not a lot of opposition was encountered. But always there was some.
00:42:22
[Activities during downtime]
JB:
So during your 12-hour days, you got 12 hours a shift. What’s your off time like?
BM:
Well, in the squadron, when we weren’t working, you’d change out of flight suits—the
guys that were flying. You’d freshen up. You’ve got time in your room to listen to music.
Everybody pretty much had a reel-to-reel tape recorder. You might have the beverage of
your choice. You go and have a meal.
Most of the ready rooms—each ready room would have a movie for the evening. They’d
bring movies on board, and it would kind of go to each ready room. And then you just—
you could study. You could write letters. You looked forward to mail. A lot of guys
would go and work out. You know, personal exercise routines. It’s your time. You could
do what you want. A lot of guys would sleep. It’s pretty dark inside one of those things
when all the lights are off.
JB:
What about entertainment? Celebrities come on board and do some entertainment for you
or…?
BM:
Yes. USO would—I believe on each cruise—I never went to a USO show. I don’t know
why. I just did not. But generally, a show would come on board. There would be an
entertainer. Generally, a troop of girls, dancers or singers. And they’d be down—it’d be
down in the hangar bay, generally. And a lot of it was for the ship’s company’s guys that
really got to enjoy it, or any of the guys that really worked hard. These guys on these
boats, I don’t care what your job was, you worked hard. It was hot. It was humid. The
days were long. And a show like that was always well received and appreciated.
JB:
Liberty?
BM:
We’d go into port. Our port—favorite port of call was Subic Bay, Philippines. We were
always told we were going to Australia, but, well, no. Not this time. We’re going back to
Subic Bay. We did get to go—on the first cruise, we went to—in addition to Subic Bay,
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we went to Hong Kong, which was really fun to do. And then we made one trip to
Sasebo, Japan for some repairs. That was an extended—we went by Formosa and did
some joint operations with the Air Force from Formosa.
But generally, into Subic Bay. And then there you could either just stay in port. A bunch
of us like going up to a town called Baguio. And then one time a bunch of us had wives
that came over. So we would go up there. It was quite nice. It was just a flat hilltop and, I
mean, just dropped off on both sides. So there was nothing and then all of a sudden,
there’s runway. And we found out about the second time we were up there, it was the
first kamikaze air base that the Japanese used out of the Philippines. So the planes could
take off and could drop well down while they gathered speed to take off. But it was really
a beautiful city. And it was well-known for silversmiths. And I remembered the wives
would buy all sorts of just beautiful filigree silver napkin rings and trays. And it was
quite a bit cooler up there than down in town, enough to the point where you’d make fires
in your little cabins at night. It was cool enough.
But it was—and they had a beautiful golf course. It was very difficult and really fun. Four
of us were up there by ourselves, and it was really hilly and two of the holes crossed. And
we noticed that behind all of the trees there, there were guys. And we then we noticed
that they all had machine guns. And we were wondering, what the hell’s going on? And
finally there’s this guy who’s down below our—to our right and he’s going up the hill
and we’re going across and over. And we—this big entourage. And finally we find out
that it was Marcos, the president of the Philippines. So we all said, okay. Guys, if there’s
ever been a time you don’t want to slice a ball, now don’t. First guy, guess what he does.
Right into him. All the guns looking at us. We just, “Hi, guys. How are you doing?” And
he was up there playing golf. And we got a kick out of it. We got to meet him, say hello.
But, yeah. Other than the Philippines, not too many—you could go down to Manila, too.
That was fun. Particularly when you check into the Manila Hilton and your name is
Mennella.
JB:
Yeah.
BM:
Yeah. “Can we help you?” “Yes.” “Your name, sir?” “Mennella.” “Yeah, we know where
you are. What’s your name?” [laughs] And so then—I remember my—our wives came
over. So my wife’s walking down the hallway, and the maids would come out of the
room and they’d go, [imitates a laugh]. And they’re pointing and—they thought she was
Miss Manila. Like, instead of Mrs.—no, Mrs. Not Miss. Mrs. Manila. So they thought
she was a big deal.
JB:
Better service, huh?
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BM:
Big deal to me. Not to them.
00:48:41
[Second WESTPAC cruise]
JB:
So that’s—when’s your first tour over?
BM:
July of 1971.
JB:
And it’s back to where?
BM:
Back to San Diego. Again, it was a pretty big honor that I—when the air wing gets close
to being back to shore, it flies off, so you get there a day or two before the boat. And I
was allowed to fly in the back of one of the planes in the fly off, which, to me, that was a
pretty big deal. Again, I’m the odd guy because I’m the one guy—the spook. But I guess
it was a nice—I guess they were saying thank you to me. They let me fly off. So I got
home a day or two before every—but all the air crews got in there. But, again, it made me
feel really good that the squadron thought enough that they let me participate in that
evolution. And it was cool. It was really nice.
We were back home. We knew we were going to go back. We thought it was going to be
quite a while. And then the—we were in the phase of the war where the ground guys
were being extracted and it was pretty much becoming an air war. And we were getting
ready and practicing. We were getting certain guys rotated out of the squadron. We got
new guys in. So we were reformulating crews to work together.
