dave: i would like to open up the floor with a question, talking about your youth and your interest in the military and what eventually lead you to the navy rotc program. at ohio state. senator tom carper: my wife says that i never grew up and i hope in a sense that i never do. i grew up in virginia, my dad worked for nationwide insurance. it was in gamble, virginia on the north carolina border.

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 b-52s were coming from a strike in the late afternoon or early evening and there was a huge wave of b-52s 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 commander-in-chief, lyndon johnson. i remember mayday parades, i don't 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 first-class 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 60's. 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 decision-making 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 five-year instead of the six-year commitment. now it is a five-year 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 follow-up. 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: uh-huh. 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 two-story frame house, five of us lived in. we started to learn a lot about anti-submarine 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 three-hour preflight. studying the oceanography and understanding the target. do our pre-flights 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 people smarter than me. what i tried to do on my crew was to put officers and enlisted people, the best people in my squadron that i could find. i loved what we did, i never gave up. from the moment we took off on the mission to coming off station, we were still monitoring the sonar buoys that

we had dropped, looking for submarines and trying to detect them, even as we were on the way home. just having excellent people on the crews was important. the other thing was training hard. i remember i would lie in bed the night before the flight and go through the flight in my head. like coaches go through a game, thinking about a game that you are going to play the next day, or quarterbacks. i would lay out the flight in my head against the soviet subs. so i think preparation is important. the other thing is not giving up. not giving up. and i was always motivated. i kept my crew motivated. they never saw me sluff off. david: were these principles forged by your naval experience? senator tom carper: the were embedded in part when i grew up but i think the navy certainly we called it the can-do spirit, the navy can-do spirit. we thought we could do anything.

when i got in my slot on active duty, after we left, we thought we were the best around. we were good. david: the, certainly, the analogy is fishing, you have to have patience. i imagine being a mission commander you have to exhibit some extreme patience as far as listening to the data and putting it together. senator tom carper: patience on the part of the officers but great patience on the part of the enlisted crew, especially the people who for six or eight hours are analyzing the acoustic data, looking for the line on a page to see if maybe that could be the clue you're looking for. the patience they had and the fortitude for staying on the job. that was impressive.

i worked with some terrific people. good on active duty but i had to some guys, jim, the chief petty officer, he was so good. david: discuss the active-duty when you deployed overseas. you talked about flying out. of moffitt. you made three deployments to southeast asia. where were you based at? senator tom carper: we would do split deployments overseas. the first time we went to the philippines, a little label air station just across the bay from manila. just a little petri base. right outside of the door was a little community where we would go and get in trouble. and you could catch lunch and go across to the big city, manila. i love the filipino people lovely people. you would go on tours and their would be people walking around with machine guns sometimes.

for the most part i thought they were a very sweet, friendly people. made us feel welcome. i especially liked the fact that we had our own middle station and there were not too many, very special. and when we were not there, you -- we were flying out of thailand. they pulled the p3s out of vietnam because they kept getting blown up. somebody finally said, why do we want to keep these p3s on the ground in vietnam were they can get blown up. we can fly them out of taiwan, out of the philippines. our missions over there were for the most part to fly anywhere from a couple hundred miles our to a lot less than that. low-level missions, 5000 feet

for the radar searches and we would drop down to as low as 200 feet to actually look at vessels. just trying to keep track of the south china sea. we talk a lot of pictures of ships coming into vietnam to see what kind of cargo they might be carrying. we looked at a whole lot for junk. considering the hours that we flew, it's not like we went out and found a couple every flight. we'd be lucky to find a couple every deployment. we pulled a lot of these surveillance missions. and i was, i must say, i was very busy. we flew in a place with a lot of shipping traffic. trying to keep with not very good navigational systems. make sure you know who you were, keep your standoff distances

from the places you are supposed to be standing off from. making sure you are at the right altitudes. standing off with the ships especially soviet ships that you are photographing and try not to set off any kind of incident. long missions, 10 or 12 our missions, started regularly. i remember in the philippines not in the philippines, but in thailand, we would probably get up about 3:00 in the morning , and the idea was to have had breakfast, finish your preflight, the airplane ready to take off at first light. fly a long mission. i remember you would be lucky if you could eat one meal. it was just go on flights, comeback and land. david: admirals walt is now the cmo. senator carper: one of my heroes. i like the admiral. david: wanted to get your thoughts. you either love him or hate him.

