Hello!
I am a crazy Greek with hobbies entirely outside one's natural enviroment (I am not a pilot but rather an engineer), I have no military connections in my family and am not mil myself, yet there's hardly a thing in life that I enjoy more than fighter aircraft, especially naval a/c and fighter pilots especially very good ones such as John Eyton-Jones! In addition, I was four during the Falklands, don't recall a thing about it when it happened, but have the entire bookshelf published about that air war!
To the point: Anna if you are reading this I have a slight angle to provide you with on your dad! I recently found out about the F-14 Tomcat Association and I very quickly saw that some of the absolute legends of fighter aviation ''reside'' there. Your dad had done an exchange tour with the US Navy test and evaluation squadron, VX-4. Now at least a couple of american VX-4 pilots are at the Association's website and I, in discussing fighter pilots, actually asked whether anyone knew your father. American fighter legend Joe ''Hoser'' Satrapa (of the "no kill, like a guns kills" fame) replied and he said that he knew E-J and had fought with and against him as a VX-4 mate. He thought very highly of him as indeed he thought of all the Brit exchange crews who served with the US Navy at the time.
I've been a nuisance to fighter pilots ever since I was 15 or so (I am now 30 and still haven't dropped the habit) but I am positive that Cdr Doug Macdonald of the FAA Officers Association will have some stories about E-J. I'd met Mr Doug at the FAAOA in my youth and pestered him about anything and everything FLY NAVY! particularly Air Warfare Instructor (AWI) stuff. Now, both your dad and Doug Macdonald were F-4 AWIs and part of my Hall of Fame. I'm particularly interested about that special breed and especially about F-4K AWIs. My Hall of Fame includes:
F-4K Phantom (FG.1) AWI List
John Eyton-Jones
Bill Peppe
Nutty Walters
Taylor Scott
Dave "the Brave" Braithwaite
Tim Gedge (764 AWI)
Sharkey Ward
Doug Macdonald (O)
Nigel Charles????
One day I might improve on my "school-type project" collection of material on fighter tactics and fighter legends from a simple archive to at least an article if not a book. I feel the least qualified seeing as I do that you are, in here, in the company of fine men, eminently more qualified than me in talking about such things and with much more personal stories than me. If I do ever reach that stage of bringing my AWI project to fruition E-J should have some significant part in it!
Here's a link to some of the previously mentioned stuff on your dad at the F-14 Tomcat Association pages:
from reply number 1266 by Hoser Satrapa (also called D-Hose or VR D-Hose he's a complete loonie!!
):
Taylor Scott and D-Hose never crossed vectors on the ground or in the sky..He was in VX-4 a year before D-Hose. As for John Eyton Jones, he was a fine F-4 stick at VX-4 along with his Brit buddy we called "Black Bart" when D-Hose checked in (1974). Got to check my records for Black Bart's real name. Any Royal Navy fighter pilots on exchange duty to US fighter squadrons were the top of the line and of course we sent no grapes to the Limmies. It was the start of the F-14 Opeval and foreign pilots had not been given the green light to fly Turkeys. D-Hose flew similar and dissimilar(A-4s/F-4s) with and against JEJ and BB @ VX-4 and they both were killed in the
Falklands Is..(87) There was another gifted Brit fighter pilot who was a F-14 instructor in VF-101 while D-Hose was there. Pete Legg (bout 1981)
VR D-Hose
The "Hoser Chronicles" and Evolution of Air Combat
another american VX-4 pilot said:
The best memory I have about EJ: He took an F-4 on an ACM go and came back with the paint burned off the tail. Seems he took it to zero, started backing down and had a burner blow out... the raw fuel was torched by the lit burner... voila! New paint job!
[Note: He's actually praising E-J not criticising him as he's referring to an air combat sortie (ACM) and the fact that he got the thing to 0 airspeed I presume indicates a very aggresive pilot who knows what he's doing - some veteran american pilots especially in the '60's were afraid of fighting the F-4 in the slow speed regime of its flight envelope]
This same pilot by the nick of ltfusn that wrote the above, has some surprises for you I guess
(check all the photos in the page below):
The "Hoser Chronicles" and Evolution of Air Combat
He might actually have more from the mid-70's VX-4 time when your dad was there.
Bloody hell you got to love the internet for allowing discussions like this to happen and I told the americans as much in that website too!