I had an opportunity not to make the second cruise, but I wrote a letter asking him that I
thought it would be best for the squadron for me to stay and make another cruise. So,
actually, I volunteered for the second one. I don’t think my wife ever knew that, but I did.
And I’m glad I did. It really, I think, paid dividends for me and for the squadron. We
were supposed to leave—I don’t remember when we were supposed to leave. But we
went to the boat one day. My wife drove three of us from the base down to the carrier that
was at North Island. And my job as an intelligence—is to notice things, to look at
photography and be able to pick things out and everything. And my first impression was
the boat was parked backwards. Normally the bow is in from the sea and the stern’s out.
And when I got there, the back of the boat was pointed towards us. I didn’t say anything
to anybody because I just thought, well, maybe it’s just me.
But we got on board and kiss—I kissed my wife goodbye. And she said, you know—
because we were going to go out to sea for like three or four days and practice evolutions,
getting ready for a cruise. And we noticed that the boat didn’t leave. And we’re all kind
of like, well, you know, we’re supposed to be gone. And it just sat there. Finally, they
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came on board and they said, due to the ramp up of operations in WESTPAC, in
Vietnam, that we were leaving in four days. Go home, get your stuff in order, and we’re
just going to go. So we all go, “Yay. Oh, bummer.”
So I call my wife and I say, you know, “We’re not going out to sea.” “Oh, great. I’ll
come down and get you.” And so all the three guys and myself, we all get in the car, and
nobody says a word. Nobody’s talking. She’s just, [imitates talking with his hand] “Duhduh-duh, oh, what are going to do? And, oh, duh-duh-duh-duh.” So we dropped
everybody off. And at that point, we lived in Del Mar, which is right down on the water.
And I took her down to the beach, and we’re walking up and down the beach. And she’s
just, “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.” And I’m pretty quiet. And finally she looks at me and she
says, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Well, I’ve got some bad news. We’re leaving in four
days.” And here’s the kind of squadron that we had. With that notification, probably 75
percent of us got together that night and we had a party and had just a big send-off. And
then everybody did their thing and then off we went.
JB:
You guys were tight. Seventy-five percent.
BM:
We were tight.
JB:
Yeah.
BM:
We were tight. We were tight. We TransPac-ed very quickly. Almost blew right by—we
didn’t stop in Hawaii. We just kept going. But we practiced when we were off Hawaii,
and we lost an airplane. The first airplane that we lost in the squadron, we lost off of
Hawaii. And they had a full load of weapons. And in—when we were in combat
operations, we always had a centerline fuel tank, which was a big, long pod right
underneath the main part of the fuselage. And to take off in a carrier, you have a bridle
that hooks onto the airplane, and that’s what throws you down. And then it releases, and
the plane takes off.
Well, it went down. It’s called a bridle slap. The bridle went down. It came back up, and
it slapped the bottom, and it ruptured the fuel tank. So to get an F—to get most of these
airplanes, we had afterburner. And so he’s in full afterburner, so that fuel is just going
right back into the afterburner and it’s igniting. It’s catching on fire. Well, this is at night,
so he looks like a rocket going off the front end of the boat. They don’t really know
what’s going on because the airplane’s working mechanically. But the air boss yells for
them to eject. And when he says, “Eject,” you do what you’re told. So they punch out. In
hindsight, if the pilot had taken a minute to just pickle off all the bombs and the
centerline fuel tank, he probably could have saved the airplane. That’s hindsight, and
hindsight’s always perfect. But anyway, so they ejected. The airplane went in, and the air
crew landed in the water. First thing you’ve got to do is get the boat out of the way. So
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the boat did a pretty good turn. But we recovered them, and they were fine. But that was
the excitement of going by Hawaii.
On the second cruise, we got out there and things were heating up pretty quickly. And our
second cruise was—just a total opposite of the first. The first cruise had been down south,
nice cyclic operations. The second cruise, we’re back to Alpha strikes. We’re going into
Haiphong. We’re mining. We’re going into Hanoi. I remember we didn’t know what was
going to happen. But I was in IOIC when the order came down for the first full Alpha
strike. And, you know, an Alpha strike is just 35, 40 airplanes, A-6s, A-7s, F-4s. Lots of
different responsibilities. You’ve got MiG CAP. You’ve got the guys that go in first for
flak suppression, SAM suppression, then you have the strike aircraft. And you have the
fighters to—protecting the MiG CAP, protecting on the way out. So lots of moving parts.
Very complicated. The evolution is a lot longer. You did about three a day instead of 10
cyclic ops just because of the number of airplanes and the magnitude.
So the first time we briefed one of those, it was a pretty big deal. And all the senior
officers came into IOIC and were sitting right there. And the head of every air wing is
called a CAG, which is Commander of the Air Group, and his job is to be in charge of all
the squadron skippers, who are in charge of their squadrons. So CAG briefed this first
Alpha strike. And it was—you know, in IOIC, we’re doing SAM—known SAM sites,
heavy Triple A sites, heavy Rules of Engagement. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.
