I was in the boy scouts. My father encouraged me to attend and i did scout when i was 12 or so. Undergo coleaders abusive older drove. Actually spent a couple of years that the Civil Air Patrol. Actually the first time i ever sat in an airplane was at the Civil Air Patrol, indicated that took off beside me. Off into the wild blue yonder. I was always intrigued with the military, my dad had been a chief petty officer in world war ii and in my family, nobody ever graduated from college that i was aware of. And i remember when i was a senior in high school i applied to the air force academy. We did not have a lot of money. I wanted to get an education like the military. It was affiliated with the air force i applied too late to be considered. I was in high school and there were announcements, and one morning, they announced anybody interested in winning a navy scholarship, go see the guidance counselor. I thought that could be me. I went to see the guidance counselor and i found out about something called the navy rotc. Reserve officer training corps. I found out the that they paid for found out that they paid for tuition and fees and 50 a month on top of that. I got a scholarship and went to ohio state. The rest is history. David you arrived in ohio state in 1964. You graduated in 1968. Senator tom carper how do you know all of this . Have you been talking to my mom . [laughter] david your bio sheet. Can you talk about how it was to be a midshipman in 1964 . The vietnam war is going on in the popularity of the war is declining and the popularity of the war is declining. Can you talk about being a midshipman in this atmosphere . Senator tom carper i will go to years two years beyond that, april of 1970. I remember coming back from one of our flights, in a restaurant outside of the officers club. And they had a, they played music, you could have a meal out there. And the b52s were coming from a strike in the Late Afternoon or early evening and there was a huge wave of b52s coming in to land after their Bombing Missions over vietnam and they played four dead in ohio a big song by crosby, stills, nash and young. It was about the shootings at kent state. I was gone from ohio state at the time, but they literally sent everybody home in the spring quarter. Never finished the quarter. That is what it was like in 1970. I left and 68. The mood on campus was not that polarized. But there was a strong sentiment against the war felt by a lot of people. And it was interesting. In rotc you wear the uniform one day a week. And the other four, actually six days a week you are just a regular college student. The people that were rabid and really spoke up against the war, a lot of cases they were your friends. It is not like they held it against you personally but the day you wore the uniform you stood out and symbolized the military and the operation led by the commanderinchief, lyndon johnson. I remember mayday parades, i dont know if you saw the pictures demonstrations where the students would put flowers in the barrels of the weapons we did not carry weapons in the mayday parade. There was sort of a friendly dissidentsce. Those who were not in uniform, demonstrating against us nothing unkind or intimidating but you felt it. The day you wore the uniform you were different. David you talked about your summer cruises as a midshipman. When i was a midshipman, we went to come straight penn state. We did and orientation to orientation tighttype cruise and then we get a firstclass cruise. Was that similar to your experience . Senator tom carper when i was a midshipman and i went to penn state. In my freshman year, we d we headed off to newport island. I was there in the year that bob dylan was booed at the folk festival. We went out into the Atlantic Ocean to do exercises on a destroyer. I remember the most exciting thing was that we got stuck in a hurricane at sea. It was a real test of our stomachs and our will and our manhood. See if we could handle that. The other thing i remember from that cruise was being assigned to the engineering department. They put you in the hottest part of the engine room, steam blows on you. I mean, it was i like to work out every day at the y back in delaware. Sometimes i go into the steam room and that is cool compared to what it was like in the engine room. But it was a good experience. You find out what is is like to be the lowest of the low. Out every day at the y back in delaware. Sometimes i go into the steam it was a good experience. David this was an old world war ii frame. They were modernizing in the early 60s. You are talking about a destroyer at the time that was probably pushing 25 years old. You rock and roll out there. Similar tom carper and senator tom carper and riding out the hurricane was an adventure. Getting bounced around in your bunk, trying to eat a meal in your quarters. I remember thinking, you know, maybe i do not want to be on a ship. Maybe there is a better life out there for me then navy aviation. David you mentioned the Civil Air Patrol so obviously you have the air bug at an early age and i assume this did nothing to dissuade you from this. Can you talk a bit about your decisionmaking process . Senator tom carper the second cruise was at the end of my sophomore year. It was bifurcated into two parts. We went to little creek, virginia, the landing training school. I remember going there a couple of days early with one of my best friends from ohio state gary, also a midshipman. We got there early. We camped out on Virginia Beach and went to a great concert. I said earlier in the summer, in newport, i did not see it but i was there the same night that bob dylan was booed. When he did rock n roll. A year later we were on Virginia Beach and we went to a concert by the byrds, the epitome of folk rock. It was great. They trained us to be like marines. Amphibious landing. We learned how to fly airplanes and had