i wanted to get your take on the admiral and with the all-volunteer force, how was that as far as the quality of the enlisted folks? senator carper: i know some of the folks who have been in the navy a long time bridled under his leadership. i liked him. i actually got to meet him later on in life. i was in a dinner in of all places, delaware, as a congressman at the time. the group was trying to raise money for a vietnam memorial. bob hope was there. general westmoreland was there. and i like to work the room, shake hands with people at tables. so i'm working the room, and i said hello to bob hope, said hi to general westmoreland, and i came up to this one table. and this fellow is in a suit and tie. and i said you look exactly like

admiral zumwalt. he said, "people have said that." [laughter] i said, i'm tom carper. i'm the congressman here.admiral zumwalt. he said, i am admiral zumwalt. i mention my core values earlier. try to do what's right, do everything as best we can, treat other people he way you want to be treated, never give up. i really thought he treated people the way he would want to be treated. he was more focused on families. i remember we used to go overseas for six months at a time. a lot of people would not see their families for a half year. home for eight months, overseas for six months. home for eight, overseas for six. boy, that took its toll on families, especially our enlisted personnel. zumwalt, i think, really did care about family life and trying to reduce the divorce rate that we had and was mindful of the fact that kids need to see their dads. and i like that. plus, the idea that he let us grow beards. if you wanted to have a beard, you could have a beard. people had sideburns. and for us in that time in california, that was great. [laughter]

david: did you do that? did you grow a beard? senator carper: i looked just like you. actually, my sister provided a copy of a picture with me and my beard. for a documentary they did when i ran for senate a couple of years ago. and i looked like a cross between g.i. joe and abraham lincoln. not a bad combination, i suppose, for a navy guy. three overseas tours. one was philippines and thailand. the second one was okinawa and guam. every month, we would cycle into -- most every month into utapao. we would fly missions out of utapao as well. we were in a drought, in the summer. it was hot, it was miserable. they turned the water on every

48 hours from midnight to 1:00 a.m. the air-conditioning in the summer was powered by water. they did not use it, so we got to be in okinawa for the whole summer with no ac and not much water. and about one out of every three weeks, we would go to guam, and it always rains in guam. it rained, like, every day. we would get off of our planes in guam after our missions and go over to our quarters, and we would just take a shower. enjoy the air-conditioning. get ready to fly another mission. there is an old saying, "guam is good." we thought it was great. loved it. actually went back to okinawa and by the end of the summer, we refitted our p-3's with a dispenser that can shoot out para flares, lighting devices. incendiary lights. they would come down over the water and light up whatever was on the water. you could use them at night. we retooled those so that we

could use them to seed the clouds. we see that the clouds and okinawa -- see you do -- seated -- seeded the clouds in okinawa in order to try to make it rain. i remember when it finally rained, we danced in the street. david: i'm looking at the time here. do we have time for about 10 more minutes? ok, good. we talked about the overseas deployments. at that time, the war in vietnam -- in 1972, of course, you have the north vietnamese offensive and then the christmas bombings and everything. i guess you are in the -- i don't know where you are in the cycle at that time, but you obviously are making some observations. you and your squadron mates about the conduct of the war. what was your thinking at the time? senator carper: i cannot speak for everybody in the squadron --

i was hoping we could get a settlement and that the war would come to an end. i had the opportunity -- during the vietnam war, we never landed in vietnam. a lot of people on aviation. but some of the people i have talked to, the first time they ever set foot in vietnam was when they were shot down. and that was about part of the deal to whoever landed there. i remember going back to vietnam and actually landing as part of a six-person congressional delegation i led in 1991. all vietnam veterans, including a guy named pete peterson a congressman from florida. he had been a pow for six years. we were trying to find out what had happened to our pow's and mia's, and the vietnamese and laotians had not been very helpful in terms of opening up and sharing with us their records.