And then you had all the target allocation, the—everybody’s mission objectives. So they
were very lengthy briefs.
Everybody took off. The guys all went in. They’re into Hanoi, probably—I’ve heard
upwards—guys who were in the debriefs, upwards of 300 SAMs. They were just flying
everywhere. They weren’t even—they were just ballistically firing them. They weren’t
necessarily guiding. So when the—and then everybody would come back, and we had a
debrief. And that, we thought, was going to be like a one- or a two-time event. That’s just
the way it became. It was that way for days. We did Haiphong. We did Hanoi, which
hadn’t been hit in a long time. Back to Vinh, the Iron Triangle, Thanh Hóa Bridge, just
all these famous names that we’re kind of reliving it. They were mining the A-6. And the
whole time, you can’t hit any of the foreign national ships in Haiphong Harbor. That was
a big no-no. But a lot of times, you’d see little junks and smaller trawlers and stuff. They
were pretty well—they were fair game.
But what we thought might have been a one-time deal became a daily event. And we
lost—in our squadron, we lost two airplanes. And in the A-6 squadron that we were with,
one pretty famous is called Viceroy 502. And Viceroy 502 is one of the airplanes here at
the Museum here in Seattle that they found the remains. And part of the parts that were
found quite a bit later, after the war, are down in a museum—or down in the Museum.
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The airplane that we lost—I guess that’s significant in my life—is the new commanding
officer took over the squadron in about July. And we had been flying from, let’s say,
from—so from February—I’m sorry. Yeah, into July. So that’s about five months. So
we’re pretty well into this. And we all thought we were going to go home in October. But
an event that changed my life was the commanding officer—we had just left the
Philippines, and I had been waiting quite anxiously because my—I knew my wife was
expecting our first child. And it didn’t happen while we were in port, so I was kind of
down a little bit.
But we had just gotten back up to the line, and we were flying again. He walked in, and
he handed me a telegram. And we opened it up, and it was the telegram from home
saying that my first daughter had just been born, that the baby and Louise were fine. And
then he went out with his RIO later that night and flew a mission, and they never came
back. We lost them. And not exactly sure what happened. We have speculation of what
happened to him. But because of that, our squadron had a policy that if we lost an air
crew, they would send somebody home to talk to the families and to the wives and stuff.
And then the XO, who’s now the CO, wasn’t on board yet because he was still ashore. So
the guy who took over and was running—temporarily was running the squadron, he said,
“Hey, your relief is here. You’re due to go home in October to get out of the service. Go
home and stay home.” I didn’t need a lot of convincing that that might be a good idea.
So I left the boat. I had to—or I got to inventory the skipper’s personal things and put it
all together for his family to ship home. And then I flew off the boat. They flew me to Da
Nang, to Saigon, to the Philippines, to Guam, Hawaii, San Francisco, LA, and I finally
got to San Diego. And I really thought I’d be really clever to just knock on the door and
say hi. I totally forgot that knocks on the door in the middle of the night normally didn’t
mean good news. But anyway, at 4:00 in the morning, I’m knocking on the door. My
wife opens the door. She looks at me. Oh, excuse me. Back up. She said, “Who is it?”
And I said, “Western Union.” So she opens the door. She looked at me, just this blank
look. “You’re not supposed to be here.” And slammed the door. [laughs] Knock, knock,
knock. I am here.
So that was how I got out of the squadron and out of my second cruise. And then Viceroy
502 was lost just not too long after that.
01:04:38
[Discussion about photographs]
JB:
I’ve got a few pictures here I’d like to go through with you a little bit and maybe you can
elaborate on some of that. I’ll hand them to you. [hands photos to Mennella]
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BM:
This is a four-picture series. I just happen to be in three of them. These depict how I
would sit in—when I was briefing in IOIC. And this would be for a cyclic op. The
enlisted man behind me is the weather briefer. And we would always start the brief with a
weather brief, like I mentioned earlier. And behind the green curtain, it’s kind of like
World War II-ish, where they would pull back the curtain and you got to see. We had
pin—we had big maps covered with acetate all of North and South Vietnam. And in that,
we had pins for each of the squadrons that would show where they were going for that
particular mission. And so it shows just the two of us, I guess, posing for a picture.
Another one shows him doing his weather briefing. One is me sitting at the desk getting
ready. I’m doing the intelligence, probably, sector of that conversation or that cyclic op.
And then there’s an aircraft picture. It just happens to be the—a picture from the rear end
of an F-4 showing the centerline fuel tank that I mentioned earlier. And it also shows a
load of ordnance hung on both sides of a Multiple Ejection Rack. And we normally carry
Mark 82 500-pound bombs. And that would be a typical bomb load for us to carry.
This is another—the second page, it’s a four-picture shot. Three of the photos is our
squadron ready room on board the ship. This is where we would get together for all
officer meetings. Each event, the crews would be meeting in here and sitting in these
chairs and watching the briefing officers on a closed-circuit TV screen. It’s where we
watched the movies at night. There’s notices, maps, and messages of importance to all
the officers who were in the squadron.
