I wasn't, but I was on CORAL SEA which was on deployment at the same time. We came together once, operationally, for the evacuation of Saigon ops...Operation FREQUENT WIND, and we would fly profiles against ENTERPRISE once in a while while they played with the then just-emerging fleet defense tactics against mass raids. Cold War stuff don't you know. Saw them a lot at Cubi Point during mutual in-ports, and of course they were in the next hangar over at Miramar. The only "bad" thing I remember about these two first squadrons was their almost total lack of JO's for the stand-up and first deployment. Each squadron had about 9 LCDRs in it, and not all of them survived, as you can imagine. A telling memory is that I was coffee mess treasurer in VF-111, and got a call from my "opposite number" in VF-1 who wanted me to pick up all of their wooden models from Ben Martinez because they had to leave earlier than planned and couldn't pick them up themselves. So I, a LTJG, did this for my LCDR coffee mess brother. Musta sucked being him... At this time, as well, the thinking was that the Tomcat could not "spin", and therefore they didn't ever brief anti-spin/OOC procedures before tactics hops. They got smarter in this regard as the years passed and "thump-bang" became almost a household word.