The Unauthorized Randy “Duke” Cunningham Page

Greetings from the cheap seats up here in the peanut gallery. Been following along since they called Cunningham's bluff. Have known him since AOCS—he was stuck on stupid then,too. LB—I'm a Sgt Ricker man, too. One helluva fine Marine—I owe him.

Re the A-7 that got wet during CQ on Connie; pilot was a friend of mine-Russ Pearson. I had been CQing on the Hancock in F-8's but they ran out of time. Several days later (11 June) went out and got 2day/4nite and sarted mentally preparing myself for numerous cold ones. Alas, evil LSO absconded with my trusty Gator, said something about rank & privelege, flipped me the bird and said good luck. Hope he choked on his adult beverage. Not sure the date of the flight deck mishap but a day or so after I went down to sickbay and Russ gave me the whole story. One lucky dude, he. As I remember it, Russ said the docs wanted to helo him off rather than wait a few days for the ship to pull in but he said no way, it was just too painful and would wait. Docs said ok. I went to the powers that be (anyone has more power than a FRP) and sniveled on the manifest. I was waiting in the ATO cage when the guy got hurt and I was sent back to the ready room. Was really ticked off at the time until the Captain made a 1MC announcement, but have thanked God a million times since for the change of events. Later I was told that it was Cunningham that had blown the guy down by not coming to idle as the yellow shirt was turning him and that he was a CPO from VF-121! Any truth there LB? Later.

Russ Pearson . . . now there is a name that I have not heard for a long, long time. A very good man. A VT-26 type of guy as I recall. He had that droll delivery when telling a TINS story that was great.

I never heard about Cunningham rolling one down the flight deck. Too much power on deck was something that FRPs were known to do.

I never heard about Cunningham rolling one down the deck. Every now and again, a nugget would screw up and do it. When we were told to use as little power as possible on the flight deck, I believed them. Early on it went the other way for me. I used too little power coming out of the gear on CQ in the F-8 and the yellow shirts went a tad nuts.

Russ Pearson was one of the good guys. Excellent droll delivery of a TINS story.

The underwater ejection was on 10 June; Don't know who'se plane blew donw the yellowshirt, or who the fellow was. Russ was supposed to be medivad'd to Balboa but there was only one evac space and the yellow-shirt got that.

Here's the story from Pearson himself:

http://www.ejectionsite.com/eunderh2o.htm

Sgt Ricker, eh....yes, on hell of a man. Small world, eh, James. Even the Sr. Ensign on here...we surely passed each other in the passage way during the mini-cruise on Connie, 1971.

Thanks LB it was good to read Rog's story again.

Also I read that Cunningham had gotten finished with his physical and psych exams and would soon be moved to a joint in California.

I also read that his wife and the AG had made a deal on the money and it will be announced Oct 6th or 7th. The only honorable thing that Cunningham did was to take a bullet for her by saying that she know nothing and that he had conned her into it.