There’s a picture of an individual in a flight suit. His name is Pete Pettigrew. He was on
the CAG staff. Again, CAG, Commander Air Group, was the staff that was responsible
for the air wing. We were CAG—it was CAG-11. So it’s Air Wing 11. And, again, that
was made up of the two F-4s, the one A-6, the two A-7s, the early warning, and the photo
airplanes. And the fuel people, the tankers, the A-3s on board the ship.
His picture is of particular note. On our second cruise, he was one of two pilots—he was
flying in one of our airplanes and with another pilot from our squadron with his backseat
RIO and this gentleman, Pete Pettigrew, with another guy’s name, Mike McCabe. They
got two MiGs, 21s, on June—no, May 6th of ‘72. And it was a pretty big treat to get a
MiG in the squadron, so that was—we didn’t get any MiGs on our first one. We didn’t
even see any. And he has one other claim to fame, is that he was a technical advisor in
the Top Gun movie, the original Top Gun. And for those that really watched it carefully
and those of us that knew him, he was actually in one of the bar scenes, sitting at a table
looking to do bookwork with Kelly McGee [Kelly McGillis]. And again, he was a
technical advisor for the movie.
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This third photo shows a bunch of officers in flight suits. Except me. I’m in my normal
khaki uniform. These were all the pilots and NFOs in the squadron. And like I had—the
gentleman on his knees on the—in the front row on the far left, he was the other person
who got a MiG on May 6th. So… And he was one of my closest friends. He regrettably
was killed in a mid-air collision in 1979. And then in the second row in the center of the
photograph was the leaving commanding officer and the new commanding officer, and
he was the gentleman who was lost. And incidentally, I had gone back to Vietnam Wall
and done etchings of Commander Pitzen [John R. Pitzen] and his backseat, O. J. Pitzen—
I mean Pender. Pitzen and Pender.
And then for my daughter’s birthday—I never call my daughter on her birthday. I always
call her the next day. Because when she was born on the 13th, it was already my 14th. So
all this time—and she’s 46—I always call her the next day, and she just expects it. But
one of the things, I kept that telegram. And then I took the etchings of Pitzen and Pender
from the Wall, and I had the telegram on top and then their names put down below. She
still has that.
This has one photo of an airplane. And then there’s three photos showing small ships out
in the Gulf. One is—one’s a junk. Another one is just what we called Mer ships. These
little Mer ships were used for transporting supplies from a cargo vessel up into the beach.
These junks were kind of fun because some guys in the air wing—maybe in our
squadron, too—you can see that they kind of have a bunch of sails sticking up. Well, if
you go over them really low and pull up, your exhaust would inflate these sails and it
would just roll the junk right over on its side. And it was kind of a sport for a while. And
our guys were doing it and having a lot of fun until one guy came back with a little bit of
mast in his wing. And that kind of put an end to junk buzzing. It wasn’t—
JB:
The junks. It’s my understanding that they were also used by the CIA. And you had to
know kind of which ones they were using and leave them alone.
BM:
I can’t help you there.
JB:
Okay.
BM:
Nope. I—nope. No, I’m not good on that. I can’t tell you. They—no. Can’t help.
This last photo is a composite photo. Composite being that it’s made up of multiple other
photos. This would be a representation of what my job would be as an air intelligence
officer. If I knew my crews were assigned a certain road segment or they were assigned a
target, if I could go and take—I would—first, I would try and get visual—vertical
coverage of an airfield or of a bridge or some other target of consequence. This is a
composite in that it kind of shows the approach coming up to—from one of the
2020 © The Museum of Flight
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quadrants. I don’t know if it’s northeast—oh. From the southern quadrant to the Vinh
Airfield. And what I would do is I would take multiple photos and make it so it turns it
almost into a 3-D, so you’re looking at it and you get the feeling of moving across the
terrain. Again, anything I could do to assist my air crews—or even in another squadron—
air crew in being able to identify what their target was. And photography like this was
just available, and we would just cut and paste and put all the stuff together to try and
help—just make it so the guys could get in there, optimally hit it the first time, get it done
so they didn’t have to go back.
This last photo is a picture of an F-4. It’s in level flight. It’s a pic—it’s one of the
squadron airplanes that I was—it’s a VF-114 airplane. Zot’s on the tail. You can see him.
This guy—a lot of times, guys would go in country, but the weather would not cooperate.
So they couldn’t visually see what they were sent in—assigned to hit. So the A-6s
primarily had capability with their navigation equipment to be able to know that they
were at a certain point and—whether on the Ho Chi Minh Trail or on land targets. This is
just straight and level bombing, getting several airplanes together in a small formation,
the lead airplane, getting to a certain point and just telling everybody to pickle. And this
is a load of bombs that’s in process of being released. These are 500-pound bombs. Not a
lot of fun compared to diving and rolling in and doing normal bombing operations.
