Yes, I have been there too—not in the surf, but in the air. I had no previous experience surviving an A-7E after it had been hit by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft fire that ruptured the main fuel tank feeding the TF41 Rolls-Royce engine, resulting in a fuel-fed fire that historically always ends badly. But I did have considerable training in how to possibly survive.
Unfortunately, when this situation first developed, I was far from the perceived safety of the ocean, so I chose not to eject immediately, as the handbook’s emergency procedures demanded in bold type, but to value not being captured over possibly not surviving. Although I could clearly see flames reflecting off the port-side wing pylons in the left rear-view mirror, and I had lost all electrical power, rendering me unable to communicate with anyone, my plan was to eject after crossing the beach outbound and take my chances floating around in my survival raft, assuming the ejection seat, parachute, raft, and other gear all worked as advertised.

When I got there, the number of fishing boats just offshore surprised me. There was a bounty on recovered American aircrew, so I knew that was not helpful. However, I could now see the USS Jouett (CG-29) manning the North SAR station a few more miles in the distance, so I eased into a gentle turn toward it, planning to eject alongside the ship so they would surely see me and the aircraft wouldn’t hit the ship.

However, that’s the point where the fuel tank must have emptied, with the external fire flashing inside it and resulting in a catastrophic explosion that separated everything aft of the wing—including the engine, vertical tail, and horizontal tail—from the wing and forward fuselage.

I was somewhere around 10,000 feet and 400 knots with zero control when my plan ended so abruptly. The immense amount of kinetic energy in the piece of aircraft I occupied had to dissipate before it could find some steady-state condition in which I wasn’t pinned against the upper-left canopy surface by extreme negative G-forces. It seemed to be unending.

So there I was… unable to reach either ejection handle and knowing that, if I could reach one, the seat would likely kill me when its rocket fired because I was so far out of position. I was calmly watching the sea surface rapidly rotating in my view through the front bulletproof glass, thinking, “This is just like the movies!” followed by, “So this is how it’s going to end for me,” when a voice in my consciousness that I didn’t recognize said clearly and matter-of-factly, “No, not yet!”

At that moment, positive G-forces suddenly returned, and I was slammed backward into the seat, where I pulled the ejection-seat’s face-curtain handle as fast as I could move. That was the beginning of an E-ticket Disneyland ride like none other, but, to my amazement and profound gratitude to all the many people who made that moment possible, everything worked, and I was soon in my raft, floating in the relative safety of the ocean just as I had hoped. The fully inflated parachute canopy above me is a sight I’ll never forget.

It turned out that the ship had no problem seeing the fireball coming out from enemy territory, the explosion, and the parachute. They were getting two rescue helicopters in the air probably as I was struggling to get into my raft. In the high sea conditions that existed, they temporarily lost sight of me, but my survival training again paid off. I popped a smoke flare I had in my vest, which allowed the helo crew to reacquire my position and judge the prevailing wind conditions. They put a rescue swimmer in the water (he jumped). The helo backed off while the he assessed my condition before signaling the helo to approach our position. He attached my harness to the lowered hoist, and we were soon on our way back to the CG.

I believe the other helo fired on my raft to sink it so none of the enemy boats could recover it and use it as a decoy.

I went back to my starting point that day, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) on another helo about dusk, where I found out how badly beat up I was. After a few weeks to recover, and with the help of crutches, I was happily flying missions again, only needing some assistance from my willing plane captains to make that initial first big step up the boarding ladder.
The crew of the H-53 “Big Mother” that day were from Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 7 (HC-7) and the three aircrew in the back were awarded Navy Commendation Medals some years later for fishing me out of the Gulf of Tonkin that September afternoon in 1972—a day I call “My bad day at the office.”

That NDE has changed my view on death ever since. I since have learned that the voice I heard has often experienced in similar circumstances. In his book on NDEs, John Geiger calls it “The Third Man Factor.”

But the takeaway from each of our stories is this: when the unexpected happens, keep your wits about you and rely on your training and experience to maximize your chances of survival. If it’s not your time to go, you may survive until it is.