Roger Ball! is a biography of US Navy legend John Monroe “Hawk” Smith, his soul mate and wife “Miss Jenny”, and their adopted son as they made way through over thirty years of first their upbringing, their chance meeting and wonderful courtship, marriage, and their combined focus for a successful, rich career in naval aviation with all its engagement with extended family.  

When I first saw the book’s title “Roger Ball!” I had an impulsive urge to read it.  My learning of the naval aviation usage of the saying "Roger Ball" stems from enjoying the movie Top Gun.  Early into the opening, there is a scene depicting an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot with call sign Cougar on glide slope for landing on an aircraft carrier.  The Landing Signal Officer aboard the ship exclaims, “Roger Ball” and soon thereafter the fighter’s arresting hook snares the arresting cable to bring the jet to a full halt on the flightdeck.  Hence, a book with the title “Roger Ball!” is dead-on for locking on my impulsive interest.

The author, retired Navy Captain Donald E. “Duck” Auten, flew Navy attack jets and jet fighters for several years all the while making tailhook arrested landings on and catapult launches off of US Navy aircraft carriers all around the globe, day and night, calm weather and severe.  He even had the exhilarating job as aggressor pilot playing the role of bandit for mock dogfights with fighter pilots sharpening their aerial warrior skills.  His own outstanding Navy career is testament to his own courage and commitment to being a naval aviator and all who contributed to making him such from the very beginning and throughout his career.  He worked closely with hundreds of Navy professionals at all levels of each organization in which he served.  As was he, others keeping them on course to success mentored each of them to varying degrees.  Yet, often there comes along a leader who particularly stands out, and for Don Auten and many of his peers, that legendary leader is naval aviator John Monroe Smith, call sign “Hawk”. 

As author Donald Auten explains, “Roger Ball!” is the clipped transmission the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) who is stationed at the stern of the aircraft carrier makes.  The LSO exclaims to the pilot of an aircraft as he or she commences his or her final approach to the deck of a carrier, “Roger Ball”, a verbal confirmation that the LSO has sight of the aircraft, that it is in the proper configuration for landing, and within parameters to continue the approach to successful recovery on the flightdeck.  In naval aviation lexicon “Roger Ball!” most simply means, “You’re looking good.  Keep it coming!”

John Monroe “Hawk” Smith dreamed during his adolescence and young adult years of the 1950s of earning the coveted US Navy wings of gold. He did ultimately do so during the early 1960s, first as a radar intercept officer (RIO), and then ultimately earning wings as a fighter pilot.  Author Donald Auten takes the reader through each phase of all “Hawk’s” thirty years involving tours in the cockpit to his significant contributions of leadership and command, including the shaping and development of TOPGUN.

Tom Wolfe describes in his book titled “The Right Stuff” that there is a vital and unique combination of skills a fighter pilot must simultaneously possess … the stuff …  to successfully negotiate through the demanding regime of mental calculus, emotional focus and ranges of compression, and physical challenges for winning in the air combat arena on a sustained, repeated basis.  Author Donald Auten explains in great, intriguing detail the arduous flying curriculum, allies’ coalition military air combat exercises, and Naval Air Force deployments marking “Hawk” as owning that rare stuff. 

It is intriguing to learn about the mix of ingredients that tempered Hawk’s mettle through growing up playing competitive, arduous, exhausting, exerting sports, including motorcycle racing, doing well in academics, working hard for cash, and stepping up to serve voluntarily whenever needed.

Roger Ball! Illuminates that a successful Navy career predominantly requires a strong home front.  This support for high probability of career success and actualization author Donald Auten addresses through writing about the delicate balancing of family and career.  These naval aviation careers require months, possibly years of separation from the home front, with very real potential for fatal demise or serious injury.

Author Donald Auten takes us to the late 1960s when aeronautical engineers in the free world and behind the Soviet Union’s iron curtain rolled out variable-sweep wing fighters and bombers.  Their wings swept in and out to change the geometry of the aircraft to meet changes in aerodynamic requirements to win aerial combat fights or extending range for dropping bombs on target. These designs expanded the scope of air combat significantly, as the wing designs allowed high swept-back maneuverability, yet fuel efficient extended-wing lift for cruise or loiter time.  The United States produced the FB-111 and B-1 bombers for its Air Force and the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet for its Navy.  Meanwhile a collaboration of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy produced the Tornado, and the Soviet Union the MiG 23 and MiG 27.  Roger Ball takes the reader to those overwhelming times when aeronautics, politics, and budgets intertwined to meet a stark reality that aerial combat success required a whole host of new shrewd and complex tactics and strategies. 

As a civilian, I have flown twice aboard Navy C-2 Greyhound turboprop aircraft out to sea to land or “trap” on aircraft carriers underway.  Until reading Roger Ball! I did not fully appreciate the dynamics of the pilot and Landing Signal Officer in getting our plane down on the flightdeck in one piece.  I had taken the role of the Landing Signal Officer for granted.  My understanding was that a pilot essentially flew down to the flightdeck using his or her visual acuity to line up on the lens system radiating up from the aircraft carrier’s stern to bring the aircraft in for a ‘trap’ on the flight deck. Now I know that “recovery” of aircraft to a carrier is a ‘my life depends on you’ dialogue of verbal instructions or orders, and intuition between the pilot and LSO.  My uninformed perception had been that LSOs are essentially a back-up system to simply aid the pilot, but primarily it was all on the pilot.  I did not appreciate the magnitude of differential equations each LSO’s mind must run on each approach to viscerally put a pilot into the glide slope that earned the significance of calling “Roger Ball!”  Adding to that set of demanding requirements of the LSO is the environment of daylight, dawn and dusk, nighttime, rain, snow, wind, and sea states, plus being physically, mentally, and maybe emotionally draining each minute out there on post.  I’ve been out there on an aircraft carrier’s flight deck both during catapult launches and arresting hook recoveries. Despite the tight-fitting goggles, cooked jet fuel residue found its way past the seals and made my eyes stream with water.  I cannot imagine hours on end of my eyes being subjected to those stinging conditions.

Roger Ball is a must-read book yielding a harvest of appreciation for the men and women who serve in all services of the US armed forces and its allies.