The last one: four pictures. On the top right is an A-7. Wings brought up for most of
the—all the wings on the airplanes on the flight deck collapsed. And that was by design,
so they had more room to park additional aircraft. And this aircraft still has his wings in
the collapsed position. He’s got—looks like he’s only got six bombs on three—on six
bomb racks, three on each side. They’re probably 1,000-pound bombs or could even be
2,000-pound. Because that’s a pretty light load for an A-7. So…
And then there’s two other pictures, both just happened to be me being in a flight suit.
One’s right by the left intake of an F-4, and one by the nose on the flight deck in flight
gear. Because I was allowed—on the first cruise, I did actually get in flight time combat,
and I did get to go in country and do bomb releasing. And, again, I kind of became
known as the flying AI. So the guys in the air wing pretty well—and what I—why I
wanted to do this, even though I wasn’t supposed to, it just lended credibility to those
guys. They knew that I was doing what they were doing, and it helped them give me—
give them confidence that I knew—when I was briefing, that it’s kind of, “Hey, I’ve been
there too.” I didn’t get to go up north. I wish I had. I wish I could have. But I wasn’t
allowed to. The squadron wouldn’t let me. But that’s some pictures of me in flight gear
for being on the flight deck.
01:18:29
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[Post-military life and career]
JB:
Well, thanks. So now you’re back home. How much longer are you in the service?
BM:
A little over a month. So I’m technically unemployed. I didn’t get out. I stayed in the
Reserves. But for a day job, I didn’t really have one. But the whole time I was in the
service, I knew I wanted to be in the car business. My dad’s business was growing. It was
successful. So in ‘72, returned to Seattle. And a lot of conversations that, yeah, this is
what I wanted to do. I’d been prepping for it, my college background. I got a degree in
accounting. So I had the—to be able to—ability to be able to read the books. And just
started cutting my teeth being in a management position. And I worked in various
positions throughout the dealership for my dad from ‘72 to ‘80.
In about ‘78, ‘79, my dad, along with another gentleman, bought the Beechcraft franchise
at Boeing Field for Washington. And they had—the franchise was for Washington,
Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. And they sold airplanes and ran fixed-base
operations. So it made a nice transition for my father to leave the dealership and go on to
another business. And then I was the general manager from ‘80 to ‘85.
In the mean—by then I have three children. Our daughter, Erica, the oldest one, was born
in ‘72. Her sister was born in ‘77. No, I’m sorry. ‘75. And their brother was born in ‘77.
And so we’re raising a family, we’re working, kind of back in the yard. We have—I
haven’t gotten too far away. I’m living kind of where I had grown up. But we finally
were able to buy the dealership from my father in ‘85. He went on to stay in flight craft.
And then one of my brothers, he and my—they—started another business.
While I had the Ford franchise, I expanded the business, enlarged it, took on the Isuzu
franchise, took on a Subaru franchise. And in addition to just the day-to-day operations, I
got into things like Rotary, was president of my Rotary Club. I got into the Youth
Exchange Program, where Rotary would send students to a foreign country for a year to
study abroad. And I had—I managed a group of about 35 kids I would place around the
world outbound and then I would bring—also bring in about 35 kids that we would place
around Puget Sound. And they would study here and be here for about nine months.
Professionally, I kind of got into the politics and representation of expanding my job. I
was elected by my peers to be what’s called the Ford National Dealer Council, where 14
dealers go back—from the entire country, go back and discuss issues of sales, product,
service, issues with the senior management of Ford Motor Company. I did that for two
years. A lot of traveling.
JB:
That’s quite an honor, though, too.
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BM:
It was. Yeah. It was very nice. And, yeah, it was. The community apparently rep—felt
comfortable with my ability to be able to represent them. And I would travel the states,
and I would meet with them and would have dialogue on their issues and tell them what
we were doing. Became chairman of the Northwest Ford Dealers Advertising Group,
which ran, again, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. We would do the
non-factory advertising. Ford says, “Buy a Ford.” Northwest Ford dealers would say,
“Buy a Ford now.” And then the Ford dealer would say, “Buy your Ford now here.” So I
got into that level and was on the committee for three or four years and was chairman.
And then I guess my finest accomplishment was I was head of the Washington State
Auto Dealers. So all of the dealers, regardless of the make or brand in the state of
Washington, nominated and appointed me to represent them for a year.
JB:
That’s quite an honor again.
BM:
Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]
JB:
Truly is. I want to roll back for just a second—
BM:
Sure.
JB:
—before we continue on. So ‘78, you’re out of the Reserves. How many medals did you
get? Tell us about your medals.
BM:
How many? [counting to himself] Three, four, five, six. I don’t know. I got a—on the
first cruise, I earned an Air Medal. And I was rewarded the Navy Achievement Medal, I
believe, for my work as an intelligence officer and just my all-around efforts. On the
second cruise, I earned the Navy Commendation Medal, which is a significant honor, I
think. I don’t—they’re not given out like popcorn.
JB:
It is. Yeah.
BM:
I donated all of my—all that stuff was in a box at home for 25, 30 years. So I donated all
of it to The Museum of Flight. And they could probably do something more rep—than
I—than my kids would.
