A young naval aviator boarded an aircraft carrier into the early months of the Vietnam War, unsure of what awaited him over the horizon.
Now, more than 60 years later, Lieutenant Junior Grade Errol F. Reilly’s words — typed on a small portable typewriter and later refined by his two stepsons, but never rewritten — are reaching a wider audience.
The story, “I’m Alive: A Young Fighter Pilot’s Diary of the U.S. Navy Air War, 1964-1965,” is built around the firsthand diary of Reilly, a 26-year-old Navy F-8 Crusader pilot during an 11-month deployment on the USS Coral Sea at the outset of America’s escalating involvement in Vietnam.
Reilly’s stepsons, Kevin Callahan and Christopher Callahan, edited the diary and were able to get the story published by the University of North Texas. Christopher Callahan, a resident of Ridgefield, followed in Reilly’s footsteps to become a naval aviator, too.
Callahan said the project began decades ago as a family keepsake before evolving into the soon-to-be-released historical publication.
“We have not seen an 11-month war journal from a naval aviator’s perspective,” Callahan said. “And 1964 to 1965 was right after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, and he was able to kind of record the first opening months of combat and where they expected a lot of dog fighting, which didn’t occur for the fighter jets, but the attack aircraft, you know, had to do a lot of bombing missions.”
In modern terms, Callaham describes it as more of a journal by Reilly, which includes a detailed, near-daily account of missions, losses and life aboard ship. It captures the emotional arc of the young pilot heading into war and experiencing the conflict.
At first, Callahan said, his stepfather was eager for action. But as the deployment wore on and friends were shot down, the tone shifted.
“Toward the end of the story, he just wants to get out alive,” Callahan said. “And that’s why we ended up calling the book, ‘I’m Alive.’”
The manuscript was revamped across three editions as Reilly had revisited the document in the late 1960s and 1970s. Callahan laid out the three versions across his dining room table, pointing out how stories were never lost, but grammar and text was cleaned up by Reilly. Reilly had resisted publishing it more broadly, but distributed copies of his third version to family members.
“We tried to get him to publish this thing back in the late 1980s,” Callahan said. “He really didn’t want to. He just wanted to keep it in the inner circle.”
After Reilly’s death in 2006, Callahan and his brother, Kevin, who served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves, felt the accounts of the Vietnam air war needed a wider readership.
“We just realized the document needed to get published so that scholars and historians and the jet aviation crowd from Vietnam who are getting older [could have access to it],” Callahan said.
Securing a publisher ended up requiring more than submitting the diary. Callahan and his brother went to work. Together they tracked down former wingmen, gathered logbooks and fitness reports, inserted letters written home by Reilly during his deployment and incorporated photographs.
The result is a layered narrative.
The journal entries often reflect what Callahan described as a “stiff upper lip,” written with an awareness that fellow aviators and family members might one day read his account of each day. In contrast, the letters for Reilly’s mom and dad, some handwritten and some typed, revealed more vulnerability.
“Suddenly, you get more emotion,” Callahan said. “You get more of the, ‘Hey, I’m kind of scared out here,’ kind of stuff. So we inserted those through the same timeline.”
The aircraft carrier spent 331 days at sea. Reilly flew the Vought F-8 Crusader with the VF-154 squadron known as the “Black Knights.” Over the course of the deployment, Reilly logged 118 combat missions and approximately 325 flight hours. His squadron fired over 143,000 rounds during the deployment. Reilly was awarded six air medals as part of his deployment.
Over the course of the deployment, the diary recounts the loss of survival of Reilly’s fellow aviators. In Callahan’s compiled research, 26 individuals are identified in connection with incidents described in the journal. Nine ejected or bailed out and were rescued. Six ejected and became prisoners of war. Eleven were killed.
“There’s a lot of dark despair and a lot of entries in there where he’s getting tired of seeing his friends die,” Callahan said.
One story recounted in the diary and in family conversations involved Reilly’s aircraft on fire over hostile territory. After being told by his wingman that his jet was indeed on fire, Reilly attempted to wait until he was over water to eject. When he pulled the ejection handle, nothing happened. The fire eventually went out and Reilly was able to safely land the aircraft back on the carrier.
“He said he didn’t know whether he should go punch the guy in the jaw who made a faulty ejection seat or buy him a flask of whiskey because he would have been taken as a POW,” Callahan recalled.
For Callahan, the project to perfect the original diary by Reilly became both personal and generational. Callahan followed his stepfather into naval aviation, serving in transport and reconnaissance squadrons, including joining the reserves and becoming a commanding officer of VR-61 out of Whidbey Island, retiring as a Navy captain. His son is also a Navy aviator, first serving as a helicopter pilot and now joining the same Whidbey Island outfit, VR-61.
“We have a jet pilot, we have a propeller pilot and now we have a helicopter pilot,” Callahan said.
Despite the depth of research and years of effort, Callahan emphasized that the family does not expect financial gain from the book.
“It’s a labor of love,” he said.
Callahan also believes that Reilly’s act of writing the journal day-to-day on the ship carried therapeutic value — a message that extends beyond Vietnam-era veterans.
“I think some of this was therapeutic,” Callahan said. “... The veterans of this generation, you know, are nearing their 80s, but any veteran, whether it be from the recent [wars] … I think the good thing that any veteran can take from this is, if they write it down, just that process of putting it away from and outside your body, and then start talking to people that are good listeners can help.”
The rare, firsthand account of the Vietnam War will be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle and from the University of North Texas. Callahan added that the Vancouver Barnes and Noble, located at 7700 NE Fourth Plain Blvd., will be stocking the book, and he anticipates doing some book signings there.
The book will be released on April 10, Callahan added. It is available for preorder at untpress.unt.edu/catalog/reilly-im-alive.