they were great record keepers but not being very helpful. a lot of information in museums and archives, but they were just not sharing very much with us. we were not all that convinced that the u.s. effort was very successful, and i got a real good briefing from the state department and worked closely with the state department and department of defense going into vietnam and spent a fair amount of time with our own teams in southeast asia. we literally were in cambodia the week that this counterfeit ring was broken. it was a period of time when a lot of americans were convinced that our guys, our mia's were being held captive. and we had pictures, the cover of "time" and "newsweek" of people alleged to be americans. even knew what their names were from the war, folks that were missing, but it turned out that they were russian nationals. and they had been, the pictures had been taken out of the russian versions of "time" and

"newsweek" and bootlegged and sort of spun back to us as american pow's, but we actually got to be there when that was being found out. we had some great meetings with leaders of different countries including the brand-new leader of vietnam who had just become the secretary. i would like to think that the earnestness of our congressional delegation made an impression on the vietnamese. we were there at a time when the bush administration, bush 41 -- president bush was saying to the vietnamese, "this is a roadmap for normalized relations. you do these things, we will do these things, and eventually, it will lead to more normal relations," and the vietnamese were not having any part of it. they felt they were being set up and if they did things, we would simply move the goal post on them. we tried to convince them that we would not do that.

six members of the house democrats and republicans that cared about that part of the world moving towards normalized relations. if they really did the things they were being asked to do, we would make sure we reciprocated. i got to be presiding over the u.s. senate when, gosh, about 10 years later, we took up u.s./vietnam trade normalization act. called pete peterson went on to become the first u.s. ambassador to vietnam. got to call him on the phone right after. guess what? he was watching on c-span, so he already knew. david: leaving the active navy going into the reserves, the reserve squadron had a reputation as being as good as the active guys. do you find that to be the case? senator tom carper: when i went

to pennsylvania, i mentioned my active duty squadron went from being sort of a ho-hum squadron to winning awards for excellence. i left just before that and moved across the country to delaware to get an mba and run for office when i was 29. i hooked up with the squad to start graduate school. i got to this reserve squadron that had been moved down from , gosh, some place in new jersey. they were in new york and moved down to pennsylvania, and they had p-3 airplanes. the old p-3s, they had p-3as and we had p-3bs. they were modified, pretty decent plane. a little bit like a step back,

but not much. not like going to a p-2 or some other kind of airplane. an airplane i was pretty much used to. in terms of being able to use it effectively, in terms of people really being serious about the mission, not especially. i'm this firebrand. i think people thought i was going to stay and be chief of naval operations. i was so committed. i loved what i did, and we worked to have the best crew to fly the best missions, and in everything, we are committed to excellence. i got to my new reserve squadron, and they just were not that with it. and one of the things, i stayed with them for 18 years, and we got to be pretty darn good. i like to think that some of my fervor and determination dedication to the mission, sort of rubbed off on them. and i had the opportunity to not only become a mission commander there as well, but have my crew fly a lot of missions in the mediterranean and atlantic but also have some jobs, including , you had to give flight checks

to the crews, take crews out and train them. i got to be trained officer for my squadron and department head. in 1982, november 1982, i have been state treasurer for six years, but in november 1982, i was elected to congress, for the only congressional seat. i was deselected for promotion to commander, which put me in the pipeline and eligible for commander of a squadron, which in navy, you always want to be commander of the ship then commander of a squadron. it was like the hat trick. in one month, elected to congress, selected for promotion to commander. and command screened. how does life get any better than this? i got to congress, and two months later, i found that i could no longer hold a mobilize able billet position in the reserves. the other thing is you could not be paid, so you could not pay your squadron, and could not fly my airplane. in my airplane, i could not fly the mission with the people i

have flown with the last six years, and i was crestfallen because i loved the p-3, i loved the mission and i loved the guys i flew within my squadron. the secretary of the navy at the time, i called him. i asked how you get through to be secretary of the navy and still fly and stay current in the airplane, and he says he has a special waiver from the chief of naval operations. i said that's what i want. i did not want to be paid, but i wanted to continue to be able to fly the airplane and stay current in the airplane and fly the missions. i got to do that for -- gosh another 12 years. 12 years. and stayed with my squadrons continue to fly. one of the great ironies is you and a how you trade airplanes back and forth from active duty