a Pilot Instructor and did all kinds of flying. It was fun, it was exciting. A bunch of guys got sick, i did not. I thought i want to do this because this was fun. We have a great marine officers out of navy rotc at ohio state. The best officers that i trained under from the time i was a midshipmen were the marines. And some of the enlisted personnel, the dummies surgeons, johnny surgeons gunny sergeants, were excellent as well. I was drawn to the marine corps i think because of the mission and the Great Respect i had for the officer and enlisted men that trained us at osu. My junior year, before my senior year, was long beach california. It was a great duty. We would go out monday morning fly around the South Pacific southeastern pacific, and come into port on friday afternoon and have the weekend off. On monday do the same thing again. It was fun. They did not put us down in the engine room. We did not have to blow the t ubes. We were treated more like a junior officer and learned a great deal about the operations part, standing watches and all. We were taught a course not too far from mexico. We had a growing mexican population in california. Someone on the ship, the skipper or somebody, asked me, i spoke a little spanish, had taken spanish in school, asked me to teach spanish classes. One of the extra things i would do was to teach troops to speak spanish. David i served for a year and a half. Senator tom carper you did not. On active duty . David from 84 or 85. One of the extra things i would do was to teach troops to speak spanish. Senator tom carper did anybody on the crew mentioned me . [laughter] david well, they were a salty crew, it was possible. [laughter] david very familiar. It is probably razor bladed by now. Could you just address the duties you had at the midshipmen brigade at ohio state . Senator tom carper i cannot remember for sure. I know i was on the, we had a military council at ohio state which was the advisory on the air force, navy, rotc. I was involved in that from the time i was a freshman. I enjoyed that. I especially enjoyed we had a military ball every year and on my senior year i got to be in charge and put together a big dance. Hundreds of students, brought in a Rock N Roll Group from canada that the mamas and the papas had discovered. It was the first time we had rock n roll at a military ball. There was also a traditional orchestra. But we have this as well. It was pretty neat. David what did you study at ohio state . Senator tom carper i thought i would major in Political Science but i changed my way halfway through and moved to economics majored in economics. And i never regretted it. Economics a lot more helpful for me as state treasurer. Of delaware. When i was in the house of representatives i served on the Banking Committee so it was very helpful there. That was definitely more helpful than a major in Political Science. And i think in the senate, a lot of what i do is actually economics. David going on to senator tom carper when i graduated from ohio state, i did not want to stay in the navy forever. I wanted to do my time and serve, i look to the navy and liked the military love the loved the navy and liked the military but i wanted to do my time and be on to other things. I was interested in business and thought what can you do in the navy . I could go to athens and be a supply officer and that would use my undergraduate training. But i was also interested in aviation. And so it was a very tough choice and in the end i almost flipped a coin and ended up going to pensacola. I said i could have been a pilot, they taught us to fly my junior year. I thought i was pretty decent that it. I did not want to stay for the extended period of time to become a navy aviator. I learned about this naval flight officer program. I said five years instead of six. In an airplane, go all over the world, exciting missions. P3s, soviet submarines. Thought i would try that. David you knew going in, it was the fiveyear instead of the sixyear commitment. Now it is a fiveyear commitment if you are a pilot. And going in, most aviators at the time, they want jets. They want to fly jets. But you had senator tom carper i like the idea of landing on land every night. The idea of sleeping on my bed. The idea of being on a ship and trying to land on these floating landing strips, that was not what i wanted to do. I wanted to be in p3a. P3s. I wanted east coast. I wanted to be close to ohio state so i could see my girlfriend who i dearly loved. Instead i got p3s, west coast. B310 was the Training Squadron at the time. Spend about half a year or so there. I love the pensacola, beautiful white beaches. I liked spending time with the guys that i flew with and the introductory courses in airmanship. We went from there to Corpus Christi, texas. I really like Corpus Christi. I remember we got to Corpus Christi, one of my buddies from pensacola and i sort of went out together, he was from baltimore, we got out to Corpus Christi and we wanted to be able to live in the economy. The deal was if you showed up at the officers quarters and they had room for you, that is where you were going to be for the period of time that you are stationed at Corpus Christi naval air station. We waited until they filled up and there were no vacancies. We came in, and they said we are followup. We said, would you stamp our orders to that effect . The next day we went out and found great accommodations, the guest quarters of a ranch for this millionaire family. Tennis court, pool, horses. And so that is where we lived. It was dirt cheap. Incredibly inexpensive. We made, we were getting paid as ensigns and we were getting flight pay and we were getting they were paying us for rooming and quarters. It felt like we had more money than we had had in our lives. We were probably making 5,000 a year. We would fly, at the time they were teaching us navigation, how to navigate