Last Name:  McCabe 
First Name:  Bill
Middle Name or Intl: 
Nickname:  
Address:  HC 61, Box 168A
City/ST/Zip: Glenwood, NM  88039
Phone:  575-539-2627
Email:  billval@gilanet.com
Receive VP-28 Email Messages?:  1  (Yes=1 / No=0)
Rate/Rank:  AO2
Years in VP-28:  57
Deceased:  
Biography:  HC 61, Box 168A, Glenwood NM, 88039, (505)539-2627

Hi Bob Colley,
Thank you for your response. Memories are 50 years old now. Names are the toughest part of aging for me. Can't remember neighbors names much of the time. Oh well. Wish I could find my Cruise book. I have hung on to it for years. Sunk into the bowels of the store room I suppose. No doubt my kids will find it when I am gone.

I left the Squadron in December of 1957. Went home to Denver. Couldn't find a job as an AO so went back to my Texaco Service Station job. At that time my wife "Ducky" a small Chinese women and I had a son who was born in Hawaii, now 50 years old. Fortunately I was hired out of the Service station job as an apprentice Electrician. I went on to study Electronics and hired with Martin/Marietta as a technician on the Titan ICBM test stands near Denver. Laid off with downsizing after 5 years I was fortunate to land a job with Los Alamos Ntl. Laboratory, near Santa Fe, and had a wonderful career in instrumentation with a large Particle Physics (Atom Smasher) machine. My employer was the University of California with which I am retired since 1993.

My first wife of 21 years was killed in an auto crash, along with our 14 year old daughter, in 1977. We had 5 children. I remarried to another Chinese woman, my age, who brought her daughter into our lives. Valerie and I have been married now for 28 years.

In 1995 we were traveling, with a travel trailer, and came upon a delightful area in SW New Mexico. We bought a small country store and moved to Alma NM, near the community of Glenwood. The store kept us busy for 10 years and we have been retired again now for almost 2 years.

We live in the largest county in NM with a total population of about 3500 people. Our home, bordering, Ntl. Forest, is in a valley with views of 10,000 foot peaks and the Gila Wilderness.

Val and I are both in decent health for our age, I'm 73, she 71.

We really enjoy having visitors and look forward to making contact with Shipmates of VP 28.

Bill McCabe

PS. Bob, I remember clearly the first aircraft to fly over our raft on the night of the ditching. The story was that your crew was intending to rendezvous with a submarine in the area and begin the search. Our radar mast worked so well that you thought we were the submarine. We had a small radio aboard and clued you in.

VP Navy entry.......

VP-28 July 22nd, 1957 Mishap
I was a crewmember,flying in the afterstation, on CF-8 while on night exercises from NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii. Pilot LCDR Ahern was making a shallow dive run on a target. When the searchlight came on the target was revealed as a small fishing boat. Pulling out of the shallow dive, the starboard engine exploded with a ball of fire. Flames were streaming past my afterstation window. Likely cause was determined as power recovery tubine disintigration. Apparently the engine had magnesium componets and it burned fiercly. My recollection is that the pilot made at least one dive attempting to extinguish the flame. It was unsuccesful and Ahern told us to get our chutes on and prepare to bail. I believe that dropping crew over the ocean far out to sea at night probably influenced the pilots to change to ditching mode. Later we were told that the aircraft had a poor record in breaking up upon ditching and ditching should be performed with wheels up. The wheels had been lowered due in concern that an exploding tire could damage the wing. We were told to buckle into our ditching station and prepare to ditch. My ditching station was immediately behind the wing passage with the small adjacent window jettisoned. Upon impact my area immediately filled with water. I was unable to unlatch my seat belt and felt like it was the end. I had a wife and three month old son back at the base and all I could think of was the the son with no Dad. Calming myself down, I managed to free the seat belt and my good buddy Darrel