-- they get older and trade them down to the reserves, keep maintaining the planes and a -- and upgrade t\he avionics and electronics and they are perfectly good airplanes for a long time? one of the airplanes that i had in moffett field california in the patrol squad, when you are the plane commander or mission commander of the aircraft, the tactical coordinator or flight engineer, you actually had your name printed on the other side of the fuselage of the plane. the plane that had my name on it ended up coming through willow grove, pennsylvania. my name was gone by that point in time, but same number. six-digit number, so you knew it was my old plane. it was a nice bookend from the time i was on active duty to later on being in the reserves, wrapping it up in the very same airplane. pretty neat. david: any follow-up questions?

david: i'm just wondering in the larger sense how military service shaped your later life and your service now in congress. senator carper: as governor, i was commander-in-chief, and they actually had a commander-in-chief who is something of military and was very much interested in your missions and actually paid a lot of attention. i still do that as a number of the senate, and i did it as a member of the house. when i was in the house, we ended up in a military skirmish down in panama. we ended up in a war in the persian gulf. god only knows what will happen now here in 2002, with iraq we could end up in another scrape . i thought it was helpful to have some military experience. we do not have a whole lot of people in the house and senate who served on active duty.

i just think it is a helpful perspective to have. i do not serve on the armed forces committee but i think because of the experience i have, i bring some expertise. i think it's a huge help. the other thing is people look at us to be leaders. i was trained to be a leader from the time i was 17 as a freshman at ohio state. and history will show what kind of leader i have been in congress, in the house or senate, but i think those leadership skills were really on display when i was governor of delaware and i'm privileged to serve as leader of a nation. david: what do your sons ask you about the military? senator carper: my younger son ben, who now is 12 -- he is just captivated by things military.

we talk about battles. we talk about aircraft, tanks. we went through a time where he just could not get enough of tanks. without aircraft. we talked the war in iraq, how would we do it, what was the approach? interestingly enough, he does not have much discipline or bearing, how to gap and make his bed. when he wears his boy scout uniform, it's really with his shirt out, but he loves military history. loves it. his bigger brother is about a year and a half older. he is ramrod straight, organized, driven and looks like the guy who could be be cno later on. so far, he has not expressed any interest. we will see. david: i guess the final question is in the aviation community, there's a lot of camaraderie, and i guess that applies here to the senate. is there some parallel there? senator tom carper: it is a close-knit group. i remember when i was on active duty, the only people that ever called me tommy besides my mom

were the people i served within the military. and the only people who call me tommy besides my mom of the people i served with in the senate. there's a closeness. you find a special unit when you are in the senate. i really felt when i was on active duty and in the reserves, but especially on active duty, i thought i was part of a special unit. my crew as well. david: i think that is a wrap. i appreciate your time. senator tom carper: i enjoyed it. thank you very much. >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. each year, time selects a single person who had the most influence on events during the previous 12 months.

if the same question were posed in the year 1865, who would "time" have selected as the person of the year? the library of virginia and the american civil war museum invited five historians to present their arguments for their candidates. next, author and historian elizabeth brown pryor nominates clara barton who the audience ultimately declared the whipper. this was six weeks before elizabeth brown pryor died in a car accident in richmond virginia. >> ladies and gentlemen, our next speaker and last nominee elizabeth brown pryor. elizabeth brown pryor burst onto the scene in 2007 with the publication of "reading the man, a portrait of robert e. lee