During the war, aircraft maintenance was paramount, while the hangers and ground equipment had been badly neglected. “Ground equipment,” Al Giordino explains, “was anything that didn’t fly - ladders, generators, tools, tool boxes and APUs, auxiliary power units.” Tired of working in the oily bowels of an R-4360, Clive, Giordino, and two other mechanics, Dave Anderson and Don Mercier, went to see their line chief. “We told Sargent Birch,” Giordino says, “If we were relieved of our duties on the line, we could fix up the hanger and the ground equipment.”

Much to their surprise, Sargent Birch told them to go for it, and they were soon scraping, painting, and overhauling. Several APUs, “requisitioned” from other squadrons, were quickly repainted and stenciled with their new home’s designation. After a month’s labor, the hanger and its contents were in such great shape that the four airmen could complete their assignments by ten o’clock and spend the rest of the day at the beach.

During their first year and a half at Hickam, Clive and his friend’s entertainment - like most young servicemen far away from home for the first time - consisted of going downtown, getting drunk, attempting to pick up girls, getting drunker, and after the bars closed, bumbling back to the base. When Clive and his friends finally got around to exploring the island’s magnificent beaches and surrounding water, he declares, “We became diving fanatics.”

In the early 1950s, equipment available for amateur divers was scarce, rudimentary, and sometimes dangerous. “My first mask,” Clive says, “was a rather strange affair with two snorkels equipped with Ping-Pong balls to keep the water out. My fins looked like bedroom slippers with big flaps.” Giordino recalls, “If we couldn’t find a piece of gear, or it was too expensive, we would make it ourselves. I turned an aircraft instrument case into an underwater camera housing and Dave Anderson assembled a pretty respectable spear gun from some parts he scrounged in the engine shop.”

Having explored the limits of snorkeling, the four friends pooled their resources and ordered an “Aqua-Lung” directly from Jacques Cousteau’s Spirotechnique factory in France. Costing $75, plus freight, the tank and double hose regulator are believed to be among the first of its kind shipped to Hawaii.

Two months later, the gear finally arrived. After picking up the crate, the four airmen rushed to their hanger, fired up a compressor, filled the tank with 200 pounds of stale air, and drove straight to the beach. Taking turns, one man would cautiously descend to twenty or thirty feet, while the other neophyte frogmen floated on the surface, ready to come to his aid if he got in trouble. Clive is amazed they survived the experience. “Air embolisms and decompression times were vague terms for most sport divers in 1951. It was a wonder we didn’t suffer any number of ghastly diving maladies.”

In early June 1952, a C-97 maintenance flight, which required a mechanic onboard, provided Clive with paid transport and two work-free weeks in California. He was thrilled with the opportunity to see Barbara Knight.

Clive and Barbara had been writing to each other, but his arrival on her birthday was a complete surprise, and the couple was inseparable for the next two weeks. Flying back to Hickham, Clive recalls listening to the Ames Brothers singing, “You, You, You” on the radio and making up his mind to ask Barbara to marry him.

Clive might have been determined to win Barbara’s hand, but he had also fallen under the spell of another lady. When he saw a poster announcing sports car races at an abandoned airport near Honolulu, he and Al Giordino drove over there. Clive struck up a conversation with a driver who owned a Jaguar XK 120. Invited to sit in the car, Clive says, “I was instantly, completely hooked. I had to have my own Jaguar.”

If he was going to pursue two classy ladies - Barbara and a Jaguar - Clive needed a bankroll. Instituting an austerity program, he gave up his apartment and moved back into the barracks, expanded his used car business, and replaced the gas-guzzling Packard limo with a 1939 Fiat Topolino (“little mouse”). Recalling their last year in Hawaii, Al said, “Clive was so tight he would beg pennies from his friends so he could go to the movies at the base theater.”

In August 1954, after almost three years in Hawaii, Sargent Clive Cussler received his orders to ship out. Sitting in the barracks girding himself for another torturous boat ride, he was informed there was a seat available on an airplane leaving within the hour for San Francisco. Grabbing his duffle bag, he shook a few hands and hurried to the flight line. As the C-97 winged east, Clive was lulled to sleep by the muffled roar of the four R-4360s.