planes. We flew missions over the gulf of mexico to see what we were doing. It was fun. I loved being in the plane being in Corpus Christi, flour bluff, texas. I have met two people in my life that have heard of flowerbluff. [laughter] david at that time were they flying beechcraft . For the Training Missions . Senator tom carper uhhuh. We were flying bamboo bombers down in pensacola. We had a bigger plane in texas but it was fun. I enjoyed it. David then you would be assigned to i guess the Replacement Air Group at the west coast. Where in the was it determined early on you would be going to the p3 community or did they make the determination . Senator tom carper i do not remember. It was somewhere around Corpus Christi that we learned we would go to the west coast instead of the east coast. Did not make my day. Did not make my day. I very much wanted east coast because of personal reasons i mentioned earlier. As it turned out, i ended up loving asia, lovely people there. David take us through it. Going out to i guess the p3 Training Squadron. Senator tom carper we first went to san diego and i live on coronado, the island, a beautiful place. The north island. Lived in coronado. We had a huge twostory frame house, five of us lived in. We started to learn a lot about antisubmarine warfare. That is where they began steeping us in that knowledge. Out of that training, some people ended up in p3 airplanes. Some people in helicopters. I ended up south of San Francisco where my patrol squadron was. They sent us up there to Moffett Field where they have the Training Squadron. Flight service lasted four or five months. Then we ended up with our squadrons. By the time we got to the squadrons it was april of 1970 and my squadron was about to deploy. I walked past the parking lot and went to the hangar of my new squad and they said pack up, we are going. David can i what the specific job was that you were being trained to do . Senator tom carper the p3 had an 18 person crew. Of the enlisted officers, three of them were aviators, their jobs were to fly the plane. The two naval flight officers, a navigator, the junior person was the navigator, and the other one was the tactical coordinator who coordinates the crew. During the time i was on active duty, a new designation was created called Mission Commander so that whoever was the senior pilot or the senior naval flight officer would be the Mission Commander. And you have to go through special curriculum. Of course, you could complete it and you could be designated as a Mission Commander. My last year in the squadron i earned the designation of Mission Commander. When i went to the reserves in willow grove, pennsylvania after my active duty, the reserves do not have a Mission Commander designation. We encourage them to establish one. Encouraged them to establish one. They did after a year or two. I still flew in the same airplane and the reserves. P3, became designated Mission Commander there as well. David take us through that first deployment. Or your i guess the three deployments to southeast asia. Talk about how those deployments go. I guess your objective was to track soviet submarines . Senator tom carper when we were home, we flew a lot of missions about halfway between california and hawaii. And the soviets would go on station with boomers, Ballistic Missile submarines. David yankee class . Senator tom carper yankee class. We flew most of our missions against yankees but they had other models that succeeded the yankees. In any event, we were flying missions. Probably a threehour preflight. Studying the oceanography and understanding the target. Do our preflights and charts and then take off. Make sure the airplane worked. We would fly 10 or 12 hour missions. Three hours en route, on station for six hours, three hours to fly home. Postflight, usually an hour take all the stuff on magnetic tape and debrief with the same folks that briefed us and sent us out hours earlier. The idea was to know where the Nuclear Submarines were so that we would know where to look. We would create these tracks. So that and the soviets would send a sub out, it would be on station for, i do not know, 60 days. We would know the route that they followed and even if we were not flying we would have a good idea of when it came back six months later and where it was going to be lurking. I love that, it was a great game of cat and mouse, matching wits against soviet sub skippers. We would usually fly those missions at a high altitude. You did not want to spook them. David by being passive, the tools you were using, sonor buoy patterns. Magnetic anomaly detection gear. Can you talk about those techniques . Senator tom carper just like you when i have individual fingerprints submarines and ships have acoustic fingerprints. If you just listen with your ears it can be hard to tell the difference but if you actually have the ability to analyze and to look visually at the acoustic signature, they are quite discrete. During the time i was on active duty, we went from not knowing where we were with any great accuracy to knowing with considerable accuracy where we were, where we were putting the sonar buoys, knowing exactly what we were looking for. Sonar buoys that could not only tell us that there was a ship but that there was a submarine over there, the direction. We actually made a lot of progress in the short time i was privileged to be on active duty. David what were the skills that were most important for you to have in that position or for anyone to have in that position . Senator tom carper i have four or five principles. That undergird me. When i was governor we call those core values. One of those is to try to do what is right. The second is to do everything well. The third is the golden rule, to treat other people they way we would want to be treated. The fourth is to never give up. The fifth is to surround myself with pe