We all celebrate letter writer James Tobler’s right to disparage the U.S. Navy while they put their lives on the line protecting his right to do that (“Overrule Navy plan to increase Whidbey’s Growler flights,” The Herald, July 4). The freedom they protect also gives him the right to expose his ignorance. How much practice do pilots need?
Getting a high performance airplane on and off an aircraft carrier is almost as dangerous as actual combat. It takes constant training to maintain the proficiency necessary to be ready to deploy on short notice. Projecting power on the seas all over the earth without depending on foreign bases is what the Navy does to preserve as much freedom as possible in this troubled world.
The air station on Whidbey Island was established there in 1943. Mr. Tobler apparently does not see any correlation in the fact that it is near the Pacific Ocean which is patrolled by other non-carrier based aircraft operating from that base. He does not realize that thousands of gallons of additional fuel would be burned on each flight back and forth to Eastern Washington.
The outlying field at Coupeville and the Naval Air Station have simulated carrier decks painted on the runways that the pilots use for practice. It offers the advantage of practice hitting a stationary deck before trying to hit an actual moving deck at sea which isn’t practice at all, but the real thing. It is noisy but necessary.
There are not many residents on the north end of Whidbey Island who moved there before 1943. So if they are not in the Navy, they moved there voluntarily and they have the freedom to move again. But the vast majority of the residents of Whidbey are proud to be the hosts of the people who protect the freedom of even our most ungrateful fools who just hate the U.S. military.
Stanley L. Walker
Mount Vernon
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