JB:
Good choice. I’m sorry for the interruption. Go back to your career.
BM:
It afforded us a lovely lifestyle. Our kids—I always tried to instill in the kids the same,
you know—you don’t have a job, but you do. When you’re in high school, your job is to
get good enough grades to go to the college that you want to go to. The kids were in the
Catholic school system, and they went to private schools here. And my daughter went to
Holy Names, and both my other daughter and son went to Seattle Prep here in Seattle.
And those were nice schools that gave them a good launch platform to go to college. One
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became a fourth generation Husky, went to Washington. The other two got a little liberal
and decided they’d go to Oregon and become a Duck. So one day a year that creates a
little bit of trouble in the household.
We like—my wife and I like to travel. She’s in a lot of volunteer work. Interesting story
on my wife. She didn’t finish college. So when my kids—we were at a football game,
and she just happened to say that one of her largest regrets—when my daughter—second
daughter was telling it, we—all of us that she wasn’t going to go to college because she
was going to be an actress. So she didn’t have to go to college. So my wife said, “Well,
you know, one of the largest regrets is that I didn’t finish school.” So my oldest daughter
picked up on this. And they came to me and they said, “Dad, for Christmas, I’ve got an
idea. Let’s send mom to college.” “Okay.” [laughs] So they made—they got a little
diploma jacket and they wrote out—had me write out a poem, and we gave it to her. And
she kind of didn’t know what to do.
But she did it. She said, “Well, they’ll never accept me.” This is like ‘91-ish. So she said,
“Well, they’ll never take me.” I said, “Well, the least you can do is fill out the
application. Let’s find out.” So she did. And they came back, and they said, “You’re
accepted.” She graduated from college 30 years to the day that she graduated from high
school. And we have both of her diplomas up on the wall. And it’s literally the same day,
June 6th, 30 years apart. So…
We travel a lot. We do a lot in our communities. Right now, I am a teacher’s assistant at
the school where my grandkids are. We have seven grandchildren now. Oldest daughter
has two, a boy and a girl. Middle daughter has four, and my son has one. And they’re all
at St. Francis School, a Catholic school here in Seattle—in Burien. And I volunteer in the
second, fourth, and fifth grade during the week, about 15 hours a week working with the
teachers on math skills for the kids. So I generally—I get the ones that are having a little
time picking up on the concepts.
My wife does a lot of volunteer work. She’s head of the foundation at our local hospital.
And we love traveling and do it as much as we can.
JB:
You’ve done civic works also, haven’t you? Steering committees and that kind of thing?
BM:
Yeah, yeah. Outside of Rotary, which I was really involved in for a long time, our
hospital wanted to do a Cancer Care Unit. And I was on the senior committee that
worked for the development of the steering committee and then the committee to go out
and do the fundraising effort. That was much—that’s where I learned real quickly I
don’t—I’d rather be an organizer than go out and ask people for money. That’s one thing
I just don’t particularly care doing for that.
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JB:
What have I missed? What have we missed? What would you like to add to this?
BM:
It’s been a great ride. I’ve been very fortunate. I had loving parents that were strict, that
taught us great us great skills. I’m proud that we’ve instilled those skills in our kids, and
that we’ve worked on it. I’ve just enjoyed everything I’ve done. I’ve tried to give it 100
percent. And just, whatever I’m doing, when I’m doing it—it’s like I said earlier, do
everything hard. Work hard. Play hard. I just don’t drink hard anymore. [laughs]
01:31:22
[Advice for young people]
JB:
So along the same lines, advice for a young person starting out today, what would you
give them for advice?
BM:
Study hard. Discipline. Organization. It’s just—it’s a different world today, and there’s a
lot of distractions, a lot of crazy things going on. But learn the basics. Learn the—you’ve
got to build the house from the foundation up. Get the—get as broad a foundation as you
can. Along the way, hopefully you figure out a dream and then go after the dream.
01:32:13
[Discussion about donated items]
JB:
[addressing oral history team] Do you have any questions?
KELCI HOPP:
Nothing super in depth. Just a couple of, like, points of clarification. If you
could state your entire date of birth, just so that we have it.
BM:
September 16th, 1946.
KH:
Excellent, thank you. And then you mentioned that your squadron won the “E” Award.
Do you recall which year that was?
BM:
[pauses] I—1972.
KH:
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And I really think that’s most of my questions. I did have
one other. I didn’t know if you might be able to talk a little bit about what’s of yours
that’s on display downstairs, if anything of note that maybe had additional information
attached to it that you could share.
BM:
I know a lot of—there’s a lot of photography that’s attributed to “my collection.” [makes
air quotes] Some of them are actually my pictures, but some of the pictures that have a
header—or, I mean, a thing below it that say “CVA-63,” that’s not actually my photo. It
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came from the carrier. It came from something that—another part of—I didn’t take the
picture.
I don’t know what floor it is. It’s not the main floor. But I know my medals are there.
