page_title: A. Jay Cristol
section_title: Navy career
hierarchical_section_title: A. Jay Cristol / Navy career
caption_attribution_description: A Grumman AF-2W Guardian (BuNo 130389) from anti-submarine squadron VS-37 in flight circa July 1957.
context_page_description: A. Jay Cristol is a judge, poet, author, pilot, and a lecturer of naval warfare. He served as a Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida from 1959 to 1965 and as a trustee in bankruptcy from 1977 to 1985. He was appointed judge to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida on April 17, 1985, and served as the district's Chief Bankruptcy Judge from 1993 to 1999.
  Cristol served his country as a U.S. Navy aviator and a captain in the US Naval Reserve, with 38 years of service in the diverse roles of both a carrier pilot and a Judge Advocate General Corps lawyer.
context_section_description: Cristol made his first flight in a Piper J-3 Cub on Biscayne Bay in 1945. He has personally piloted a Ford Tri-Motor, the Goodyear Blimp, a Soviet MiG-15, a Czech L-39, a Chinese CJ-6, a French Fouga Magister, and many other unique, antique, or historic aircraft.
  In November 1951, during the Korean war, Cristol joined the US Navy. After receiving his wings in 1953, he deployed to the western Pacific and flew both day and night missions in the Grumman AF Guardian from the USS Princeton CVS 37. Upon returning to the US, Cristol left active duty and joined the Naval Reserve.
  He graduated from Naval Justice School and served as a naval JAG lawyer for another twenty years. In 1983, Cristol was appointed an honorary professor of the Naval Justice School. During the 1980s, he was sent to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law at Sanremo to lecture on the Law of Naval Warfare.
caption: Grumman AF Guardian AF-2W
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