Just Call Me Frank!: Memories of a Navy Jet Pilot

A great up-close personal tale of a previous time relating some experiences in a special segment of Naval Aviation, tactical reconnaissance. I have always considered the “50s era of Naval aviation the “golden age”. The men who operated off of straight carrier decks flying the first jets in combat had to have flying skills only exceeded by their bravery. Hamrick was of that era. Not like today or even the early ‘70s. Probably half the adventures Skipper Hamrick recounts in his book in today’s Navy would get you booted. Among those still around who were part of the Vigi community Captain Hamrick remains legendary for his flying and leadership skills. He is surprisingly very FRANK in his observations naming names and pointing out some of the problems of the bureaucratic Navy. I particularly like his comments on getting a CAG job after being in the reconnaissance community. I could not read this without feeling a certain melancholy for the good old days, we were soldiers once… and young.

My dad flew A5 Vigilante so this pilots inputs and stories made/helped me to relive stories from 1960/70's from my dad.Well written shows Navy life and trials for families and dealing with combat losses and operational accidents within flight test as he was civilian test pilot after USN career same as my dad. NAA Vigilante was biggest highest performance aircraft to ever fly off a carrier Mach 2+ and 9M a copy in 1959 also the most beautiful ever produced and highest loss rate more than 10% of total to Vietnam combat losses plus operational losses out of 225 produced.Losses were all as RA5C recon version except for those lost in peacetime as nuclear VAH heavy attack A5A variant from 1960-1965.

I read what Amazon give as a review. I just bought it about 60 seconds ago. Sounds like another great read of a small town country boy done good. However, I always wanted more information on what it was like to fly the Vigilante at low level over North Vietnam on a high speed photo recon. It's an airplane that you rarely hear about. Can't wait for it to arrive. Congratulations and a Big Thank You to Frank for putting this out here!

This is not a very interesting book and very little detail about the missions and aircraftIf you are looking to learn anything about the RA-5 pick something else

Great book about an accomplished man. Family and friends have always been the focus of his life and still are.

Really good Navy flying book.

Excellent book.

For those of you aviators or aspiring aviators, this is a great read. The personal accounts of his experiences are very interesting and entertaining. Knowing the author made it all the more enjoyable to read.

An honest account of an ordinary US lad who overcame obstacles to become a USN fighter pilot. His time in the RA5C Vigilante is particularly interesting. As with many others, he found in his later staff career that his superiors were part of the problem. But he does give some good warning for any pilot based on his own near misses.

Das Buch ist gut als allgemeine Schilderung des Lebens eines Navy Piloten, insbesondere während der Zeit des Vietnam Krieges.Wenn Sie mit der militärischen Fliegerei bisher nichts oder nur wenig zu tun hatten, gibt es einige Eindrücke in das Leben eines Jet Piloten. Hierzu sind aber einige fachliche Aspekte, die angesprochen werden, zu wenige erklärt. Auf der anderen Seite ist meines Erachtens für Leser, die in der Materie "drinnen" sind, der Text viel zu allgemein gehalten. Technische Dinge werden nur angesprochen und nicht richtig erklärt. Auch bei Einsätzen ist die Schilderung recht oberflächlich gehalten.Daher kann ich leider die Bewertung, wie sie in Amazon.com abgegeben wurde, nicht ganz teilen. Deswegen nur "in Ordnung".

This was a very disappointing read. As an ex-Naval pilot myself I hoped for more about the flying and, especially, combat ops. The Vigilante was an amazing aircraft and I had hoped to learn more about it, however, the flying experiences played second fiddle to Hamrick writing about Hamrick. The book is poorly written and the impression is that Hamrick tried to squeeze too much into the number of pages available, thus creating a mediocre coverage of a lot rather than focusing on providing a more detailed and enjoyable coverage of interesting material.