There’s a copy of my squadron patch, Zot, which says VF-114 on it. Some patches of
different things that guys collect and put on flight jackets. Generally, typically, they’re
about the aircraft type and places of significance that were in country, in Vietnam or
something. I believe I gave you my Saint Christopher Medal that I wore. Later I know I
gave you a large—or I donated a number of photographs that, again, I just had in a box.
And then I gave them to you and I kind of thought, like, well, this is crazy. They’re never
going to figure out what they are. So I came back and tried to tell you—put them in a
chronology so you’d know what they were. A lot of them are people photos. Some
places. But things on board the ship and people. I don’t really know what else you have.
01:35:21
[Details about air intelligence work]
KH:
On the photography piece of it, out of curiosity, do you remember the kind of photo—or
the kind of camera that you used and how some of those photographs were taken?
BM:
It was a Nikon Nikkormat that everybody bought when they’re in their first trip to Hong
Kong. I just carried it on the airplane with me. Lots of guys carried tape recorders. Let me
back up. On the first cruise when were down south, probably the first three or four times
you might have done it. I always did it because a lot of my—the limited combat I got to
do was always a thrill for me. So I got—I never knew if I was going to get to do it again.
On the second cruise, a number of guys would take cameras, and they also would carry
tape recorders. And the tape recorders were really beneficial in debriefing to try and piece
together all the chaotic—to roll 30 airplanes across a target in 25 seconds. I mean, it’s
just chaos. It’s organized chaos. And to be able to listen to conversations and in the
event—which mostly it never happened, in case there was a problem, you could maybe
piece together the dialogue and the events as they took place.
KH:
So that was like one of the tools that you used for air intelligence, was their tape
recordings?
BM:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. You could.
KH:
What were some of the other things you used? I know you mentioned that you got
reporting sent from you guy—from in—so that you could analyze it and then then brief
your squadron. What were some of the types of materials and intelligence that you got so
that you could then share that information?
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BM:
We got most of our targeting—all of our targeting came from above, whether it started in
Washington, D.C. or Hawaii. But it all—it’s a funnel and it funnels down, and we were
given our piece of the puzzle for that day. I would rely first on photography. I would rely
on debrief summaries that—whether the Air Force put them out or we put them out, of
defense. Defenses. Where were we going? What are we going to cross? What’s in the
area? And a lot of that was most—from visual observation would be the most important. I
did get sometimes information in my capacity that there might be MiG activity in a
certain area.
Visual was probably the most important because that was the most current. Because if
you could talk to a guy who was there two hours ago and he said, “This SAM site was
doing that,” or, “That SAM—,” you know, “This SAM site has moved from here to
there,” that’s what we needed to know. I just had to try and give the guys the best
information I could to keep them alive. And so they knew where the threats were.
KH:
And you were the only air intelligence officer for that squadron for your tours?
BM:
Yes. Yes. I replaced a gentleman that I met when I got there. And my replacement, I—
while I don’t really recall him too much now, I’m sure I met him and worked with him a
little bit before I left the ship.
KH:
To transfer.
BM:
Yeah. But I was one of—so there was two F-4, two A-7, one A-6. So I was one of five
intelligence officers that were doing what I had talked about.
KH:
Okay. And for my own curiosity, you’ve obviously explained that photographs were the
most useful. Would those photographs come from other pilots? And then how did you
come to receive the photographs? Were there, like, facilities on-site where they could be
developed and then given to you to use? Or did they get shipped in somehow?
BM:
Target facility—target photography could come from within or without. If we were going
to be given a new type of target, that could come from Hawaii. It could come from
Saigon. We had a photo squadron, like Vigilantes. They’re RA-5Cs. Typically, they
would go over a target after a strike group would take what we call BDA photography,
Bomb Damage Assessment. And that photography would be vertical, and it could also be
horizontal. And that would be real-time photography developed on the ship, processed,
and just brought to us. So we could see, literally within hours after a strike, the
effectiveness. Did the bridge fall or did it not?
When we were talking earlier, John showed me a photo of an A-7 pulling off of a target,
which was a bridge. And you can actually see—you can’t tell if the bridge is down, but
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you can see that the bombs were going off, and there was smoke. That photo would have
been done by the RA-5C, and it’s just developed and it’s right there for us. It was all
cataloged and processed, so the minute we knew where we were going to be assigned
targets, we could—that photography could be brought up immediately. It was housed
right in the area where we worked.
KH:
Excellent. That’s so interesting. I think that’s one thing that researchers would be
interested in going forward and have—if they view the oral history, is kind of
conceptualizing the technology at the time to get photos like that.
BM:
It was taken out of the air—the guys that had their handheld photography, that was
slower. We’d have to take that into the Philippines to—it was the old-fashioned way.
They weren’t digital cameras. [laughs]
KH:
Right.
BM:
This photo came off, was in a can, they’d develop it in the bowels of the ship somewhere,
and you could literally just roll through it. It’d be on two spools. And you had white
gloves, and you’d just kind of roll through. You know, it’s a reverse image because
you’re looking at negative film. But we would just get our little magnifying glasses and
just actually just roll it right by.
KH:
Thank you.
BM:
Sure.
KH:
I think that’s the end of my questions.
JB:
Bruce, I want to thank you for all your service and for taking part in this oral history.
BM:
Well, thank you. It’s—you’re welcome. Anything that will make it interesting for
somebody 50 years from now thinking about, whoa, how did they do it way back then?
[laughter] No, thank you.
01:43:43
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2020 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
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The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
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Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mennella, Bruce E., 1946-
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Barth, John
Biographical Text
<p>Bruce Mennella served in the U.S. Navy with Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) during the Vietnam War. He later operated a car dealership in Burien, Washington.</p>
<p>Bruce Edward Mennella was born on September 16, 1946 in New York City to Vincent and Madeline Mennella. His father had been a pilot in World War II, flying transport airplanes from Sand Point Naval Air Station. After the war, Vincent obtained a college degree under the GI Bill. In mid-1947, he and his family moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked for NCM, a cash register company. In the mid-1950s, Vincent opened a Ford dealership in Burien, Washington. He also remained an active pilot in the Navy Reserves.</p>
<p>Mennella attended school in Burien, Washington, graduating from Highline High school in 1964. He attended the University of Washington’s School of Business. He planned on joining his family’s car business after graduation; however, the onset of the Vietnam War altered his post-graduation plans. As a sophomore, he went to a Navy recruiter and worked out a deal to enter the military after graduation. He passed the aviation written exam in order to become a pilot, but due to his eyesight, he did not pass the medical exam. Instead, he went into Air Intelligence. Graduating in June 1968, he reported to Aviation Office Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. From there, he went to Air Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. While in Denver, he re-connected with Louise A. Vacca, a woman he had dated occasionally in high school who was now a flight attendant with United Airlines. They were married in 1969.</p>
<p>Once he had completed his training, Mennella was assigned to NAS Miramar in San Diego, California, arriving there in November 1969. VF-114 flew McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II aircraft and was reformatting after a WESTPAC cruise. He spent the next 11 months training, including flying in the back seat of VF-114 airplanes whenever possible. The USS Kitty Hawk, associated with the squadron, was at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington for refurbishing at that time.</p>
<p>Mennella’s first cruise was from November 1970 to July 1971 on the USS Kitty Hawk. Operating in the middle of a bombing halt and in the southern area off the coast of Vietnam, the cruise did not see a great deal of activity. Mennella worked in the Integrated Operations Information Center (IOIC), briefing and debriefing pilots on their targets. Briefings included weather conditions, rules of engagement, tanking procedures, emergency procedures, and an overview of the area of operations. In his off time, he traveled in Sasebo, Japan; Hong Kong; and Subic Bay, Philippines, where his wife was able to visit him.</p>
<p>Mennella’s second cruise, also on the USS Kitty Hawk, began in February 1972. This time, the carrier operated off the north coast of Vietnam and included missions going into Hanoi. Each Alpha strike took 35 to 40 airplanes in a three-operations-per-day cycle. Briefings were longer and more complex due to the area of operations. About five months into the tour, Mennella’s wife had their first child. Since Mennella’s replacement was on board, Mennella was sent home. He left the Navy in October 1972. He was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for his first cruise and earned the Navy Commendation Medal on his second cruise.</p>
<p>Back in Seattle, Mennella went to work for his father’s Ford dealership. He assumed the role of general manager in 1980 and five years later bought the business. He added Isuzu and Subaru franchises shortly after. His success brought him on to the Ford National Dealer Council, where he served for two years. After that, he was elected chairman of the Northwest Ford Dealers Advertising Group covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.</p>
<p>Mennella and his wife ultimately had three children and seven grandchildren. As of 2020, they were still living in the Seattle area.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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OH_Mennella_Bruce
OH_Mennella_Bruce_transcription
Title
A name given to the resource
Bruce Mennella oral history interview
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Bruce Mennella and interviewer John Barth, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, January 28, 2020.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Vietnam War veteran Bruce Mennella is interviewed about his life and military service. He discusses his career with the United States Navy, focusing particularly on his time as an air intelligence office with Fighter Squadron VF-114 on board the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). He also touches on his experiences growing up in Washington State during the 1950s and 1960s and on his post-military career managing a car dealership in Seattle.
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- College years and joining the U.S. Navy -- Air Intelligence School and marriage -- Assignment to Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) -- Deployment to WESTPAC and mission logistics -- Activities during downtime -- Second WESTPAC cruise -- Discussion about photographs -- Post-military life and career -- Advice for young people -- Discussion about donated items -- Details about air intelligence work
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-01-28
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grumman A-6 (A2F) Intruder/Prowler Family
Kitty Hawk (Aircraft carrier)
McDonnell F-4 (F4H) Phantom II Family
Mennella, Bruce E., 1946-
Mennella, Louise A. (Vacca)
United States. Navy
United States. Navy. Fighting Squadron VF-114
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Vought A-7 Corsair II Family
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
California
Colorado
Philippines
United States
Vietnam
Washington (State)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Extent
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1 recording (1 hr., 43 min., 43 sec.) : digital
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight