A Day In The Life of a Cold Warrior

by Anonymous

The Out of Area

 Chapter 1 (Getting to the hanger)

While the end of the cold war was, and still is, a call for great celebration it would seem that the cold war like some other dark times in American history is currently falling victim to revisionist history.  Aside from the cathartic value of putting pen to paper I thought it would be beneficial to record some firsthand accounts of daily cold war events.  My cold war service took place in the 1980’s.  I was involved in antisubmarine warfare.  I was an aircrew member aboard the U.S. Navy’s P-3 Orion aircraft.  My primary role aboard the aircraft was as a sonar operator although all of the crew members underwent considerable cross training for all of the stations aboard the plane.  Prior to the narrative, a little background information is in order.  After the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960’s it was determined that the best possible way to handle the American public was to try to remove from their daily thought process, that the cold war was even taking place.  The war in Vietnam was also instrumental in allowing the general public to ignore the fact that incredible, possibly world ending destruction was never more than about 8 minutes away.  The cold war actually underwent a considerable escalation during the 1980’s, and Soviet submarines were continually on station off the American coasts awaiting the order to launch.  The distance of the submarines from the American coast lines was regulated only by the size of the missiles they carried.  The older boats with the shorter range missiles had to get closer in than the newer subs that could carry larger, longer range missiles.  The single most important element of the Navy’s cold war antisubmarine strategy was simply stated, that from the time a Soviet submarine slipped its’ moorings and put to sea, to the time it returned to port and tied back up, there would always be an asset in place to sink it before it could launch.  Now an asset could be a ship, another submarine, or an aircraft like my Orion.  The narrative that follows is about what we used to call an out of area mission.  These flights launched from the continental U.S., and generally lasted 12 to 18 hours; the target was generally one of the older Yankee class Russian submarines.  At this point in history the navy had four wings of P-3 squadrons, two in the Pacific fleet, and two in the Atlantic fleet.  Each wing had about 14 squadrons, some of which would be deployed overseas to track targets and events that could not be monitored from the United States.  The stateside or non-deployed squadrons would take turns as the ready alert squadron stateside, while the other stateside squadrons would be in some phase of ramp up for their next deployment, or ramping down after recently returning from overseas.  It was the responsibility of the ready alert squadron to handle all tactical matters that could be prosecuted from the U.S.  Each non-deployed squadron would stand the ready alert for one month.  What follows is a narrative about a typical out of area mission.

It’s 0200, and I am not sure why I am awake.  Oh, I get it now; someone is beating on the door to the barracks room that I share with another junior enlisted man.  Knowing full well that my squadron has the ready alert, and that more specifically, my crew is the ready one, read we need to be able to get airborne in 4 hours if launched, I am pretty sure why the barracks watch is trying to beat the door to my room off its’ hinges.  I stagger to the door less than half awake, and tell the watch to inform the duty office I am on my way.  I have thirty minutes to get to the hanger, so despite being well versed in the exercise, I still have some decisions to make.  Dressing myself is automatic, pull on a flight suit, and the obligatory steel toed flight boots, and that issue is resolved.  The next thing to address is food.  The galley closed at 1900 hours, and there is nowhere on base to get a hot meal at 0200, therefore the only option is what passes for food at the squadron’s coffee mess.  The remaining decision is how to get to the hanger.  I have two options on this particular morning, either call the duty office and ask if the duty driver can come to the barracks, and pick me up, or ride my bicycle to the hanger.  The base does have a bus service, but it is not running at 0200.  At this point in my career I am flying the sensor two position on the aircraft, which means I have several boxes of magnetic tapes I need to get to the plane.  Carrying these to the plane is quite difficult, due to their extreme weight, so I elect to ride the bicycle to the hanger.  With all the immediate matters decided I mumble an apology to my roommate for the early morning disturbance, he grunts back something unintelligible and then promptly rolls over and resumes snoring, and head outside the barracks to pedal my way to the hanger.  Now the elapsed time for all of this activity was about five minutes.

Now outside the barracks I walk over to the bicycle rack, and unchain the flounder mobile.  A little background information is in order here.  My afore mentioned bicycle was referred to by my shipmates as the flounder mobile as my call sign at the time was flounder, I was told that the site of me riding the rather antiquated conveyance about left a lasting visual impression on anyone that witnessed it.  I had purchased the flounder mobile at a local yard sale, it was a vintage three speed bicycle with large balloon gum walled tires, and I mounted a very large cargo rack on the rear of it to carry the afore mentioned tape cases.  The distance from the barracks to the hanger was a little over two miles, so bear in mind that it is 0200, I have been awake less than ten minutes, and have not had the benefit of either coffee or a morning cigarette and I am now facing a two mile pedal to get to the hanger.  The route to the hanger involved navigating the flounder mobile around half the distance of the base’s perimeter road.  Because of the prevailing winds blowing off the bay, half of the ride required pedaling against what could be a very strong headwind.  On the way to the hanger I needed to stop at the A.S.W.O.C. (Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Center) to pick up the tape cases which I would need to preflight my sonar gear, and record the events that transpired during the mission.  At this point some people could be wondering why I didn’t have a car.  The answer is very simple, and entirely based in economics, I couldn’t afford one.  The base was located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, the single most expensive place in the country to live.  As a junior enlisted man I believe I was making about $17,000 dollars a year at the time, and an automobile was simply beyond my financial means.

Now one advantage to taking the flounder mobile was that by the time I arrived at the A.S.W.O.C. after a vigorous bike ride, all vestiges of sleep had been expelled.  I walk through the door to the A.S.W.O.C. and I am inside what appears to be an airlock.  The only thing I can see is another door directly opposite the one I entered, and one of those two way mirror affairs that you see in police line ups.  I walk up to the mirror and slide my I.D. card through a slot just barely large enough to admit the card.  I then give the mirror my squadron and crew number, and after a brief pause a Different I.D. card emerges from the same slot that will grant me access to the A.S.W.O.C.  After attaching the dispensed card to my flight suit I hear the solenoid on the interior door click, and a voice instructs me to go on in.  Now I know there was a human being on the other side of the mirror that performed all these machinations, but during my entire career, I never met the individual, nor did I ever see the office that must have been located behind the mirror.  Now inside the A.S.W.O.C., I proceed to the lab that analyzes all of the acoustic recordings to get the tape case.  Here I will get my first tidbit of information about the flight.  The acoustic lab is operated by sonar operators such as myself.  A.S.W.O.C. duty is considered a shore duty billet, and this is a normal assignment for AW’s when they have finished a sea duty assignment.  Now, some definitions are in order here.  AW is a rating.  The letters are an abbreviation for my actual rating designation, Aviation Antisubmarine warfare operator.  In the Navy, enlisted men have rates, and officers have rank.  Now despite the fact that the P-3 Orion is a land based aircraft, assignment to a fleet P-3 squadron was considered sea duty at the time due to the fact that the squadrons would be deployed overseas for six month or longer periods of time.  After explaining to the Petty Officer on duty at the time why I was there, he pointed at my tape case, and when queried told me why we were being launched.  A full tactical briefing would be given to the crew after we got the aircraft preflighted, but it was considered professional courtesy for the lab boys to let the operators flying the mission know ahead of time what we were going to be getting into.  As I have already mentioned an asset always had to be in place to sink a Soviet ballistic missile sub before it could launch.  On this particular evening the T.A.S. (Towed Array Sonar) ship that had been tracking the duty Yankee had lost contact and my crew was being launched to reestablish contact.  The T.A.S. ships had a better sonar system than the Orion, after all you only have so much room in an airplane for electronics, however, they could not search a large area nearly as quickly as an aircraft could.  I let out a grunt as I picked up my tape case; the things weighed about 65 Lbs., and left the lab.  Now back in the airlock, I remove the I.D. card I was given and insert it back in the slot below the mirror, after a brief pause, my I.D. emerges from the same slot, and I walk back outside to the flounder mobile.

I had modified the flounder mobile with an oversized cargo rack mounted above the rear fender.  The cargo rack was originally used for delivering newspapers, and with some judicious sawing I was able to produce a flat surface that could accommodate two tape cases.  The tapes inside were one inch magnetic tapes mounted on glass reels that measured about two feet in diameter.  The magnetic tapes did not record any flight data, or digital information from the aircrafts mission computer.  The tapes were analog affairs that recorded the information gathered by the sonar gear; their only other function was recording whatever was said over the aircrafts I.C.S. (Internal Communication System).  After securing the tape case to the cargo rack, using a well practiced bungee cord method, I pedaled the flounder mobile, now 65 Lbs. heavier from the A.S.W.O.C. to the hanger.

Once inside the hanger, I parked the flounder mobile inside the AW shop, unlashed the tape case, and headed for the locker room to get the rest of my flight gear.  From my locker I retrieved my flight helmet, and L.P.A. (Life Preserver Apparatus)/survival vest combination.  Now wearing full flight gear, and carrying the tape case, I have gained about 90 Lbs., but I still have one more item to retrieve prior to trudging out to the plane, my comm. box.  The magnetic tapes inside the case are currently blank, and thus not classified.  Now my comm. box does not contain any communications equipment however, it does contain all of my technical manuals pertaining to submarines, and these documents are classified, and need to be kept in metal briefcases with drain holes that allow them to fill with water and sink in the event the aircraft winds up in the Pacific.  Each flight crew had a crew locker in the squadron duty office were they would keep their comm. boxes.  Now classified material is not dissimilar to a small child in that it must be constantly attended by a human being, you can’t just leave the things lying about unsupervised.  After retrieving my comm. box from the duty office, I have now gained about 110 Lbs. since I left the barracks, and I am now ready to leave the hanger and walk out to the plane, which depending upon which spot it’s parked in could be a fairly long walk especially considering my now substantially increased body weight.  The total elapsed time since I left the barracks is about 25 minutes, so there are about three and a half hours remaining before we are supposed to be rolling down the runway, so far, so good.

Chapter 2 (Preflight)

Once again, I have to break off the narrative, and provide some background information.  A fleet P-3 squadron would generally consist of eight to ten aircraft, operated by nine to eleven flight crews.  The N.A.S. (Naval Air Station) my squadron was home ported out of had three hangers.  One of the hangers housed the training squadron, commonly referred to as the rag squadron, as well as training facilities, and the simulators, and the other two hangers were used by the fleet squadrons that were currently non-deployed.  The hangers were designated one, two, and three.  Hanger one was on one side of the runway, and hangers two and three were on the other.  Hangers two and three housed the fleet squadrons, and were World War II constructions that had originally been built for the operation of Navy blimps.  During the Second World War blimps were used in both the Atlantic, and Pacific to provide the A.S.W. (antisubmarine warfare) role that was being filled by the Orions during the 1980’s.  Hangers two and three were actually wooden constructions, as metal had to be very judiciously allocated during the war.  The hangers were arching affairs with multi paneled doors on each end.  The apex of the wooden arches that formed the majority of the structure were in excess of two hundred feet high.  The sheer size was impressive enough, however, what always fascinated me was that humans associate wood as a material to make square shapes, not curved ones, and the sight of all of those large curving wooden arches was rather counter intuitive.  The sea of concrete surrounding the two hangers were the planes were parked was simply referred to as the ramp.  Each squadron was assigned a group of spots on the ramp to keep their planes, while stateside.  The individual aircraft did not have designated spots on the ramp, and thus could be parked in any one of the spaces currently assigned to that squadron; this meant that a fair amount of walking could be required to locate your plane.  At this point in my career the Orions were still painted in the traditional grey and white paint scheme, which included squadron specific tail insignias painted on the vertical stabilizers, and large side numbers painted on either side of the aircrafts nose.  These markings aside from being nice to look at did make locating your plane much easier.  Later in my career this paint scheme along with our cherished tail insignias went away in favor of a generic I.R. (Infer Red) absorbing one.

The large doors at the ends of the hangers were seldom fully closed.  They normally remained open wide enough to allow the easy passage of maintenance and support equipment from inside the hanger out to the ramp.  I start walking towards the hanger doors, and when I reach the squadron’s maintenance control office I step inside to ask the watch which bird is the ready one.  Now according to N.A.T.O.P.S. (Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures Standardization), the governing body that rules all of Naval Aviation regardless of aircraft type, I am required to look at the last ten maintenance records for the aircraft I will be flying.  The large binders that contained the M.A.F.’s (Maintenance Action Forms) for each aircraft were simply called gripe books, and the M.A.F.’s were known as gripe sheets.  The gripe books contained much more than the last ten gripe sheets, but I am only required to review the ten most recent ones.   The chief on duty is a very rotund man named Hagwood, who was generally referred to, although not to his face especially if you were junior to him, as Chief Hugewood.  Chief Hagwood was a flight engineer who normally would fly only the minimum four hours a month required to keep his flight pay.

I walk up to the counter in maintenance control and say, “Chief which bird is the ready one?”

The chief responds, “SG-6.”

I ask the yeoman on duty in the office with the chief for SG-6’s gripe book.  The yeoman unceremoniously plunks the giant tome on the counter, and I flip it open to the section containing the last ten gripe sheets.  Since this is a tactical flight, and there will be a full crew aboard, I am not really all that concerned about the maintenance records, as my primary role tonight is as a sonar operator, safety of flight and mechanical issues will be addressed by the crew’s pilots and flight engineers.  If the gripe sheets indicate any recent problems with the sonar gear I will take note of them, but the reality is, if the gear has issues, I just have to fix it prior to takeoff.  I am however concerned by one thing.  Despite all the science and technology involved here, aviators are a very superstitious bunch, and SG-6 is regarded  as a hanger queen and unlucky aircraft in general.  The reasons being, SG-6 had recently suffered a lightning strike while flying through some heavy weather, and the avionics in the plane had been intermittently displaying rather strange behavior ever since, the other reason I am a bit unnerved about SG-6 is that on the squadron’s last deployment overseas a young woman had died aboard the plane while being med-evaced to the Naval Hospital in Subic Bay.  Some of the squadron’s ground pounders (maintenance staff) insisted that the plane had been haunted ever since.  Paranormal issues aside I find nothing in the gripe book of immediate concern, so I leave the office, and resume walking out to the plane.  Total elapsed time is now about thirty minutes

At this point I have yet to encounter any of my fellow crew mates.  This is not a cause of any concern, as only four of us lived on the base, and the rest would be coming in from town.  Exiting the hanger, I start scanning the ramp for SG-6.  Now all aircraft both civilian and military are assigned a burrow number, these numbers are not unlike the license plate on a car, and are used to identify specific aircraft.  Military aircraft also have side numbers assigned by the squadron, and each squadron has a two letter designation that uniquely identifies it.  My squadron’s two letter designation was SG (sierra golf), so the plane I am looking for will have SG6 painted on either side of the aircrafts nose just behind the radome.  Emerging from the hanger the first thing I do is listen for the sound of an A.P.U. (Auxiliary Power Unit).  The junior flight engineer on my crew (Dave) lived in base housing with his wife, and two daughters, and normally either he or I would be the first to arrive at the aircraft.  Our 2P(Jim), or copilot, also lived in base housing with his wife, but the pilot’s would have to stop at the tower and check the weather and other safety of flight issues prior to heading for the hanger, so Jim was normally the third person to arrive at the plane when we were launched.  The remaining on base resident was the sensor 3 (Casey), also an AW like me, but Casey was chronically late for everything, to the point where he always seemed to be in jeopardy of being written up for missing muster.  The ramp was absolutely quiet; therefore I must have beaten Dave to the hanger.  An A.P.U. is an aircraft engine contained inside the fuselage of the plane.  It is identical to the engines in the wings; it just doesn’t have a propeller connected to it.  A.P.U.’s are also very loud, so if one had been running there would have been no missing it.

Now would seem to be the best time to jump out of the narrative and introduce the full cast of characters that will be flying the mission.  I am refraining from using full names and ranks in this narrative, I will simply refer to the crewmembers by either the position they flew on the aircraft, or the familiar names we addressed each other by.

C.A.C. – 3

Combat Air Crew Three

AKA The Orangutans

 The Flight Station

 Hawk

PPC – Patrol Plane Commander (Normally Spoken as Peeps)

Pilot – Solely responsible for all matters pertaining to safety of flight.

Regarded by everyone in the squadron as the best stick.

 Jim

2P – Second Pilot

Copilot

Jim was from NJ, he was just over five feet all with a seven foot mouth, he possessed the thickest New Jersey accent I have ever heard.  Jim initially came across to people who first met him as rather abrasive, but he was a competent pilot, and one of the funniest men I have ever met.

 Craig

3P – Third Pilot

Craig was a relatively new addition to the squadron.  He was an easy going fellow who was just starting to find his niche in both the squadron, and the crew.  New pilots checking into fleet P-3 squadrons started out as No-P’s and immediately started the qualification process to become P.P.C.’s.  The progression was No-P to 3P to 2P to P.P.C.  The whole process took a little under two years.

 Senior

Senior Flight Engineer – Expert on all aircraft systems

The senior flight engineer was also responsible for the care and feeding of the junior enlisted members of the crew.  While this duty was never formally assigned, it was a long standing tradition that was simply understood.

 Normally Senior Chief Petty Officers are simply addressed as Senior, unless the circumstances involved are of the highest order of formality.  The squadrons aircrew rated C.P.O.’s (Chief Petty Officers) were all assigned to a flight crew, at least on paper, but most of them seldom flew more than the minimum four hours a month required to keep their flight pay.  Senior was the exception to this rule; he took every available opportunity to fly.

 Gary

First Engineer – A fully qualified flight engineer, Expert on all aircraft systems

Gary was a very polite soft spoken man from the American Midwest, a competent flight engineer who was all business in the flight station.

 Dave

Second Engineer – A flight engineer in training

Dave was also a recent graduate from the training squadron.  He was working on his qualification process to become a First Engineer.  Second Engineers were normally junior N.C.O.’s who had come from different parts of the Navy prior to starting their careers in Orions.

 The Tube

(The Rest of the Aircraft, Aft of the Flight Station)

 Ken

TACCO/MC – Tactical Coordinator/Mission Coordinator

TACCO – Responsible for combining the tactical information gathered by all the crew stations in order to ensure a successful weapons deployment.

MC – Responsible for ensuring the successful completion of the mission.  The MC designation could be assigned to either the PPC, or TACCO.

 The TACCO enjoyed an unofficial duty not dissimilar to the senior flight engineer in that he was responsible for the care and feeding of the entire crew, not just the enlisted personnel.  Due to the rather unique make up of crew three Ken was normally referred to by officers senior to him, as the zookeeper.

Tony

NAVCOM – Navigator Communicator

The NAVCOM was responsible for handling all secure communications, and the safe navigation of the aircraft, the NAVCOM was also training to become a TACCO.  It should be noted that this period in time is pre-GPS, and that the Orions spent most of their flight time off the A.T.C. (Air Traffic Control) grid.  Although the plane did posses an inertial navigation system, like the ones used on submarines, we still relied on a traditional navigator using the time tested tools of the trade such as a sextant.

 Tony was a graduate of the Naval Academy.  Tony was living proof that you cannot judge a book by its cover.  At first glance he seemed like a rather unpleasant man, but in actuality he was a very nice man, and a fine officer.  When describing himself, and his less than friendly visage, Tony used to say, “I can’t help the face I was born with.”

 Casey

SS3 – Sensor Three

The Sensor Three was an AW who operated all the non-acoustic detection systems aboard the aircraft.  These included RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging), E.S.M. (Electronic Surveillance Measures), M.A.D. (Magnetic Anomaly Detection), and I.R.D.S. (Infer Red Detection System).

 Casey and I were both teenagers at this time.  We had gone through the entire AW training pipeline together, and somehow managed to wind up not only in the same squadron, but assigned to the same crew.  Casey was an incredibly youthful looking fellow, to the degree that you could have placed him in any Junior High School and he would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the student body.  Casey was not unlike Gracie Allen in that he came across as somewhat scatterbrained.  Fortunately for all of us he always remained remarkably focused once he had strapped himself into his seat.

 Mike

SS1 – Sensor One

The Sensor One, also an AW, was the lead sonar operator on the aircraft responsible for the successful prosecution of the target.  The SS1 was also unofficially responsible for riding herd on all of the flight crew’s AW’s.

 Mike was an interesting character.  His prowess as a sonar operator was actually quite legendary throughout the entire wing.  He was regarded as one of the best AW’s in the Pacific Fleet.  Mike was also a second generation cold warrior.  His father, now retired from the Navy, had been a sonar operator aboard the P-2 Neptune, the predecessor to the Orion.  As the sensor one another one of his principle duties was to train his sensor two, me, to become a fully qualified sensor one.  Mike could be a very nasty individual, and assignment to him as a sensor two was regarded as about a half a step above a death sentence by most of the people who knew him. 

 Me

SS2 – Sensor Two

The sensor two was an AW who also operated the aircrafts sonar system, and was in training to become a fully qualified sensor one.  The sonar gear on the Orions could not be fully operated by just one individual, there was just too much of it.

 At this point in my career, I am relatively fresh out of the rag squadron, and just starting to grow into my role in the Navy.  The reader can form his own opinion of me.

Zero

IFT – In Flight Technician

The IFT was an AT (Aviation Electronics Technician) responsible for troubleshooting, and repairing issues occurring during the mission.  The IFT would also repair most issues that manifested themselves during preflight.  Now, one of the core design concepts behind the Orion was that the aircraft could operate completely independently if necessary.  What this really means is that the crew could resolve any issues with the aircraft without the assistance of ground support staff.

 Zero was one of the squadron’s best technicians.  He was on his second enlistment in that Navy, and trying to determine whether he should head for the private sector at the end of his current hitch.  Zero was a very level headed, and even tempered individual and thus used by the senior members of crew three as the barometer of our crew.  If Zero was upset about something, then there was probably a legitimate reason for the rest of us to be swinging from the bailout rail.

 Larry

IFO – In Flight Ordinanceman

The IFO was an AO (Aviation Ordinanceman) who managed the weapons, and search stores (Sonobouys) during flight.  The IFO was also responsible for manually launching search stores when required.

 Larry was a person who lived totally in the moment.  He never gave much thought to either the past or future.  He had something of a split personality.  One moment he was an absolute wild man, and moral degenerate, and the next moment he was quoting biblical scripture.  Talking to Larry could be difficult because you were never entirely sure which one of his personalities you were conversing with, or when the other one may manifest itself.

Now that the major players have been introduced, I will return to the narrative.  Since I did not hear an A.P.U. running, I start scanning the ramp for SG6.  All ten of the squadron’s aircraft are currently on the ground, so our squadron’s part of the ramp is quite full.  I spot a sonobouy cart parked next to one of the planes, that plane is most likely the ready one, and of course it is parked the furthest from the hanger.  Dreadfully annoying considering the amount of gear I am carrying.  Reaching the suspected aircraft, it does in fact prove to be SG6.  Now the only other people on the ramp are the normal navy ramp security watch, and some ground pounders working on other aircraft.  This is actually a good thing; if the plane had been surrounded by Marines it would have meant that there was special ordinance in the Bombay.  Now I need to start SG6’s A.P.U.  Without the A.P.U. running, the plane has no electricity, and more importantly no air-conditioning.  I walk up to the nose gear, and set down my tape case and comm. box, I then walk into the nose gear wheel well, connect the battery, verify the nose gear uplock switch is in the correct position, and check the oil level in the four sight glasses pertaining to the A.P.U.  Exiting the nose gear wheel well, I pick my gear back up, and walk aft along the port side of the aircraft to the boarding ladder.  The main cabin door at the top of the ladder is locked with a combination pad lock, so I once again set down my gear, and then climb the ladder to remove the lock on the main cabin door.  Trying to juggle the tape case and comm. box while working the combination lock on the narrow ladder would be not only close to impossible, but stupid as well.  After removing the lock and opening the main cabin door, I descend the ladder to get my gear.  Now that myself, and all my gear are in the plane, I can start the A.P.U., keep in mind that the plane is not much brighter than a coffin at this point.  After turning on the flashlight attached to my survival vest, I head forward to the flight station.  Once I am seated in the flight engineers seat, I verify that the A.P.U. in flight arm switch is in the unarmed position, perform two different checks on the A.P.U.’s fire alarm system, place the A.P.U. start switch in the on position, turn on the number two fuel boost pump, and reengage the A.P.U. intake and exhaust door circuit breakers.  I am now ready to start the A.P.U.  I move the switch from on to start, and closely watch the oil pressure on the A.P.U. as the turbine spins up.  I get a normal start on the A.P.U., so I immediately turn on the ground air, and glance down at the fuel panel.  Once the A.P.U. was running it was regarded as good practice to set its fuel feed up from the tank containing the most fuel.  After adjusting the fuel control panel I then turn my attention to entertainment, namely the A.D.F. (Automatic Direction Finder) radio.  Stepping back in time to WWII for a moment, some people may recall that the Japanese pilots used local Hawaiian radio stations to assist them in flying from their ships to Pearl Harbor.  This was done using an A.D.F. radio.  Simply tune the A.D.F. to the desired frequency, and an arrow on the instrument panel tells the pilot which direction to fly.  For preflight purposes it was customary to tune the A.D.F. to a local radio station so the crew could listen via the I.C.S.  I tune the radio to an oldies station, and then head back aft.  As I walk through the tube to retrieve my gear I am turning on the overhead lights.  The inside of the aircraft is now substantially less coffin like, and the ground air is running full tilt.  Placing my gear next to the sonar station I now have to decide my next move.

Now something needs to be said at this point about the preflight process in general.  There are really two preflights running simultaneously.  One is the preflighting of the tactical systems for prosecuting the submarine; the other is the general aircraft preflight that would have to be done whether this was a tactical mission or not.  Each member of the crew was responsible for the tactical preflight of their own gear however; the responsibilities for the general preflight were spread across all the crew members.  No written rules existed delegating the general preflight duties to specific crew members.  Each flight crew would work out the assignments amongst themselves.  About 45 minutes have elapsed since my wake up call, and I have not had any coffee, so my next move decides itself.  I walk into the galley and start to make the coffee.  This was one of my normal responsibilities as I had been told on several occasions that I made the best coffee in the pacific fleet.  The galley was equipped with a 42 cup navy issue coffee urn.  Rummaging about through the galley drawers, I locate some coffee grounds.  I set the coffee urn on the floor and walk to the aircrafts head.  Inside the head is a large water container with a spout at the bottom, and under neath the spout is a small wash basin.  Removing the container from the wall, I dispense some water into the urn and swish it about a bit.  I then unceremoniously dump the water down the aircrafts freefall shoot.  Sanitization of the urn complete, I fill it up with water, add the basket with the coffee grounds, then place the whole affair back in its rack in the galley, and plug it in.  After returning the water tank to the wall in head, I pause for a moment because I hear someone coming up the aircraft ladder.  The main cabin door opens, and in steps Dave.

“Good morning Dave”, I greet him, “Any PAX tonight?”

PAX is Navy for passengers, read guys going along for the ride to maintain their flight pay.

“No we are all orange”, Dave responds.

Crew three was collectively referred to as the orangutans, and in our case the color orange was commonly used by senior officers as a verb to describe our attitudes and behavior.

“Good deal!” I reply, “I’m headed outside to do plugs and covers.”

“Can you help me with coordinated checks when you’re finished?” Dave queries back.

“Not a problem.” I answer.  

Once again, I need to provide the reader with some clarity.  When aircraft are put to bed, certain critical openings are either covered, or plugged up.  Doing plugs and covers is simply the act of removing, or installing them.  Coordinated checks are tests of certain aircraft parts that require two people to perform, one inside the flight station to operate the controls, and another outside the aircraft to verify the results.  Communication between the man inside the plane and the man outside is accomplished with hand signals.

Prior to exiting the plane I unlash the aircrafts service ladder from the bulkhead.  The large covers over the turbine intakes for our four engines are about twenty feet up in the air.  When operating independently overseas, and out of sight of the Navy’s watchful eye, we seldom bothered with the service ladder.  Under those less formal conditions, we normally just walked out onto the wing, and shimmied down the engines nacelles to remove the intake covers.  This procedure could not be practiced stateside, as it was a blatant disregard of regulations, but it was much faster and easier, provided you didn’t lose your balance and fall off the engine.  The service ladder in its collapsed and stored configuration was about six feet long.  It could be unfolded to about three times that length.  I wrestle the service ladder down the aircrafts boarding ladder, and start pulling plugs and covers.  One of the universal concerns of aviation, civilian or military is F.O.D. (Foreign Object Damage), so when removing plugs and covers it is of tantamount importance not to lose any.  An unaccounted for plug or cover being sucked into a turban intake will have disastrous consequences.  My method of pulling plugs and covers was to remove the large turban intake covers first, and then use one of the covers as a bag to carry all the other plugs and covers.  After four trips up and down the service ladder, and a walk around the entire aircraft I have removed and corralled all the plugs and covers.  This task completed I wrestle the service ladder, and all the plugs and covers up the aircraft ladder and into the plane.

The galley had a small dinette booth sort of affair in it, and the benches opened up for storage, this is where the plugs and covers were kept when not in use.  After stowing the plugs and covers in one of the benches I lash the service ladder back to the bulkhead, and walk forward to the flight station.

“Ready for coordinated checks” I ask Dave?

“Roger that” Dave responds, so I head back aft and descend the ladder again.

Once on the ground I walk well out in front of the aircrafts nose.  I look up in the flight station, and Dave gives me a thumbs up indicating he is ready to begin.  I make a V with my right index and middle finger, and hold it up to my eyes.  Dave turns on the taxi lights.  I verify both lights come on and give him a thumbs up, Dave turns off the taxi lights.  I then extend both my arms fully and point at the center of the wings.  The landing lights extend and come on.  I give Dave another thumbs up.  The landing lights go out and retract back into the wings.  Next I hold my left thumb over my right thumb and swivel them about.  The upper and lower strobe lights come on, and I give Dave the thumbs up.  The strobes go out.  Now I place both my hands together out in front of me, and open them like a clam.  The flaps fully extend.  I then close my hands and Dave fully retracts the flaps.  Dave is rewarded with another thumbs up from me for his efforts.  I pause for just a moment and wait for Dave to lower the flaps back to the 18 degree position.  While on the ground the flaps where always left at 18 degrees.  The reason being, if the crew had to perform and emergency exit from the ground, we simply went out the over wing exits and slid down the flaps, the civilian equivalent would be the emergency evacuation slides the flight attendants always talk about.  With the flaps back in the correct position I hold my hands up in the air and squeeze them into fists several times.  Inside the flight station Dave starts pumping the brakes.  I walk to the aircrafts main mounts, the two main landing gear, one in each wing, and visually verify that the brakes are working.  Next I open the access door to the hydraulic service center and check for the correct pressure reading on the hydraulic accumulators.  Keep in mind that the whole time I am doing all of this, Dave is still up in the flight station pumping away.  After verifying the proper performance of the aircrafts brakes and hydraulics I open and close the plane’s sonobouy disable door several times.  This flashes a light in the flight station, and tells Dave he can stop pumping the brakes now.  The sonobouy disable door is a small door on the bottom of the plane about the size of an index card.  When this door is open, the sonobouys cannot be launched.  Since the sonobouys are deployed from the aircraft with explosive charges it is preferable to make sure they cannot be inadvertently fired when the plane is on the ground.  Coordinated checks completed, that’s right you guessed it, its back up the ladder again.

Now while Dave and I have been performing the coordinated checks, my fellow crewmates have been arriving at the aircraft.  Back inside the plane the first thing I do is head to the coffee pot.  Mike is standing in the galley.

“Morning Mike” I greet him.

I receive a grunt from Mike, and the two of us walk forward to the sonar station.  The sonar gear sits over the wing on the port side of the plane.  The SS1 and SS2 sit side by side facing outboard.  Taking our seats, Mike and I start powering up the gear.  Now about an hour has passed since the call came from the duty office notifying the crew that we were being launched.  This means we need to be airborne in about 3 hours.  Now this may seem like a lot of time, but there is still a considerable amount of work to be done, and time is of the essence.  A full preflight of the sonar system starting from scratch took a little over two hours, but since this is a ready alert launch we do have some things working in our favor.  One of the squadrons other crews not assigned to a ready alert the previous day has already performed a full preflight of all the aircrafts systems.  A preflight had a shelf life of 12 hours.  If the plane was not launched within 12 hours of the preflight being performed the aircraft would need to be gone over again from top to bottom.  What Mike and I are going to do is get the gear powered up and perform some basic checks on it if for no other reason than our own piece of mind.  Now for reasons I never knew the tactical systems i.e.:  anything not related to the flight station, did not have officially sanctioned pocket checklists, so each AW would make up his own abbreviated checklist based on the gigantic tome hanging on the back of his seat, the C.S.M.M. (Crew Station Maintenance Manual).  Now all SS1 and SS2 combinations would refine their methods to a point where very little real intelligible conversation was required, Mike and I where no exception, so the dialog may seem a bit bizarre.

I point up at the T.C.G. (Time Code Generator), and say to Mike, “WWV or Timex?”

“Timex” Mike responds.

Now the T.C.G. is exactly what its name implies, a clock.  Its primary function was not to let Mike and I know what time it was, but to continuously record a time stamp on the magnetic tapes capturing the information displayed on the sonar gear.  In theory the correct procedure to set the current time on the T.C.G. was to tune one of the aircraft radios to station WWV which still to this day broadcasts the exact time from the atomic clock in Colorado.  Aviation, both civilian and military operates on Zulu Time, a.k.a Greenwich Mean Time.  Mike’s response of “Timex” told me to skip the rather cumbersome procedure of setting the T.C.G. via WWV, and just look at my wrist watch, perform the conversion from Pacific Time to Zulu Time in my head, and start the T.C.G.

“T.C.G. is up”, I say.

Mike responds, “Here’s a cookie”, and tosses me a chocolate chip cookie.

There is of course a back story here.  Mike’s long suffering wife was a rather voluminous woman named Sheri.  Sheri normally came across as rather loud, and uncouth, but she had a good heart.  Whenever the orangutans were launched she would send Mike to the plane with a very large tub of made from scratch chocolate chip cookies.  If the crew had the ready alert, Sheri always had a tub of cookies standing the ready alert as well.  The cookies were Mike’s method of positive reinforcement.  If I did something right I got a cookie.  If I made a mistake something else would happen.

At this point Zero walks past the sonar gear headed aft, glances in our direction and says, “SGNOGs up.”

SYGNOG, pronounced signog, stands for system go no go.  The SYGNOG was a program that could be loaded on the aircrafts computer that would perform some automated testing on various tactical systems in the tube.  The processing power of the aircrafts computer was about the equivalent of a 486, which by today’s standards doesn’t seem like a lot, but in the early 1980’s it was quite remarkable.  The aircrafts computer programs were stored on magnetic tapes, and only one program could be run at a time, so Mike and I had a finite amount of time to run the SYGNOG on our gear before Zero would have to take down the SYGNOG, and load the operating system.

Mike looks at me and says, “Start your SYGNOG, and then check the AQH-4.”

“Roger that” I respond.  “Lower door open or closed?” I further query.

“Open” Mike grunts back.

The translation here is simple.  Mike just instructed me to start the SYGNOG on my sonar equipment, and while the program is running, to preflight the tape recorder, designation AQH-4.  The AQH-4 had a lower door that covered the circuit boards that captured the information on the tapes.  As I mentioned earlier the tape recorder at the sonar station only recorded the information being collected by the sonar gear, and whatever was spoken over the aircrafts I.C.S. system.  The I.C.S. dialog was recorded on track two of the magnetic tapes.  Each track being recorded had its own circuit board.  In the event the crew did not want its conversations preserved for all posterity, or more importantly for further review, the card responsible for collecting that information would simply be removed from the AQH-4.  Of course prior to removing the board a suspected malfunction with track two was always reported to the TACCO, flying with the lower door open facilitated quick removal of the card.  While I am performing these tasks, Mike is running the SYGNOG on his equipment, and checking the gear responsible for controlling the active sonar. I finish with the AQH-4, and confirm my gear passed the SYGNOG, then turn to Mike and say, “Sensor two is up.”  Fully expecting to receive another cookie at this point I am quite disappointed when none is forthcoming.

Instead Mike responds, “Where’s Casey?”

“I don’t know “I reply.

Mike growls at me, “I’m going to find the f***ing idiot!  Run a B.I.T.E. test on both stations, and stay out of the cookies.”

After this little exchange of pleasantries, Mike storms away from the station.  I slide his seat off to the extreme right side of the station, and start running the B.I.T.E. tests.  B.I.T.E. (Built In Test Equipment) allows the operators to manually check the sonar gear if the SYGNOG is not available.  Although both the sensor one and two stations have passed the SYGNOG it was considered good practice to perform a B.I.T.E. test as well, if time permitted.  After completing the B.I.T.E. test on both the sensor one and two stations, and finding no issues, I have a few moments to collect my thoughts.  About two hours have passed since I got the call from the duty office, and my thoughts now turn to food.  As I mentioned earlier, the only possible source of food at this hour of the morning is the squadron’s coffee mess, so I decide to use this window of opportunity to go foraging for food.

I get up from the station and start walking aft towards the main cabin door, and I immediately find myself face to face with Senior.  Now I am more than a little surprised to see him, as he was not on the flight schedule, so I immediately say something stupid.

“Senior, what are you doing here?”

Senior responds, “What is your major malfunction Flounder?”

Confused, I reply, “You weren’t on the flight schedule Senior.”  “I didn’t expect to see you.”

Further aggravated senior answers, “I was not aware I needed your permission to be here Flounder.”

Now I am really on the ropes so, looking for a way to exit the conversation with my posterior intact I respond, “I’m sorry Senior.”  “I thought you had the day shift in maintenance control.”

Seniors tone softens somewhat and he patently explains to me as if I were a small child, “Flounder, did crew three get launched?”

“Yes” I reply.

“Flounder, am I a member of crew three.”

“Yes” I respond again.

“Do you have any more stupid questions Flounder?”

“No Senior”

“Outstanding!”  Now get some garbage bags in those sh** cans and bring me a God d*** bean burrito.”, and with that Senior heads up to the flight station.

Now armed with an iron clad excuse to go to the coffee mess, after all senior needs a bean burrito, I head back to the galley to put garbage bags in the two large trash cans located there.  After digging around in the galley drawers, I locate some trash bags, place them on the galley table, and bend over to untie the trash cans.

While I am in this compromised position a voice says to me, “Flounder haven’t I warned you about this before?”

I look up and find Hawk standing over me with a very stern expression on his face.  I have no idea what infraction I may have committed, and after just narrowly escaping Senior I am more than a little bit alarmed.

Standing up straight, I ask Hawk as innocently as I can, “What did I do wrong sir?”

Pointing at the trash bags on the table Hawk replies in a very stern voice, “Flounder do you have any idea how dangerous those things are?”  “You can’t just leave them lying around.”

Now even more confused than before I respond, “Sir, there’re trash bags what’s the problem?”

“Flounder, if you leave these things lying around, small children, and pilots will put them over their heads, and suffocate!”

With this said, Hawk pulls a trash bag over his head and inhales deeply plastering the bag against his face.  After removing the bag from his head he closes the conversation by saying, “Don’t let this happen again Flounder!”

I laughingly reply, “Aye Aye Sir!”, and Hawk heads up to the flight station.

My mood considerably improved I exit the plane and head for the coffee mess before anyone else can get a hold of me.  The walk back to the hanger is considerably easier, since I am no longer encumbered by all the flight gear and equipment.  All navy squadrons have a coffee mess, as the name implies, you can purchase coffee there however, there are other items for sale as well.  Aside from coffee, also available for purchase are squadron apparel and photographs, but what I am interested in tonight is food,  the food available at the coffee mess consists primarily of what used to be termed gedunk:  chips, candy bars, and that sort of thing.  The coffee mess did posses some slightly more substantial food, things like instant soup, prepackaged sandwiches, and of course the obligatory bean burritos.  Most people associate bananas as the preferred food of simians, but the diet of choice amongst orangutans that fly Orions is bean burritos and Cup O’ Noodles soup.  This choice in food stuffs was determined by two factors, first being the available cooking equipment in the plane’s galley, and second air pressure.  As a human being ascends to altitude, the barometric pressure on the human body decreases, as a result of this internal organs expand, and the digestive track becomes less restricted, think the campfire scene in the movie Blazing Saddles.  If this pressure drop is helped along by things like beans and coffee the resulting flatchulence can qualify as biological warfare.  Flying orangutans take great pride in emitting only the most toxic of gasses.

Upon entering the coffee mess, I find the place completely deserted, with the exception of the young airman on duty behind the counter.  All squadron coffee messes are operated by the First Lieutenants division.  Some clarification is in order here, like a lot of terminology used in the Navy, the name First Lieutenants Division is very misleading.  There is no actual First Lieutenant in a squadron.  A great deal of the language used in the Navy dates back to the age of sail, and cannot be applied in the most literal fashion, because  much of the technology used by the Navy simply did not exist when the phrases were coined.  The best parallel in the civilian world is the country of Israel.  When Israel became a country, one of the decisions that was made was the determination of a national language.  The Israelis elected to make Hebrew the national language, and have had to be a bit creative over the years in its application as things like electricity did not exist a few thousand years ago.  The First Lieutenants division sees to the inglorious duties required to keep things running, i.e.:  cleaning the heads (bathrooms), swabbing and waxing the decks (floors), and of course, the operation of the coffee mess.  Upon checking into a new squadron as a junior enlisted man, especially if you were not rated (in other words, had received no specialized training by the Navy), you were normally sent T.A.D. (Temporary Attached Duty) to either the base’s galley, or assigned to the First Lieutenants division.  The First Lieutenants division was also a dumping ground of sorts for poor performers.  I’m afraid there is no polite way to say this, so I will just spit it out, if you could not be trusted to work on the airplanes, either do to incompetence or stupidity, you were assigned to the First Lieutenants division.  Carl, the airman on duty this evening, qualified on both counts.

“Hey Carl”, I say entering the coffee mess.

“Did you guys get launched?’”, he replies.

“What was your first clue?”

“Where are you going?” Carl asks.

“The skimmers lost a bad guy, so we have to find him again.”

The term skimmer is slang for surface ships.

“What can I get you?” asks Carl.

“Give me six bean burritos, and three shrimp Cup O’ Noodles soups.”

While Carl is gathering up the foodstuffs he takes an opportunity to make a cheap shot.  “I wish I had your job”, he grumbles.  “All you have to do is fly around and play space invaders.”

Handing Carl the money for the food, I fire back, “If you think it’s so easy, you try being locked up in a plane with Mike for 18 hours.”

Now that I have acquired the food, I check my watch to see if I have enough time for a cigarette before walking back out to the plane.  It’s now a little over two hours since we got the order to launch, and since no major issues have manifested themselves, and the sonar gear has checked out, I decide to indulge myself in a smoke.  Stepping outside the hanger and lighting up, I start scanning the parking lot for signs of Mike, and Casey.  Now I didn’t exactly lie to Mike when I claimed ignorance of Casey’s location, but I was not entirely forthcoming with all the information I possessed either.  Unlike me, Casey did own what might be considered a car; it was a very early Datsun 280 ZX.  Casey’s motor vehicle was a car in the sense that it sat on four tires, and could occasionally loco mote under its own power, but that is about where the resemblance stopped and started.  Casey’s Datsun had lost its reverse gear the month before the squadron assumed the ready alert.  To repair the car and restore its ability to back up would have generated a repair bill slightly in excess of a thousand dollars, that much money might as well have been a million, so Casey had been endeavoring to always park the car in such a fashion that no back up maneuver was required, on this particular morning Casey’s efforts failed.  The enlisted personnel parked their cars behind the barracks, and Casey had neglected to pull his car all the way through the parking spot so he could pull out going forwards.  The parking spot he had chosen sloped downhill just enough that he was unable to push the car out on his own.  Keep in mind that Casey did not reason through things in a conventional manner.  Instead of simply calling the duty office, and asking for a ride to the hanger, Casey, at considerable risk to his own safety, had been going around the barracks in the wee hours of the morning knocking on doors trying to determine who was blocking him in.  As I am finishing up my cigarette, I see Mike’s car pull into the lot, and both he and Casey emerge from it.

Mike looks at me and growls, “Is the gear up?”

“We’re F.M.C.”, I respond.  (Fully Mission Capable)

Turning to Casey Mike says, “Get your sorry a** out to the plane, and check your gear!”

“Aye aye”, Casey sheepishly responds.

Turning back to me Mike says, “Get back out to the plane and grab the comm. boxes, we need to head over to the ASWOC, I’ll wait for you here.”

I leave Mike, and start double timing out to the plane.  Back inside the plane I retrieve both my own, and Mike’s comm. boxes from the sonar station, turning to leave, I once again find myself face to face with Senior.

“Oh sh**!” I inadvertently exclaim.

“Is there some sort of a problem I am not aware of Flounder?” Senior asks.

“No Senior”, I respond.

“Flounder you have no idea how f***ing overjoyed I am to hear that!  Now can you give me any reasonable explanation as to why you have failed to place my burrito in the oven prior to exiting my aircraft?!”

“Is brain fart a reasonable explanation Senior?”

“Considering the source Flounder I will accept that excuse.  Now put my burrito in the oven, and get your sorry a** over to the ASWOC with the rest of the techno rats!”

“Understood Senior”, I respond.

After placing senior’s burrito in the oven, I start double timing back to the parking lot to meet Mike.  The sprint back to the car is considerably more difficult, as I am now encumbered with 40 lbs. worth of comm. boxes.

I arrive at the car slightly winded.  Mike looks at me and says, “Get in.”

Relieved beyond words that Mike will be driving us to the ASWOC, I toss the comm. boxes in the back seat and get in.  Mike then says to me in a tone more venomous than a king cobra, “I don’t care if you have to strap that idiot to the back of the flounder mobile, if he’s late to a launch again, it’s you’re a**.”

“When did I become Gracie Allen’s keeper?”  I shoot back.

“As of right now!” Mike spits at me.

Once Mike and I are checked into the ASWOC we proceed to the briefing room and sit down.  Shortly after we are seated, Ken, Hawk, and Tony enter the room.  Soon after they take their seats the briefing officer enters, along with one of the lab boys.

The briefing officer steps up to the podium and addresses us, “Good morning gentleman, and I use that term very loosely.  Your target today is a Yankee class currently on station.  The TAS ship lost the T.O.I. (Target of Interest) when the boat maneuvered to check his baffles, the skimmer has been unable to reacquire contact.”

“How old is the datum?” Ken asks.

“Approximately 14 hours.” responds the briefing officer.

“Are we authorized to go active?” Ken continues.

“If, you Orangutans are able to reacquire the target, active sonar, and simulated attacks are authorized.  The Admiral would like to shake this one up a little bit.  He does not want Ivan to get the impression he can slip away from us at will.”

Ignoring the rather thinly veiled contempt being displayed by the briefing officer Ken continues, “Will there be a relieving aircraft?”

The briefing officer answers Ken using the same contemptuous tone he has maintained throughout the briefing, “Should team orange localize the target, notify the ASWOC immediately, and a relief aircraft will be launched.”

Still maintaining his composure, Ken presses on, “Once contact has been reestablished, how long will the wing be responsible for tracking the target?”

Leveling a very critical gaze at Ken, the briefing officer replies, “You sound awfully sure of yourself.  However, the short answer is the contact will continue to be prosecuted aerially until such time as another asset can be moved into position.”

At this point attempting to calm the waters a bit, Hawk pipes up with his own question, “Should the flight station maintain a profile to maximize on station time, and what is the EMCON protocol?”

“You will be under full EMCON during transit to on station; the admiral would like to surprise this one.  Once on station take all steps necessary to ensure maximum endurance.  That will be all gentleman, good luck and good hunting.”

The briefing such as it was, now concluded we all break up into smaller groups to talk with our respective ASWOC counter parts.  Mike and I walk over to the lab boy while Hawk, Tony, and Ken go to another part of the ASWOC to get specifics on the search area, and communications protocols to be used during the mission.

“What have you got on this one?” Mike asks the lab boy.

“Nothing out of the ordinary”, he responds.  “Before the TAS ship lost him the TOI was displaying all the standard Yankee class signature characteristics.”

I follow up with my own question, “Do we know which hull number he is?”

“Negative, he hasn’t been trapped since he left port” the lab boy responds.

After handing both Mike and I huge stacks of papers containing the most current information from the TAS ship before it lost contact with the target, the lab boy closes with, “You two need anything else?”

“No we’re good”, Mike responds for both of us. Mike and I store the documents in our comm. boxes, and exit the ASWOC.

As Mike and I are exiting the A.S.W.O.C. about two and a half hours have elapsed since the crew got the call to launch.  The order to launch the ready was issued at 0200 hours, so SG-6 should be on takeoff roll by 0600 hours.  The timing here is important due to air traffic control issues in the Bay Area.  While the mission being performed by the crew is truly critical to national security, the reader needs to keep in mind that all of this activity is going on outside the general consciousness of the American public.  If you look at the photograph on page four, the two runways you see are 32 right, and 32 left.  We will be taking off on 32 right, as that is the longer runway, and SG-6 will be very near its maximum takeoff weight, so a little extra real estate is useful.  Runway numbers are not randomly assigned, the number of the runway corresponds to the compass heading.  Therefore, if you are taking off on runway 32, you are traveling in a direction of 320 degrees true.  Now due North is 360 degrees, so SG-6 will essentially be taking off headed North.  Referencing the photograph on page four again, this means that the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) will be to our left, and the Oakland Airport (OAK) will be to our right.  There is also a small general aviation field in Palo Alto to contend with, this would also be on the left, but closer to the base than SFO.  I apologize for the geography lesson, but the lay of the land has everything to do with the timing of the launch.  Both SFO, and OAK are going to be launching large numbers of commercial flights starting at about 0700 hours, essentially producing gridlock in the sky, and the orangutans really need to beat the airborne equivalent of the morning rush hour.  The Orions, especially when heavily loaded were a great source of frustration to the Bay Area controllers, as our rate of climb was very slow, and we produced the aerial equivalent for the commercial flights of being stuck behind a slow truck in a no passing zone.  It was not uncommon for the Orions to sit at the end of the runway with all four engines turning for almost an hour before they were cleared to launch.  This sort of a delay could not be tolerated when something with enough firepower to wipe out the West Coast was lost and needed to be found.  The conundrum was that if commercial traffic was slowed down, or worse yet brought to a halt for even a brief period of time, the Navy was subject to a great deal of abuse because the general public was truly clueless as to what we were doing.  All John Q Public new was that the Navy was the cause of his flight being delayed, and considering the level of contempt the local population possessed for the military in general the wing worked very hard at not focusing any undue attention on activities at the base.  As far as A.T.C. gridlock is concerned the Orion crews did have one ace up their sleeves.  Should the mission commander feel it necessary, he could declare an “Echo Item”.  What this meant in air traffic control world was that all other activity was brought to a screeching halt, and the Orion got to go first.  Declaring an “Echo Item” would of course produce A.T.C. chaos, especially if called for during peak travel times, thus fully focusing the wrath of several government agencies squarely on the Navy.  If a mission commander declared an “Echo Item”, he was guaranteed a trip to the Admiral’s office to dance on the carpet as soon as his plane returned, and the mission commander had best be able to provide the Admiral with some absolutely ironclad reasons to defend his action.

Mike parks his car back at the hanger, and the two of us grab our comm. boxes and start walking back to the plane.

Mike pauses before we enter the hanger and says, “Let’s burn one before we go in.”

Mike and I light our cigarettes, and smoke them in silence.  As a general rule of thumb it was best to let Mike initiate any conversation.  Since Mike was silent my best course of action was to remain so as well.  Mike finishes his smoke and grunts; we then enter the hanger and head for the plane.

As Mike and I walk towards the plane we see Larry driving across the ramp in the ordinance truck with sonobouy cart in tow.  I turn to Mike and say, “That must be the rest of the buoy load out.”  Mike looks at me and grunts.  The meaning of this particular monosyllabic unintelligible sound is clear to me, what Mike means is we need to give Larry a hand with the rest of the buoys.

Now would seem to be the best time to discuss the matter of sonobuoys.  Sonar when reduced to its simplest elements can be categorized in one of two fashions, either passive, or active.  Passive sonar is exactly what the name implies, you simply stick a hydrophone (a hydrophone is a microphone that can be placed under water) in the water and listen.  Since the hydrophone does not make any noise this is called passive sonar.  Active sonar is probably more familiar to folks as most of us have seen at least one war movie.  The pinging you hear in the movies is active sonar.  In this case a transducer is placed in the water.  The transducer emits a sound wave, or ping, hence the term active sonar.  If the sound wave strikes a solid object, like a submarine, part of the ping will reflect off the object and travel back to the transducer.  The issue here is that not only the person doing the pinging can hear it, but the target you are looking for can as well, thus you are advertising your presence to the enemy.  Since the plane is flying around in the sky, it can’t very well dangle a hydrophone, or transducer out a window and go trolling for submarines, enter the sonobuoy.  Sonobuoys were launched from the aircraft; they then descended to the ocean surface.  Once the buoy was in the water, either a hydrophone or a transducer would deploy from the buoy and descend below the surface.  The buoy would transmit the sonar information to the plane via radio.  Equipment inside the plane would convert the radio signals back to sonar information that would be displayed on my gear.  The P-3C model was designed to carry 84 sonobuoys, 48 externally loaded, and 36 internally loaded.  There were many different types of sonobuoys, most of which had adjustable settings.  Most of the settings on the buoys needed to be configured prior to the buoy being launched; obviously the prelaunch settings on the externally loaded buoys could not be modified in flight.  This is why some buoys were carried internally, allowing their prelaunch settings to be tailored to suit the tactical situation while on station.

The ordinance truck’s bed was mounted on a scissor lift, not unlike the food service trucks you would see at a commercial airport; this allowed the cargo section of the truck to be raised to aircraft level.  The orangutans normally did not make use of this feature for loading internal stores.  Our preferred method was to simply form a human chain, and pitch the buoys into the plane.  Larry parks the truck just aft of the aircraft ladder on the port side of the plane.  As Larry is climbing out of the cab, Ken is descending the aircraft ladder.  As the TACCO Ken has the final decision regarding the buoy load out i.e.:  buoy type, prelaunch settings, external or internal load, and the quantity of each type of buoy to be carried.  Failure to acquire, or worse yet the loss of the target due to running out of sonobuoys was yet another infraction that guarantied you a trip to the admiral’s office to dance on the carpet.  It was standard practice at the time among the flight crews to have at least two predetermined buoy loadouts, one for active authorized missions, and another for passive only missions.  This being said, there was always some fine tuning of the buoy loadout that took place during the preflight.  At this point Mike, Larry, Ken and myself huddle up next to the ordinance truck.

Ken opens with, “Show me the load out sheet for what’s onboard.”

Larry hands Ken a laminated card which has been filled out with a grease pencil indicating the bouys currently aboard the plane. 

After studying the card for a moment, Ken looks at Mike and myself and asks, “Jez, can you sniff him out with one search pattern?”

Mike answers back, “Won’t be a problem if the datum we got from the skimmer is any good, we know were he’s going.”

“Outstanding!  Ken responds with enthusiasim, “That gives us more room for 62’s!  We are going to rock Ivan’s world!”

Ken pulls a handkerchief out of one of his pockets, spits on it, and edits the laminated card by use of the freshly moistened handkerchief, and a grease pencil.  After making the adjustments, he hands the card back to Larry.

Larry studies the sheet for a moment and asks Ken, “Do you want to replace any of these 53’s with 77’s?”

Ken furrows his brow for a moment and responds, “Replace six of the internal 53’s with the VLADS.  That should keep the admiral happy, this is a tactical, not a f***ing  R&D flight.” Once again, a little translation is necessary.  Tactically speaking, the SS1 and SS2 although two different individuals, and in my case Mike and I could not be any more different, are collectively known as Jez; the reason being the first airborne sonar equipment was invented by a man named Arnold J. Izebel.   At this point in time the Orion’s can monitor a maximum number of 16 buoys simultaneously.  Therefore, a standard search pattern consisted of 16 buoys.  If a second pattern needed to be deployed, the crew would have expended 32 of its 74 buoys leaving only 42 remaining to maintain contact until the relieving aircraft arrived, so it was in everyone’s best interest to find Ivan with the first pattern.  The term skimmer is slang for surface ship, and datum is the last known position of the target.  While we do not know the exact position the submarine is traveling to, we do know about where he is going.  The Soviets had designated patrol areas depending upon what type of missiles they could carry.  In the case of tonight’s target the orangutans know Ivan is heading to the Yankee patrol box off the California coast.  Sonobuoys like all material’ in the navy have rather lengthy and indecipherable nomenclature.  When Ken is talking about 62’s, he is referring to the SSQ-62 active sonar buoy.  If active sonar was not authorized, in theory we would not be carrying any 62’s.  The SSQ-53 was the real workhorse of all the various types sonobuoys.  The 53 was a passive buoy that in addition to providing acoustic information, also provided a magnetic compass bearing indicating the direction, relative to the buoy, that the sound was coming from.   Before I give any explanation of the SSQ-77, or VLAD buoy, I need to editorialize a bit.  This narrative is taking place during the first half of the 1980’s.  Now a few decades have come and gone since then, and as I remarked at the beginning of this narrative, I have noticed more than a little rewriting has transpired regarding the events of the time.  The 80’s have become known as a period of runaway irresponsible defense spending.  Worse yet, in my opinion, is the misconception that simply spending the money is what forced the collapse of the Soviet Union.  On a personal level I find this more than a little offensive.  The United States could spend all the money it wanted to on wiz bang toys for the military, but without the men who were willing to go out and fight the cold war day after day all of that hardware was useless.  All of this being said, the SSQ-77 is an excellent example of misallocated funds; the SSQ-77, or VLAD (vertical line array detection), buoy was simply a more modern version of the SSQ-53.  Unfortunately it really was not any better.  The manufacturer was pressuring the Navy to adopt this buoy as part of our standard equipment.  We, the flight crews, did not really care for it, but were under considerable pressure to prove it a viable weapons system.  On this particular evening the target is a real world threat, and the orangutans would prefer not to waste any time, or valuable space on an unproven system.  Ken’s decision to bring along a half a dozen 77’s was probably the best compromise.  It made us all look like team players without compromising the success of the mission.  My pet peeve with the 77’s was rather personal, for the cost of just one of those buoys the Navy could have paid to run the bus schedule round the clock, thus eliminating the early morning ride on the flounder mobile.  My point here is simple, the much maligned increase in defense spending that took place during the 1980’s was not so much overspending as it was poor application of funds.  A 24/7 shuttle bus, and a flight line cafeteria A Day In The Life of a Cold Warrior
by Anonymous
The Out of Area
Chapter 1 (Getting to the hanger)
While the end of the cold war was, and still is, a call for great celebration it would seem that the cold war like some other dark times in American history is currently falling victim to revisionist history. Aside from the cathartic value of putting pen to paper I thought it would be beneficial to record some firsthand accounts of daily cold war events. My cold war service took place in the 1980’s. I was involved in antisubmarine warfare. I was an aircrew member aboard the U.S. Navy’s P-3 Orion aircraft. My primary role aboard the aircraft was as a sonar operator although all of the crew members underwent considerable cross training for all of the stations aboard the plane. Prior to the narrative, a little background information is in order. After the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960’s it was determined that the best possible way to handle the American public was to try to remove from their daily thought process, that the cold war was even taking place. The war in Vietnam was also instrumental in allowing the general public to ignore the fact that incredible, possibly world ending destruction was never more than about 8 minutes away. The cold war actually underwent a considerable escalation during the 1980’s, and Soviet submarines were continually on station off the American coasts awaiting the order to launch. The distance of the submarines from the American coast lines was regulated only by the size of the missiles they carried. The older boats with the shorter range missiles had to get closer in than the newer subs that could carry larger, longer range missiles. The single most important element of the Navy’s cold war antisubmarine strategy was simply stated, that from the time a Soviet submarine slipped its’ moorings and put to sea, to the time it returned to port and tied back up, there would always be an asset in place to sink it before it could launch. Now an asset could be a ship, another submarine, or an aircraft like my Orion. The narrative that follows is about what we used to call an out of area mission. These flights launched from the continental U.S., and generally lasted 12 to 18 hours; the target was generally one of the older Yankee class Russian submarines. At this point in history the navy had four wings of P-3 squadrons, two in the Pacific fleet, and two in the Atlantic fleet. Each wing had about 14 squadrons, some of which would be deployed overseas to track targets and events that could not be monitored from the United States. The stateside or non-deployed squadrons would take turns as the ready alert squadron stateside, while the other stateside squadrons would be in some phase of ramp up for their next deployment, or ramping down after recently returning from overseas. It was the responsibility of the ready alert squadron to handle all tactical matters that could be prosecuted from the U.S. Each non-deployed squadron would stand the ready alert for one month. What follows is a narrative about a typical out of area mission.
It’s 0200, and I am not sure why I am awake. Oh, I get it now; someone is beating on the door to the barracks room that I share with another junior enlisted man. Knowing full well that my squadron has the ready alert, and that more specifically, my crew is the ready one, read we need to be able to get airborne in 4 hours if launched, I am pretty sure why the barracks watch is trying to beat the door to my room off its’ hinges. I stagger to the door less than half awake, and tell the watch to inform the duty office I am on my way. I have thirty minutes to get to the hanger, so despite being well versed in the exercise, I still have some decisions to make. Dressing myself is automatic, pull on a flight suit, and the obligatory steel toed flight boots, and that issue is resolved. The next thing to address is food. The galley closed at 1900 hours, and there is nowhere on base to get a hot meal at 0200, therefore the only option is what passes for food at the squadron’s coffee mess. The remaining decision is how to get to the hanger. I have two options on this particular morning, either call the duty office and ask if the duty driver can come to the barracks, and pick me up, or ride my bicycle to the hanger. The base does have a bus service, but it is not running at 0200. At this point in my career I am flying the sensor two position on the aircraft, which means I have several boxes of magnetic tapes I need to get to the plane. Carrying these to the plane is quite difficult, due to their extreme weight, so I elect to ride the bicycle to the hanger. With all the immediate matters decided I mumble an apology to my roommate for the early morning disturbance, he grunts back something unintelligible and then promptly rolls over and resumes snoring, and head outside the barracks to pedal my way to the hanger. Now the elapsed time for all of this activity was about five minutes.
Now outside the barracks I walk over to the bicycle rack, and unchain the flounder mobile. A little background information is in order here. My afore mentioned bicycle was referred to by my shipmates as the flounder mobile as my call sign at the time was flounder, I was told that the site of me riding the rather antiquated conveyance about left a lasting visual impression on anyone that witnessed it. I had purchased the flounder mobile at a local yard sale, it was a vintage three speed bicycle with large balloon gum walled tires, and I mounted a very large cargo rack on the rear of it to carry the afore mentioned tape cases. The distance from the barracks to the hanger was a little over two miles, so bear in mind that it is 0200, I have been awake less than ten minutes, and have not had the benefit of either coffee or a morning cigarette and I am now facing a two mile pedal to get to the hanger. The route to the hanger involved navigating the flounder mobile around half the distance of the base’s perimeter road. Because of the prevailing winds blowing off the bay, half of the ride required pedaling against what could be a very strong headwind. On the way to the hanger I needed to stop at the A.S.W.O.C. (Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Center) to pick up the tape cases which I would need to preflight my sonar gear, and record the events that transpired during the mission. At this point some people could be wondering why I didn’t have a car. The answer is very simple, and entirely based in economics, I couldn’t afford one. The base was located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, the single most expensive place in the country to live. As a junior enlisted man I believe I was making about $17,000 dollars a year at the time, and an automobile was simply beyond my financial means.
Now one advantage to taking the flounder mobile was that by the time I arrived at the A.S.W.O.C. after a vigorous bike ride, all vestiges of sleep had been expelled. I walk through the door to the A.S.W.O.C. and I am inside what appears to be an airlock. The only thing I can see is another door directly opposite the one I entered, and one of those two way mirror affairs that you see in police line ups. I walk up to the mirror and slide my I.D. card through a slot just barely large enough to admit the card. I then give the mirror my squadron and crew number, and after a brief pause a Different I.D. card emerges from the same slot that will grant me access to the A.S.W.O.C. After attaching the dispensed card to my flight suit I hear the solenoid on the interior door click, and a voice instructs me to go on in. Now I know there was a human being on the other side of the mirror that performed all these machinations, but during my entire career, I never met the individual, nor did I ever see the office that must have been located behind the mirror. Now inside the A.S.W.O.C., I proceed to the lab that analyzes all of the acoustic recordings to get the tape case. Here I will get my first tidbit of information about the flight. The acoustic lab is operated by sonar operators such as myself. A.S.W.O.C. duty is considered a shore duty billet, and this is a normal assignment for AW’s when they have finished a sea duty assignment. Now, some definitions are in order here. AW is a rating. The letters are an abbreviation for my actual rating designation, Aviation Antisubmarine warfare operator. In the Navy, enlisted men have rates, and officers have rank. Now despite the fact that the P-3 Orion is a land based aircraft, assignment to a fleet P-3 squadron was considered sea duty at the time due to the fact that the squadrons would be deployed overseas for six month or longer periods of time. After explaining to the Petty Officer on duty at the time why I was there, he pointed at my tape case, and when queried told me why we were being launched. A full tactical briefing would be given to the crew after we got the aircraft preflighted, but it was considered professional courtesy for the lab boys to let the operators flying the mission know ahead of time what we were going to be getting into. As I have already mentioned an asset always had to be in place to sink a Soviet ballistic missile sub before it could launch. On this particular evening the T.A.S. (Towed Array Sonar) ship that had been tracking the duty Yankee had lost contact and my crew was being launched to reestablish contact. The T.A.S. ships had a better sonar system than the Orion, after all you only have so much room in an airplane for electronics, however, they could not search a large area nearly as quickly as an aircraft could. I let out a grunt as I picked up my tape case; the things weighed about 65 Lbs., and left the lab. Now back in the airlock, I remove the I.D. card I was given and insert it back in the slot below the mirror, after a brief pause, my I.D. emerges from the same slot, and I walk back outside to the flounder mobile.
I had modified the flounder mobile with an oversized cargo rack mounted above the rear fender. The cargo rack was originally used for delivering newspapers, and with some judicious sawing I was able to produce a flat surface that could accommodate two tape cases. The tapes inside were one inch magnetic tapes mounted on glass reels that measured about two feet in diameter. The magnetic tapes did not record any flight data, or digital information from the aircrafts mission computer. The tapes were analog affairs that recorded the information gathered by the sonar gear; their only other function was recording whatever was said over the aircrafts I.C.S. (Internal Communication System). After securing the tape case to the cargo rack, using a well practiced bungee cord method, I pedaled the flounder mobile, now 65 Lbs. heavier from the A.S.W.O.C. to the hanger.
Once inside the hanger, I parked the flounder mobile inside the AW shop, unlashed the tape case, and headed for the locker room to get the rest of my flight gear. From my locker I retrieved my flight helmet, and L.P.A. (Life Preserver Apparatus)/survival vest combination. Now wearing full flight gear, and carrying the tape case, I have gained about 90 Lbs., but I still have one more item to retrieve prior to trudging out to the plane, my comm. box. The magnetic tapes inside the case are currently blank, and thus not classified. Now my comm. box does not contain any communications equipment however, it does contain all of my technical manuals pertaining to submarines, and these documents are classified, and need to be kept in metal briefcases with drain holes that allow them to fill with water and sink in the event the aircraft winds up in the Pacific. Each flight crew had a crew locker in the squadron duty office were they would keep their comm. boxes. Now classified material is not dissimilar to a small child in that it must be constantly attended by a human being, you can’t just leave the things lying about unsupervised. After retrieving my comm. box from the duty office, I have now gained about 110 Lbs. since I left the barracks, and I am now ready to leave the hanger and walk out to the plane, which depending upon which spot it’s parked in could be a fairly long walk especially considering my now substantially increased body weight. The total elapsed time since I left the barracks is about 25 minutes, so there are about three and a half hours remaining before we are supposed to be rolling down the runway, so far, so good.

Chapter 2 (Preflight)

Once again, I have to break off the narrative, and provide some background information. A fleet P-3 squadron would generally consist of eight to ten aircraft, operated by nine to eleven flight crews. The N.A.S. (Naval Air Station) my squadron was home ported out of had three hangers. One of the hangers housed the training squadron, commonly referred to as the rag squadron, as well as training facilities, and the simulators, and the other two hangers were used by the fleet squadrons that were currently non-deployed. The hangers were designated one, two, and three. Hanger one was on one side of the runway, and hangers two and three were on the other. Hangers two and three housed the fleet squadrons, and were World War II constructions that had originally been built for the operation of Navy blimps. During the Second World War blimps were used in both the Atlantic, and Pacific to provide the A.S.W. (antisubmarine warfare) role that was being filled by the Orions during the 1980’s. Hangers two and three were actually wooden constructions, as metal had to be very judiciously allocated during the war. The hangers were arching affairs with multi paneled doors on each end. The apex of the wooden arches that formed the majority of the structure were in excess of two hundred feet high. The sheer size was impressive enough, however, what always fascinated me was that humans associate wood as a material to make square shapes, not curved ones, and the sight of all of those large curving wooden arches was rather counter intuitive. The sea of concrete surrounding the two hangers were the planes were parked was simply referred to as the ramp. Each squadron was assigned a group of spots on the ramp to keep their planes, while stateside. The individual aircraft did not have designated spots on the ramp, and thus could be parked in any one of the spaces currently assigned to that squadron; this meant that a fair amount of walking could be required to locate your plane. At this point in my career the Orions were still painted in the traditional grey and white paint scheme, which included squadron specific tail insignias painted on the vertical stabilizers, and large side numbers painted on either side of the aircrafts nose. These markings aside from being nice to look at did make locating your plane much easier. Later in my career this paint scheme along with our cherished tail insignias went away in favor of a generic I.R. (Infer Red) absorbing one.

The Base 1 (Hanger 1 on left, Hangers 2 and 3 on right.)
The large doors at the ends of the hangers were seldom fully closed. They normally remained open wide enough to allow the easy passage of maintenance and support equipment from inside the hanger out to the ramp. I start walking towards the hanger doors, and when I reach the squadron’s maintenance control office I step inside to ask the watch which bird is the ready one. Now according to N.A.T.O.P.S. (Naval Aviation Training and Operating Procedures Standardization), the governing body that rules all of Naval Aviation regardless of aircraft type, I am required to look at the last ten maintenance records for the aircraft I will be flying. The large binders that contained the M.A.F.’s (Maintenance Action Forms) for each aircraft were simply called gripe books, and the M.A.F.’s were known as gripe sheets. The gripe books contained much more than the last ten gripe sheets, but I am only required to review the ten most recent ones. The chief on duty is a very rotund man named Hagwood, who was generally referred to, although not to his face especially if you were junior to him, as Chief Hugewood. Chief Hagwood was a flight engineer who normally would fly only the minimum four hours a month required to keep his flight pay.
I walk up to the counter in maintenance control and say, “Chief which bird is the ready one?”
The chief responds, “SG-6.”

SG-6 As She Looked At The Time (Taxiing to the active)
I ask the yeoman on duty in the office with the chief for SG-6’s gripe book. The yeoman unceremoniously plunks the giant tome on the counter, and I flip it open to the section containing the last ten gripe sheets. Since this is a tactical flight, and there will be a full crew aboard, I am not really all that concerned about the maintenance records, as my primary role tonight is as a sonar operator, safety of flight and mechanical issues will be addressed by the crew’s pilots and flight engineers. If the gripe sheets indicate any recent problems with the sonar gear I will take note of them, but the reality is, if the gear has issues, I just have to fix it prior to takeoff. I am however concerned by one thing. Despite all the science and technology involved here, aviators are a very superstitious bunch, and SG-6 is regarded as a hanger queen and unlucky aircraft in general. The reasons being, SG-6 had recently suffered a lightning strike while flying through some heavy weather, and the avionics in the plane had been intermittently displaying rather strange behavior ever since, the other reason I am a bit unnerved about SG-6 is that on the squadron’s last deployment overseas a young woman had died aboard the plane while being med-evaced to the Naval Hospital in Subic Bay. Some of the squadron’s ground pounders (maintenance staff) insisted that the plane had been haunted ever since. Paranormal issues aside I find nothing in the gripe book of immediate concern, so I leave the office, and resume walking out to the plane. Total elapsed time is now about thirty minutes

At this point I have yet to encounter any of my fellow crew mates. This is not a cause of any concern, as only four of us lived on the base, and the rest would be coming in from town. Exiting the hanger, I start scanning the ramp for SG-6. Now all aircraft both civilian and military are assigned a burrow number, these numbers are not unlike the license plate on a car, and are used to identify specific aircraft. Military aircraft also have side numbers assigned by the squadron, and each squadron has a two letter designation that uniquely identifies it. My squadron’s two letter designation was SG (sierra golf), so the plane I am looking for will have SG6 painted on either side of the aircrafts nose just behind the radome. Emerging from the hanger the first thing I do is listen for the sound of an A.P.U. (Auxiliary Power Unit). The junior flight engineer on my crew (Dave) lived in base housing with his wife, and two daughters, and normally either he or I would be the first to arrive at the aircraft. Our 2P(Jim), or copilot, also lived in base housing with his wife, but the pilot’s would have to stop at the tower and check the weather and other safety of flight issues prior to heading for the hanger, so Jim was normally the third person to arrive at the plane when we were launched. The remaining on base resident was the sensor 3 (Casey), also an AW like me, but Casey was chronically late for everything, to the point where he always seemed to be in jeopardy of being written up for missing muster. The ramp was absolutely quiet; therefore I must have beaten Dave to the hanger. An A.P.U. is an aircraft engine contained inside the fuselage of the plane. It is identical to the engines in the wings; it just doesn’t have a propeller connected to it. A.P.U.’s are also very loud, so if one had been running there would have been no missing it.

SG-6 As She Looked At The Time 3 (On short final)

SG-6 As She Looked At The Time 2 (Airborne off the California coast)

Now would seem to be the best time to jump out of the narrative and introduce the full cast of characters that will be flying the mission. I am refraining from using full names and ranks in this narrative, I will simply refer to the crewmembers by either the position they flew on the aircraft, or the familiar names we addressed each other by.

C.A.C. – 3
Combat Air Crew Three
AKA The Orangutans
The Flight Station
Hawk
PPC – Patrol Plane Commander (Normally Spoken as Peeps)
Pilot – Solely responsible for all matters pertaining to safety of flight.
Regarded by everyone in the squadron as the best stick.
Jim
2P – Second Pilot
Copilot
Jim was from NJ, he was just over five feet all with a seven foot mouth, he possessed the thickest New Jersey accent I have ever heard. Jim initially came across to people who first met him as rather abrasive, but he was a competent pilot, and one of the funniest men I have ever met.
Craig
3P – Third Pilot
Craig was a relatively new addition to the squadron. He was an easy going fellow who was just starting to find his niche in both the squadron, and the crew. New pilots checking into fleet P-3 squadrons started out as No-P’s and immediately started the qualification process to become P.P.C.’s. The progression was No-P to 3P to 2P to P.P.C. The whole process took a little under two years.
Senior
Senior Flight Engineer – Expert on all aircraft systems
The senior flight engineer was also responsible for the care and feeding of the junior enlisted members of the crew. While this duty was never formally assigned, it was a long standing tradition that was simply understood.
Normally Senior Chief Petty Officers are simply addressed as Senior, unless the circumstances involved are of the highest order of formality. The squadrons aircrew rated C.P.O.’s (Chief Petty Officers) were all assigned to a flight crew, at least on paper, but most of them seldom flew more than the minimum four hours a month required to keep their flight pay. Senior was the exception to this rule; he took every available opportunity to fly.
Gary
First Engineer – A fully qualified flight engineer, Expert on all aircraft systems
Gary was a very polite soft spoken man from the American Midwest, a competent flight engineer who was all business in the flight station.
Dave
Second Engineer – A flight engineer in training
Dave was also a recent graduate from the training squadron. He was working on his qualification process to become a First Engineer. Second Engineers were normally junior N.C.O.’s who had come from different parts of the Navy prior to starting their careers in Orions.
The Tube
(The Rest of the Aircraft, Aft of the Flight Station)
Ken
TACCO/MC – Tactical Coordinator/Mission Coordinator
TACCO – Responsible for combining the tactical information gathered by all the crew stations in order to ensure a successful weapons deployment.
MC – Responsible for ensuring the successful completion of the mission. The MC designation could be assigned to either the PPC, or TACCO.
The TACCO enjoyed an unofficial duty not dissimilar to the senior flight engineer in that he was responsible for the care and feeding of the entire crew, not just the enlisted personnel. Due to the rather unique make up of crew three Ken was normally referred to by officers senior to him, as the zookeeper.
Tony
NAVCOM – Navigator Communicator
The NAVCOM was responsible for handling all secure communications, and the safe navigation of the aircraft, the NAVCOM was also training to become a TACCO. It should be noted that this period in time is pre-GPS, and that the Orions spent most of their flight time off the A.T.C. (Air Traffic Control) grid. Although the plane did posses an inertial navigation system, like the ones used on submarines, we still relied on a traditional navigator using the time tested tools of the trade such as a sextant.
Tony was a graduate of the Naval Academy. Tony was living proof that you cannot judge a book by its cover. At first glance he seemed like a rather unpleasant man, but in actuality he was a very nice man, and a fine officer. When describing himself, and his less than friendly visage, Tony used to say, “I can’t help the face I was born with.”
Casey
SS3 – Sensor Three
The Sensor Three was an AW who operated all the non-acoustic detection systems aboard the aircraft. These included RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging), E.S.M. (Electronic Surveillance Measures), M.A.D. (Magnetic Anomaly Detection), and I.R.D.S. (Infer Red Detection System).
Casey and I were both teenagers at this time. We had gone through the entire AW training pipeline together, and somehow managed to wind up not only in the same squadron, but assigned to the same crew. Casey was an incredibly youthful looking fellow, to the degree that you could have placed him in any Junior High School and he would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the student body. Casey was not unlike Gracie Allen in that he came across as somewhat scatterbrained. Fortunately for all of us he always remained remarkably focused once he had strapped himself into his seat.
Mike
SS1 – Sensor One
The Sensor One, also an AW, was the lead sonar operator on the aircraft responsible for the successful prosecution of the target. The SS1 was also unofficially responsible for riding herd on all of the flight crew’s AW’s.
Mike was an interesting character. His prowess as a sonar operator was actually quite legendary throughout the entire wing. He was regarded as one of the best AW’s in the Pacific Fleet. Mike was also a second generation cold warrior. His father, now retired from the Navy, had been a sonar operator aboard the P-2 Neptune, the predecessor to the Orion. As the sensor one another one of his principle duties was to train his sensor two, me, to become a fully qualified sensor one. Mike could be a very nasty individual, and assignment to him as a sensor two was regarded as about a half a step above a death sentence by most of the people who knew him.
Me
SS2 – Sensor Two
The sensor two was an AW who also operated the aircrafts sonar system, and was in training to become a fully qualified sensor one. The sonar gear on the Orions could not be fully operated by just one individual, there was just too much of it.
At this point in my career, I am relatively fresh out of the rag squadron, and just starting to grow into my role in the Navy. The reader can form his own opinion of me.
Zero
IFT – In Flight Technician
The IFT was an AT (Aviation Electronics Technician) responsible for troubleshooting, and repairing issues occurring during the mission. The IFT would also repair most issues that manifested themselves during preflight. Now, one of the core design concepts behind the Orion was that the aircraft could operate completely independently if necessary. What this really means is that the crew could resolve any issues with the aircraft without the assistance of ground support staff.
Zero was one of the squadron’s best technicians. He was on his second enlistment in that Navy, and trying to determine whether he should head for the private sector at the end of his current hitch. Zero was a very level headed, and even tempered individual and thus used by the senior members of crew three as the barometer of our crew. If Zero was upset about something, then there was probably a legitimate reason for the rest of us to be swinging from the bailout rail.
Larry
IFO – In Flight Ordinanceman
The IFO was an AO (Aviation Ordinanceman) who managed the weapons, and search stores (Sonobouys) during flight. The IFO was also responsible for manually launching search stores when required.
Larry was a person who lived totally in the moment. He never gave much thought to either the past or future. He had something of a split personality. One moment he was an absolute wild man, and moral degenerate, and the next moment he was quoting biblical scripture. Talking to Larry could be difficult because you were never entirely sure which one of his personalities you were conversing with, or when the other one may manifest itself.

Now that the major players have been introduced, I will return to the narrative. Since I did not hear an A.P.U. running, I start scanning the ramp for SG6. All ten of the squadron’s aircraft are currently on the ground, so our squadron’s part of the ramp is quite full. I spot a sonobouy cart parked next to one of the planes, that plane is most likely the ready one, and of course it is parked the furthest from the hanger. Dreadfully annoying considering the amount of gear I am carrying. Reaching the suspected aircraft, it does in fact prove to be SG6. Now the only other people on the ramp are the normal navy ramp security watch, and some ground pounders working on other aircraft. This is actually a good thing; if the plane had been surrounded by Marines it would have meant that there was special ordinance in the Bombay. Now I need to start SG6’s A.P.U. Without the A.P.U. running, the plane has no electricity, and more importantly no air-conditioning. I walk up to the nose gear, and set down my tape case and comm. box, I then walk into the nose gear wheel well, connect the battery, verify the nose gear uplock switch is in the correct position, and check the oil level in the four sight glasses pertaining to the A.P.U. Exiting the nose gear wheel well, I pick my gear back up, and walk aft along the port side of the aircraft to the boarding ladder. The main cabin door at the top of the ladder is locked with a combination pad lock, so I once again set down my gear, and then climb the ladder to remove the lock on the main cabin door. Trying to juggle the tape case and comm. box while working the combination lock on the narrow ladder would be not only close to impossible, but stupid as well. After removing the lock and opening the main cabin door, I descend the ladder to get my gear. Now that myself, and all my gear are in the plane, I can start the A.P.U., keep in mind that the plane is not much brighter than a coffin at this point. After turning on the flashlight attached to my survival vest, I head forward to the flight station. Once I am seated in the flight engineers seat, I verify that the A.P.U. in flight arm switch is in the unarmed position, perform two different checks on the A.P.U.’s fire alarm system, place the A.P.U. start switch in the on position, turn on the number two fuel boost pump, and reengage the A.P.U. intake and exhaust door circuit breakers. I am now ready to start the A.P.U. I move the switch from on to start, and closely watch the oil pressure on the A.P.U. as the turbine spins up. I get a normal start on the A.P.U., so I immediately turn on the ground air, and glance down at the fuel panel. Once the A.P.U. was running it was regarded as good practice to set its fuel feed up from the tank containing the most fuel. After adjusting the fuel control panel I then turn my attention to entertainment, namely the A.D.F. (Automatic Direction Finder) radio. Stepping back in time to WWII for a moment, some people may recall that the Japanese pilots used local Hawaiian radio stations to assist them in flying from their ships to Pearl Harbor. This was done using an A.D.F. radio. Simply tune the A.D.F. to the desired frequency, and an arrow on the instrument panel tells the pilot which direction to fly. For preflight purposes it was customary to tune the A.D.F. to a local radio station so the crew could listen via the I.C.S. I tune the radio to an oldies station, and then head back aft. As I walk through the tube to retrieve my gear I am turning on the overhead lights. The inside of the aircraft is now substantially less coffin like, and the ground air is running full tilt. Placing my gear next to the sonar station I now have to decide my next move.
Now something needs to be said at this point about the preflight process in general. There are really two preflights running simultaneously. One is the preflighting of the tactical systems for prosecuting the submarine; the other is the general aircraft preflight that would have to be done whether this was a tactical mission or not. Each member of the crew was responsible for the tactical preflight of their own gear however; the responsibilities for the general preflight were spread across all the crew members. No written rules existed delegating the general preflight duties to specific crew members. Each flight crew would work out the assignments amongst themselves. About 45 minutes have elapsed since my wake up call, and I have not had any coffee, so my next move decides itself. I walk into the galley and start to make the coffee. This was one of my normal responsibilities as I had been told on several occasions that I made the best coffee in the pacific fleet. The galley was equipped with a 42 cup navy issue coffee urn. Rummaging about through the galley drawers, I locate some coffee grounds. I set the coffee urn on the floor and walk to the aircrafts head. Inside the head is a large water container with a spout at the bottom, and under neath the spout is a small wash basin. Removing the container from the wall, I dispense some water into the urn and swish it about a bit. I then unceremoniously dump the water down the aircrafts freefall shoot. Sanitization of the urn complete, I fill it up with water, add the basket with the coffee grounds, then place the whole affair back in its rack in the galley, and plug it in. After returning the water tank to the wall in head, I pause for a moment because I hear someone coming up the aircraft ladder. The main cabin door opens, and in steps Dave.
“Good morning Dave”, I greet him, “Any PAX tonight?”
PAX is Navy for passengers, read guys going along for the ride to maintain their flight pay.
“No we are all orange”, Dave responds.
Crew three was collectively referred to as the orangutans, and in our case the color orange was commonly used by senior officers as a verb to describe our attitudes and behavior.
“Good deal!” I reply, “I’m headed outside to do plugs and covers.”
“Can you help me with coordinated checks when you’re finished?” Dave queries back.
“Not a problem.” I answer.
Once again, I need to provide the reader with some clarity. When aircraft are put to bed, certain critical openings are either covered, or plugged up. Doing plugs and covers is simply the act of removing, or installing them. Coordinated checks are tests of certain aircraft parts that require two people to perform, one inside the flight station to operate the controls, and another outside the aircraft to verify the results. Communication between the man inside the plane and the man outside is accomplished with hand signals.
Prior to exiting the plane I unlash the aircrafts service ladder from the bulkhead. The large covers over the turbine intakes for our four engines are about twenty feet up in the air. When operating independently overseas, and out of sight of the Navy’s watchful eye, we seldom bothered with the service ladder. Under those less formal conditions, we normally just walked out onto the wing, and shimmied down the engines nacelles to remove the intake covers. This procedure could not be practiced stateside, as it was a blatant disregard of regulations, but it was much faster and easier, provided you didn’t lose your balance and fall off the engine. The service ladder in its collapsed and stored configuration was about six feet long. It could be unfolded to about three times that length. I wrestle the service ladder down the aircrafts boarding ladder, and start pulling plugs and covers. One of the universal concerns of aviation, civilian or military is F.O.D. (Foreign Object Damage), so when removing plugs and covers it is of tantamount importance not to lose any. An unaccounted for plug or cover being sucked into a turban intake will have disastrous consequences. My method of pulling plugs and covers was to remove the large turban intake covers first, and then use one of the covers as a bag to carry all the other plugs and covers. After four trips up and down the service ladder, and a walk around the entire aircraft I have removed and corralled all the plugs and covers. This task completed I wrestle the service ladder, and all the plugs and covers up the aircraft ladder and into the plane.
The galley had a small dinette booth sort of affair in it, and the benches opened up for storage, this is where the plugs and covers were kept when not in use. After stowing the plugs and covers in one of the benches I lash the service ladder back to the bulkhead, and walk forward to the flight station.
“Ready for coordinated checks” I ask Dave?
“Roger that” Dave responds, so I head back aft and descend the ladder again.
Once on the ground I walk well out in front of the aircrafts nose. I look up in the flight station, and Dave gives me a thumbs up indicating he is ready to begin. I make a V with my right index and middle finger, and hold it up to my eyes. Dave turns on the taxi lights. I verify both lights come on and give him a thumbs up, Dave turns off the taxi lights. I then extend both my arms fully and point at the center of the wings. The landing lights extend and come on. I give Dave another thumbs up. The landing lights go out and retract back into the wings. Next I hold my left thumb over my right thumb and swivel them about. The upper and lower strobe lights come on, and I give Dave the thumbs up. The strobes go out. Now I place both my hands together out in front of me, and open them like a clam. The flaps fully extend. I then close my hands and Dave fully retracts the flaps. Dave is rewarded with another thumbs up from me for his efforts. I pause for just a moment and wait for Dave to lower the flaps back to the 18 degree position. While on the ground the flaps where always left at 18 degrees. The reason being, if the crew had to perform and emergency exit from the ground, we simply went out the over wing exits and slid down the flaps, the civilian equivalent would be the emergency evacuation slides the flight attendants always talk about. With the flaps back in the correct position I hold my hands up in the air and squeeze them into fists several times. Inside the flight station Dave starts pumping the brakes. I walk to the aircrafts main mounts, the two main landing gear, one in each wing, and visually verify that the brakes are working. Next I open the access door to the hydraulic service center and check for the correct pressure reading on the hydraulic accumulators. Keep in mind that the whole time I am doing all of this, Dave is still up in the flight station pumping away. After verifying the proper performance of the aircrafts brakes and hydraulics I open and close the plane’s sonobouy disable door several times. This flashes a light in the flight station, and tells Dave he can stop pumping the brakes now. The sonobouy disable door is a small door on the bottom of the plane about the size of an index card. When this door is open, the sonobouys cannot be launched. Since the sonobouys are deployed from the aircraft with explosive charges it is preferable to make sure they cannot be inadvertently fired when the plane is on the ground. Coordinated checks completed, that’s right you guessed it, its back up the ladder again.
Now while Dave and I have been performing the coordinated checks, my fellow crewmates have been arriving at the aircraft. Back inside the plane the first thing I do is head to the coffee pot. Mike is standing in the galley.
“Morning Mike” I greet him.
I receive a grunt from Mike, and the two of us walk forward to the sonar station. The sonar gear sits over the wing on the port side of the plane. The SS1 and SS2 sit side by side facing outboard. Taking our seats, Mike and I start powering up the gear. Now about an hour has passed since the call came from the duty office notifying the crew that we were being launched. This means we need to be airborne in about 3 hours. Now this may seem like a lot of time, but there is still a considerable amount of work to be done, and time is of the essence. A full preflight of the sonar system starting from scratch took a little over two hours, but since this is a ready alert launch we do have some things working in our favor. One of the squadrons other crews not assigned to a ready alert the previous day has already performed a full preflight of all the aircrafts systems. A preflight had a shelf life of 12 hours. If the plane was not launched within 12 hours of the preflight being performed the aircraft would need to be gone over again from top to bottom. What Mike and I are going to do is get the gear powered up and perform some basic checks on it if for no other reason than our own piece of mind. Now for reasons I never knew the tactical systems i.e.: anything not related to the flight station, did not have officially sanctioned pocket checklists, so each AW would make up his own abbreviated checklist based on the gigantic tome hanging on the back of his seat, the C.S.M.M. (Crew Station Maintenance Manual). Now all SS1 and SS2 combinations would refine their methods to a point where very little real intelligible conversation was required, Mike and I where no exception, so the dialog may seem a bit bizarre.
I point up at the T.C.G. (Time Code Generator), and say to Mike, “WWV or Timex?”
“Timex” Mike responds.
Now the T.C.G. is exactly what its name implies, a clock. Its primary function was not to let Mike and I know what time it was, but to continuously record a time stamp on the magnetic tapes capturing the information displayed on the sonar gear. In theory the correct procedure to set the current time on the T.C.G. was to tune one of the aircraft radios to station WWV which still to this day broadcasts the exact time from the atomic clock in Colorado. Aviation, both civilian and military operates on Zulu Time, a.k.a Greenwich Mean Time. Mike’s response of “Timex” told me to skip the rather cumbersome procedure of setting the T.C.G. via WWV, and just look at my wrist watch, perform the conversion from Pacific Time to Zulu Time in my head, and start the T.C.G.
“T.C.G. is up”, I say.
Mike responds, “Here’s a cookie”, and tosses me a chocolate chip cookie.
There is of course a back story here. Mike’s long suffering wife was a rather voluminous woman named Sheri. Sheri normally came across as rather loud, and uncouth, but she had a good heart. Whenever the orangutans were launched she would send Mike to the plane with a very large tub of made from scratch chocolate chip cookies. If the crew had the ready alert, Sheri always had a tub of cookies standing the ready alert as well. The cookies were Mike’s method of positive reinforcement. If I did something right I got a cookie. If I made a mistake something else would happen.
At this point Zero walks past the sonar gear headed aft, glances in our direction and says, “SGNOGs up.”
SYGNOG, pronounced signog, stands for system go no go. The SYGNOG was a program that could be loaded on the aircrafts computer that would perform some automated testing on various tactical systems in the tube. The processing power of the aircrafts computer was about the equivalent of a 486, which by today’s standards doesn’t seem like a lot, but in the early 1980’s it was quite remarkable. The aircrafts computer programs were stored on magnetic tapes, and only one program could be run at a time, so Mike and I had a finite amount of time to run the SYGNOG on our gear before Zero would have to take down the SYGNOG, and load the operating system.
Mike looks at me and says, “Start your SYGNOG, and then check the AQH-4.”
“Roger that” I respond. “Lower door open or closed?” I further query.
“Open” Mike grunts back.
The translation here is simple. Mike just instructed me to start the SYGNOG on my sonar equipment, and while the program is running, to preflight the tape recorder, designation AQH-4. The AQH-4 had a lower door that covered the circuit boards that captured the information on the tapes. As I mentioned earlier the tape recorder at the sonar station only recorded the information being collected by the sonar gear, and whatever was spoken over the aircrafts I.C.S. system. The I.C.S. dialog was recorded on track two of the magnetic tapes. Each track being recorded had its own circuit board. In the event the crew did not want its conversations preserved for all posterity, or more importantly for further review, the card responsible for collecting that information would simply be removed from the AQH-4. Of course prior to removing the board a suspected malfunction with track two was always reported to the TACCO, flying with the lower door open facilitated quick removal of the card. While I am performing these tasks, Mike is running the SYGNOG on his equipment, and checking the gear responsible for controlling the active sonar. I finish with the AQH-4, and confirm my gear passed the SYGNOG, then turn to Mike and say, “Sensor two is up.” Fully expecting to receive another cookie at this point I am quite disappointed when none is forthcoming.
Instead Mike responds, “Where’s Casey?”
“I don’t know “I reply.
Mike growls at me, “I’m going to find the fing idiot! Run a B.I.T.E. test on both stations, and stay out of the cookies.” After this little exchange of pleasantries, Mike storms away from the station. I slide his seat off to the extreme right side of the station, and start running the B.I.T.E. tests. B.I.T.E. (Built In Test Equipment) allows the operators to manually check the sonar gear if the SYGNOG is not available. Although both the sensor one and two stations have passed the SYGNOG it was considered good practice to perform a B.I.T.E. test as well, if time permitted. After completing the B.I.T.E. test on both the sensor one and two stations, and finding no issues, I have a few moments to collect my thoughts. About two hours have passed since I got the call from the duty office, and my thoughts now turn to food. As I mentioned earlier, the only possible source of food at this hour of the morning is the squadron’s coffee mess, so I decide to use this window of opportunity to go foraging for food. I get up from the station and start walking aft towards the main cabin door, and I immediately find myself face to face with Senior. Now I am more than a little surprised to see him, as he was not on the flight schedule, so I immediately say something stupid. “Senior, what are you doing here?” Senior responds, “What is your major malfunction Flounder?” Confused, I reply, “You weren’t on the flight schedule Senior.” “I didn’t expect to see you.” Further aggravated senior answers, “I was not aware I needed your permission to be here Flounder.” Now I am really on the ropes so, looking for a way to exit the conversation with my posterior intact I respond, “I’m sorry Senior.” “I thought you had the day shift in maintenance control.” Seniors tone softens somewhat and he patently explains to me as if I were a small child, “Flounder, did crew three get launched?” “Yes” I reply. “Flounder, am I a member of crew three.” “Yes” I respond again. “Do you have any more stupid questions Flounder?” “No Senior” “Outstanding!” Now get some garbage bags in those sh** cans and bring me a God d bean burrito.”, and with that Senior heads up to the flight station.
Now armed with an iron clad excuse to go to the coffee mess, after all senior needs a bean burrito, I head back to the galley to put garbage bags in the two large trash cans located there. After digging around in the galley drawers, I locate some trash bags, place them on the galley table, and bend over to untie the trash cans.
While I am in this compromised position a voice says to me, “Flounder haven’t I warned you about this before?”
I look up and find Hawk standing over me with a very stern expression on his face. I have no idea what infraction I may have committed, and after just narrowly escaping Senior I am more than a little bit alarmed.
Standing up straight, I ask Hawk as innocently as I can, “What did I do wrong sir?”
Pointing at the trash bags on the table Hawk replies in a very stern voice, “Flounder do you have any idea how dangerous those things are?” “You can’t just leave them lying around.”
Now even more confused than before I respond, “Sir, there’re trash bags what’s the problem?”
“Flounder, if you leave these things lying around, small children, and pilots will put them over their heads, and suffocate!”
With this said, Hawk pulls a trash bag over his head and inhales deeply plastering the bag against his face. After removing the bag from his head he closes the conversation by saying, “Don’t let this happen again Flounder!”
I laughingly reply, “Aye Aye Sir!”, and Hawk heads up to the flight station.
My mood considerably improved I exit the plane and head for the coffee mess before anyone else can get a hold of me. The walk back to the hanger is considerably easier, since I am no longer encumbered by all the flight gear and equipment. All navy squadrons have a coffee mess, as the name implies, you can purchase coffee there however, there are other items for sale as well. Aside from coffee, also available for purchase are squadron apparel and photographs, but what I am interested in tonight is food, the food available at the coffee mess consists primarily of what used to be termed gedunk: chips, candy bars, and that sort of thing. The coffee mess did posses some slightly more substantial food, things like instant soup, prepackaged sandwiches, and of course the obligatory bean burritos. Most people associate bananas as the preferred food of simians, but the diet of choice amongst orangutans that fly Orions is bean burritos and Cup O’ Noodles soup. This choice in food stuffs was determined by two factors, first being the available cooking equipment in the plane’s galley, and second air pressure. As a human being ascends to altitude, the barometric pressure on the human body decreases, as a result of this internal organs expand, and the digestive track becomes less restricted, think the campfire scene in the movie Blazing Saddles. If this pressure drop is helped along by things like beans and coffee the resulting flatchulence can qualify as biological warfare. Flying orangutans take great pride in emitting only the most toxic of gasses.
Upon entering the coffee mess, I find the place completely deserted, with the exception of the young airman on duty behind the counter. All squadron coffee messes are operated by the First Lieutenants division. Some clarification is in order here, like a lot of terminology used in the Navy, the name First Lieutenants Division is very misleading. There is no actual First Lieutenant in a squadron. A great deal of the language used in the Navy dates back to the age of sail, and cannot be applied in the most literal fashion, because much of the technology used by the Navy simply did not exist when the phrases were coined. The best parallel in the civilian world is the country of Israel. When Israel became a country, one of the decisions that was made was the determination of a national language. The Israelis elected to make Hebrew the national language, and have had to be a bit creative over the years in its application as things like electricity did not exist a few thousand years ago. The First Lieutenants division sees to the inglorious duties required to keep things running, i.e.: cleaning the heads (bathrooms), swabbing and waxing the decks (floors), and of course, the operation of the coffee mess. Upon checking into a new squadron as a junior enlisted man, especially if you were not rated (in other words, had received no specialized training by the Navy), you were normally sent T.A.D. (Temporary Attached Duty) to either the base’s galley, or assigned to the First Lieutenants division. The First Lieutenants division was also a dumping ground of sorts for poor performers. I’m afraid there is no polite way to say this, so I will just spit it out, if you could not be trusted to work on the airplanes, either do to incompetence or stupidity, you were assigned to the First Lieutenants division. Carl, the airman on duty this evening, qualified on both counts.
“Hey Carl”, I say entering the coffee mess.
“Did you guys get launched?’”, he replies.
“What was your first clue?”
“Where are you going?” Carl asks.
“The skimmers lost a bad guy, so we have to find him again.”
The term skimmer is slang for surface ships.
“What can I get you?” asks Carl.
“Give me six bean burritos, and three shrimp Cup O’ Noodles soups.”
While Carl is gathering up the foodstuffs he takes an opportunity to make a cheap shot. “I wish I had your job”, he grumbles. “All you have to do is fly around and play space invaders.”
Handing Carl the money for the food, I fire back, “If you think it’s so easy, you try being locked up in a plane with Mike for 18 hours.”
Now that I have acquired the food, I check my watch to see if I have enough time for a cigarette before walking back out to the plane. It’s now a little over two hours since we got the order to launch, and since no major issues have manifested themselves, and the sonar gear has checked out, I decide to indulge myself in a smoke. Stepping outside the hanger and lighting up, I start scanning the parking lot for signs of Mike, and Casey. Now I didn’t exactly lie to Mike when I claimed ignorance of Casey’s location, but I was not entirely forthcoming with all the information I possessed either. Unlike me, Casey did own what might be considered a car; it was a very early Datsun 280 ZX. Casey’s motor vehicle was a car in the sense that it sat on four tires, and could occasionally loco mote under its own power, but that is about where the resemblance stopped and started. Casey’s Datsun had lost its reverse gear the month before the squadron assumed the ready alert. To repair the car and restore its ability to back up would have generated a repair bill slightly in excess of a thousand dollars, that much money might as well have been a million, so Casey had been endeavoring to always park the car in such a fashion that no back up maneuver was required, on this particular morning Casey’s efforts failed. The enlisted personnel parked their cars behind the barracks, and Casey had neglected to pull his car all the way through the parking spot so he could pull out going forwards. The parking spot he had chosen sloped downhill just enough that he was unable to push the car out on his own. Keep in mind that Casey did not reason through things in a conventional manner. Instead of simply calling the duty office, and asking for a ride to the hanger, Casey, at considerable risk to his own safety, had been going around the barracks in the wee hours of the morning knocking on doors trying to determine who was blocking him in. As I am finishing up my cigarette, I see Mike’s car pull into the lot, and both he and Casey emerge from it.
Mike looks at me and growls, “Is the gear up?”
“We’re F.M.C.”, I respond. (Fully Mission Capable)
Turning to Casey Mike says, “Get your sorry a** out to the plane, and check your gear!”
“Aye aye”, Casey sheepishly responds.
Turning back to me Mike says, “Get back out to the plane and grab the comm. boxes, we need to head over to the ASWOC, I’ll wait for you here.”
I leave Mike, and start double timing out to the plane. Back inside the plane I retrieve both my own, and Mike’s comm. boxes from the sonar station, turning to leave, I once again find myself face to face with Senior.
“Oh sh!” I inadvertently exclaim. “Is there some sort of a problem I am not aware of Flounder?” Senior asks. “No Senior”, I respond. “Flounder you have no idea how fing overjoyed I am to hear that! Now can you give me any reasonable explanation as to why you have failed to place my burrito in the oven prior to exiting my aircraft?!” “Is brain fart a reasonable explanation Senior?” “Considering the source Flounder I will accept that excuse. Now put my burrito in the oven, and get your sorry a* over to the ASWOC with the rest of the techno rats!”
“Understood Senior”, I respond.
After placing senior’s burrito in the oven, I start double timing back to the parking lot to meet Mike. The sprint back to the car is considerably more difficult, as I am now encumbered with 40 lbs. worth of comm. boxes.
I arrive at the car slightly winded. Mike looks at me and says, “Get in.”
Relieved beyond words that Mike will be driving us to the ASWOC, I toss the comm. boxes in the back seat and get in. Mike then says to me in a tone more venomous than a king cobra, “I don’t care if you have to strap that idiot to the back of the flounder mobile, if he’s late to a launch again, it’s you’re a**.”
“When did I become Gracie Allen’s keeper?” I shoot back.
“As of right now!” Mike spits at me.
Once Mike and I are checked into the ASWOC we proceed to the briefing room and sit down. Shortly after we are seated, Ken, Hawk, and Tony enter the room. Soon after they take their seats the briefing officer enters, along with one of the lab boys.
The briefing officer steps up to the podium and addresses us, “Good morning gentleman, and I use that term very loosely. Your target today is a Yankee class currently on station. The TAS ship lost the T.O.I. (Target of Interest) when the boat maneuvered to check his baffles, the skimmer has been unable to reacquire contact.”
“How old is the datum?” Ken asks.
“Approximately 14 hours.” responds the briefing officer.
“Are we authorized to go active?” Ken continues.
“If, you Orangutans are able to reacquire the target, active sonar, and simulated attacks are authorized. The Admiral would like to shake this one up a little bit. He does not want Ivan to get the impression he can slip away from us at will.”
Ignoring the rather thinly veiled contempt being displayed by the briefing officer Ken continues, “Will there be a relieving aircraft?”
The briefing officer answers Ken using the same contemptuous tone he has maintained throughout the briefing, “Should team orange localize the target, notify the ASWOC immediately, and a relief aircraft will be launched.”
Still maintaining his composure, Ken presses on, “Once contact has been reestablished, how long will the wing be responsible for tracking the target?”
Leveling a very critical gaze at Ken, the briefing officer replies, “You sound awfully sure of yourself. However, the short answer is the contact will continue to be prosecuted aerially until such time as another asset can be moved into position.”
At this point attempting to calm the waters a bit, Hawk pipes up with his own question, “Should the flight station maintain a profile to maximize on station time, and what is the EMCON protocol?”
“You will be under full EMCON during transit to on station; the admiral would like to surprise this one. Once on station take all steps necessary to ensure maximum endurance. That will be all gentleman, good luck and good hunting.”
The briefing such as it was, now concluded we all break up into smaller groups to talk with our respective ASWOC counter parts. Mike and I walk over to the lab boy while Hawk, Tony, and Ken go to another part of the ASWOC to get specifics on the search area, and communications protocols to be used during the mission.
“What have you got on this one?” Mike asks the lab boy.
“Nothing out of the ordinary”, he responds. “Before the TAS ship lost him the TOI was displaying all the standard Yankee class signature characteristics.”
I follow up with my own question, “Do we know which hull number he is?”
“Negative, he hasn’t been trapped since he left port” the lab boy responds.
After handing both Mike and I huge stacks of papers containing the most current information from the TAS ship before it lost contact with the target, the lab boy closes with, “You two need anything else?”
“No we’re good”, Mike responds for both of us. Mike and I store the documents in our comm. boxes, and exit the ASWOC.

(Soviet Yankee Class Submarine)
As Mike and I are exiting the A.S.W.O.C. about two and a half hours have elapsed since the crew got the call to launch. The order to launch the ready was issued at 0200 hours, so SG-6 should be on takeoff roll by 0600 hours. The timing here is important due to air traffic control issues in the Bay Area. While the mission being performed by the crew is truly critical to national security, the reader needs to keep in mind that all of this activity is going on outside the general consciousness of the American public. If you look at the photograph on page four, the two runways you see are 32 right, and 32 left. We will be taking off on 32 right, as that is the longer runway, and SG-6 will be very near its maximum takeoff weight, so a little extra real estate is useful. Runway numbers are not randomly assigned, the number of the runway corresponds to the compass heading. Therefore, if you are taking off on runway 32, you are traveling in a direction of 320 degrees true. Now due North is 360 degrees, so SG-6 will essentially be taking off headed North. Referencing the photograph on page four again, this means that the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) will be to our left, and the Oakland Airport (OAK) will be to our right. There is also a small general aviation field in Palo Alto to contend with, this would also be on the left, but closer to the base than SFO. I apologize for the geography lesson, but the lay of the land has everything to do with the timing of the launch. Both SFO, and OAK are going to be launching large numbers of commercial flights starting at about 0700 hours, essentially producing gridlock in the sky, and the orangutans really need to beat the airborne equivalent of the morning rush hour. The Orions, especially when heavily loaded were a great source of frustration to the Bay Area controllers, as our rate of climb was very slow, and we produced the aerial equivalent for the commercial flights of being stuck behind a slow truck in a no passing zone. It was not uncommon for the Orions to sit at the end of the runway with all four engines turning for almost an hour before they were cleared to launch. This sort of a delay could not be tolerated when something with enough firepower to wipe out the West Coast was lost and needed to be found. The conundrum was that if commercial traffic was slowed down, or worse yet brought to a halt for even a brief period of time, the Navy was subject to a great deal of abuse because the general public was truly clueless as to what we were doing. All John Q Public new was that the Navy was the cause of his flight being delayed, and considering the level of contempt the local population possessed for the military in general the wing worked very hard at not focusing any undue attention on activities at the base. As far as A.T.C. gridlock is concerned the Orion crews did have one ace up their sleeves. Should the mission commander feel it necessary, he could declare an “Echo Item”. What this meant in air traffic control world was that all other activity was brought to a screeching halt, and the Orion got to go first. Declaring an “Echo Item” would of course produce A.T.C. chaos, especially if called for during peak travel times, thus fully focusing the wrath of several government agencies squarely on the Navy. If a mission commander declared an “Echo Item”, he was guaranteed a trip to the Admiral’s office to dance on the carpet as soon as his plane returned, and the mission commander had best be able to provide the Admiral with some absolutely ironclad reasons to defend his action.
Mike parks his car back at the hanger, and the two of us grab our comm. boxes and start walking back to the plane.
Mike pauses before we enter the hanger and says, “Let’s burn one before we go in.”
Mike and I light our cigarettes, and smoke them in silence. As a general rule of thumb it was best to let Mike initiate any conversation. Since Mike was silent my best course of action was to remain so as well. Mike finishes his smoke and grunts; we then enter the hanger and head for the plane.
As Mike and I walk towards the plane we see Larry driving across the ramp in the ordinance truck with sonobouy cart in tow. I turn to Mike and say, “That must be the rest of the buoy load out.” Mike looks at me and grunts. The meaning of this particular monosyllabic unintelligible sound is clear to me, what Mike means is we need to give Larry a hand with the rest of the buoys.
Now would seem to be the best time to discuss the matter of sonobuoys. Sonar when reduced to its simplest elements can be categorized in one of two fashions, either passive, or active. Passive sonar is exactly what the name implies, you simply stick a hydrophone (a hydrophone is a microphone that can be placed under water) in the water and listen. Since the hydrophone does not make any noise this is called passive sonar. Active sonar is probably more familiar to folks as most of us have seen at least one war movie. The pinging you hear in the movies is active sonar. In this case a transducer is placed in the water. The transducer emits a sound wave, or ping, hence the term active sonar. If the sound wave strikes a solid object, like a submarine, part of the ping will reflect off the object and travel back to the transducer. The issue here is that not only the person doing the pinging can hear it, but the target you are looking for can as well, thus you are advertising your presence to the enemy. Since the plane is flying around in the sky, it can’t very well dangle a hydrophone, or transducer out a window and go trolling for submarines, enter the sonobuoy. Sonobuoys were launched from the aircraft; they then descended to the ocean surface. Once the buoy was in the water, either a hydrophone or a transducer would deploy from the buoy and descend below the surface. The buoy would transmit the sonar information to the plane via radio. Equipment inside the plane would convert the radio signals back to sonar information that would be displayed on my gear. The P-3C model was designed to carry 84 sonobuoys, 48 externally loaded, and 36 internally loaded. There were many different types of sonobuoys, most of which had adjustable settings. Most of the settings on the buoys needed to be configured prior to the buoy being launched; obviously the prelaunch settings on the externally loaded buoys could not be modified in flight. This is why some buoys were carried internally, allowing their prelaunch settings to be tailored to suit the tactical situation while on station.
The ordinance truck’s bed was mounted on a scissor lift, not unlike the food service trucks you would see at a commercial airport; this allowed the cargo section of the truck to be raised to aircraft level. The orangutans normally did not make use of this feature for loading internal stores. Our preferred method was to simply form a human chain, and pitch the buoys into the plane. Larry parks the truck just aft of the aircraft ladder on the port side of the plane. As Larry is climbing out of the cab, Ken is descending the aircraft ladder. As the TACCO Ken has the final decision regarding the buoy load out i.e.: buoy type, prelaunch settings, external or internal load, and the quantity of each type of buoy to be carried. Failure to acquire, or worse yet the loss of the target due to running out of sonobuoys was yet another infraction that guarantied you a trip to the admiral’s office to dance on the carpet. It was standard practice at the time among the flight crews to have at least two predetermined buoy loadouts, one for active authorized missions, and another for passive only missions. This being said, there was always some fine tuning of the buoy loadout that took place during the preflight. At this point Mike, Larry, Ken and myself huddle up next to the ordinance truck.
Ken opens with, “Show me the load out sheet for what’s onboard.”
Larry hands Ken a laminated card which has been filled out with a grease pencil indicating the bouys currently aboard the plane.
After studying the card for a moment, Ken looks at Mike and myself and asks, “Jez, can you sniff him out with one search pattern?”
Mike answers back, “Won’t be a problem if the datum we got from the skimmer is any good, we know were he’s going.”
“Outstanding! Ken responds with enthusiasim, “That gives us more room for 62’s! We are going to rock Ivan’s world!”
Ken pulls a handkerchief out of one of his pockets, spits on it, and edits the laminated card by use of the freshly moistened handkerchief, and a grease pencil. After making the adjustments, he hands the card back to Larry.
Larry studies the sheet for a moment and asks Ken, “Do you want to replace any of these 53’s with 77’s?”
Ken furrows his brow for a moment and responds, “Replace six of the internal 53’s with the VLADS. That should keep the admiral happy, this is a tactical, not a f***ing R&D flight.”
Once again, a little translation is necessary. Tactically speaking, the SS1 and SS2 although two different individuals, and in my case Mike and I could not be any more different, are collectively known as Jez; the reason being the first airborne sonar equipment was invented by a man named Arnold J. Izebel. At this point in time the Orion’s can monitor a maximum number of 16 buoys simultaneously. Therefore, a standard search pattern consisted of 16 buoys. If a second pattern needed to be deployed, the crew would have expended 32 of its 74 buoys leaving only 42 remaining to maintain contact until the relieving aircraft arrived, so it was in everyone’s best interest to find Ivan with the first pattern. The term skimmer is slang for surface ship, and datum is the last known position of the target. While we do not know the exact position the submarine is traveling to, we do know about where he is going. The Soviets had designated patrol areas depending upon what type of missiles they could carry. In the case of tonight’s target the orangutans know Ivan is heading to the Yankee patrol box off the California coast. Sonobuoys like all material’ in the navy have rather lengthy and indecipherable nomenclature. When Ken is talking about 62’s, he is referring to the SSQ-62 active sonar buoy. If active sonar was not authorized, in theory we would not be carrying any 62’s. The SSQ-53 was the real workhorse of all the various types sonobuoys. The 53 was a passive buoy that in addition to providing acoustic information, also provided a magnetic compass bearing indicating the direction, relative to the buoy, that the sound was coming from. Before I give any explanation of the SSQ-77, or VLAD buoy, I need to editorialize a bit. This narrative is taking place during the first half of the 1980’s. Now a few decades have come and gone since then, and as I remarked at the beginning of this narrative, I have noticed more than a little rewriting has transpired regarding the events of the time. The 80’s have become known as a period of runaway irresponsible defense spending. Worse yet, in my opinion, is the misconception that simply spending the money is what forced the collapse of the Soviet Union. On a personal level I find this more than a little offensive. The United States could spend all the money it wanted to on wiz bang toys for the military, but without the men who were willing to go out and fight the cold war day after day all of that hardware was useless. All of this being said, the SSQ-77 is an excellent example of misallocated funds; the SSQ-77, or VLAD (vertical line array detection), buoy was simply a more modern version of the SSQ-53. Unfortunately it really was not any better. The manufacturer was pressuring the Navy to adopt this buoy as part of our standard equipment. We, the flight crews, did not really care for it, but were under considerable pressure to prove it a viable weapons system. On this particular evening the target is a real world threat, and the orangutans would prefer not to waste any time, or valuable space on an unproven system. Ken’s decision to bring along a half a dozen 77’s was probably the best compromise. It made us all look like team players without compromising the success of the mission. My pet peeve with the 77’s was rather personal, for the cost of just one of those buoys the Navy could have paid to run the bus schedule round the clock, thus eliminating the early morning ride on the flounder mobile. My point here is simple, the much maligned increase in defense spending that took place during the 1980’s was not so much overspending as it was poor application of funds. A 24/7 shuttle bus, and a flight line cafeteria would have been much more useful to the orangutans then a new buoy type that was not providing us any real tactical advantage against Ivan.

Above:Underside of the Orion showing the external sonobuoy tubes.

Above: An SSQ-53 DIFAR Buoy
Below: An ordinanceman loading external buoys. A buoy cart can be seen behind him.

Below: Interior view of the orion showing internally loaded sonotubes, internal buoy storage rack and the freefall shoot.

Speaking of Ivan, I should probably mention that any piece of Soviet hardware we happened to be dealing with could be referred to as Ivan. Additionally the name Ivan could also be used to refer to the U.S.S.R. in general.

The conference over, Mike turns to me and says, “Find Gracie Allen and get these buoys on board!”
“Roger that!” I reply, and bound up the ladder.
Back inside the plane again, I take a quick look around and spot Casey walking aft from the SS3 station. As he approaches me I say to him in not the most pleasant of tones, “I hope like hell your gear is FMC, Mike is already on the warpath.”
Casey responds, “I’m good.” just as Larry enters the aircraft.
I look at Larry and query, “Which ones are the internals?”
Larry responds, “The ones on the right side.”
With this being said, I go back down the ladder to the ordinance truck; Casey follows me, and pauses half way down the ladder. I start grabbing the buoys Larry has segregated off to the right side of the ordinance truck, and begin pitching them up to Casey, who then turns, and starts chucking them into the plane. Meanwhile Larry is inside the bird snatching up buoys, and stowing them in the internal rack. This task complete, Casey and I reenter the plane. Just as I get back inside the bird, Hawk descends the ladder to perform his final walk around prior to engine starts.
While Hawk is down on the ramp, Ken is walking through the tube checking with all the stations to establish the condition of the tactical systems. No one has any major issues to report and Ken walks over to the coffee urn in the galley to draw himself a cup. Turning towards Casey and Me Ken asks, “Are you two kids ready to go catch a bad guy?”
“Yes sir!” We enthusiastically respond in unison.
Just as Casey and I finish chorusing our response Hawk reenters the aircraft. Looking aft towards the galley he says, “Get the ladder up and close the main cabin door.”
Turning to Mike I inquire, “Are there any ground pounders left onboard?”
“Negative” Mike responds, “You would have seen the Handler leave with the release if you didn’t have you head so far up the TACCO’s ass.”
I decide not to offer up any response, and instead turn my attention to the matter of the ladder, and main cabin door. After retracting the ladder, and securing the main cabin door, I reach over Zero’s seat, pick up a microphone, and call up to the flight station, “Flight aft, ladder up, main cabin door secure.”
The flight station responds, “Understood, stand by to start two.” I glance down at my watch prior to seating myself in the port aft observation seat; the time is 0510 hours, only 50 minutes left until we need to be airborne.
“Roger stand by two”, I answer. The words are no sooner out of my mouth, than I hear the turbine on number two spinning up, and the propeller begins to rotate. I stare intently out the port aft observation window looking for any signs of malfunction i.e.: excessive smoke, sparks, fluid leaks, etc… I hear the turbine subtly change pitch indicating it has reached the proper operating RPM, and call back up to the flight station, “Flight aft, normal start two.”
“Roger that” responds the flight station, “stand by three.” I swivel around in the seat just to confirm someone has placed themselves in starboard aft to monitor the number three engine start. I am very gratified to see Larry seated in his chair at starboard aft, eliminating the need for me to dash across the plane, and monitor another engine start. Knowing full well that we only need two engines to taxi over to the fuel pits, I stand up and head forward towards the sonar station to make sure all of my, and Mikes gear is securely tied down prior to takeoff. Although the Orion was derived from Lockheed’s Electra airliner, the Orion did not possess a lot of the amenities present on its civilian counterpart, namely overhead storage compartments. All of the crew has brought along a significant amount of personal gear, in Jez’s case we have the afore mentioned comm. boxes helmet bags, and of course the all important jar of cookies. Prior to takeoff all of this loose gear needs to be tied down so it doesn’t fly around the tube in the event something goes wrong on takeoff. The Orions had several low narrow bench seats located between the electronics racks, when these seats were not being used for PAX, passengers, the crew members would use the seatbelts on them to tie down loose gear.
Once again, I feel some explanation is in order. The P-3 has four engines; they are simply numbered 1-4 starting with the left most engine on the port (Left) side, and ending with the right most engine on the starboard (Right) side. Therefore, number two is the port inboard engine, and number three is the starboard inboard engine. Even though some forty years had come and gone since World War II, some of the standard practices from the days of the 8th Air Force, who flew the now legendary B-17’s, and B-24’s, still remained. Namely all engine starts were required to be visually monitored, as start up still presented the highest risk of fire, and other malfunctions. As I mentioned earlier, we are taxiing to the fuel pits to bag out the bird. The term “bagging out” means we will be filling all the fuel tanks up to their maximum capacity. Unlike the other three stateside bases the Orions operated from at the time, our home base did not utilize fuel trucks to gas up the planes. We would taxi to the fuel pits, essentially a self service gas station for airplanes, and bag the bird out ourselves. When not loaded down with a full complement of search and weapons stores, along with a full tactical crew, and all their gear, one engine was normally sufficient to taxi to the pits. I imagine that some readers may be wondering why the plane wasn’t fully fueled, after all it was the designated ready alert. The answer is fairly simple, but also two fold. First, jet fuel once it has been put inside a plane has a shelf life, and cannot simply be drained out and reused in some other aircraft, due to the risk of contamination. Second, since the orangutans will be bagging out the bird, once SG-6 is fully fueled up it will exceed the recommended maximum landing weight for the airframe; therefore, if the ready alert was not launched, the Navy would have to discard about 100,000 lbs. of JP-5.
After securing all of Mike’s and my gear I walk back aft to the vicinity of the main cabin door. The taxi time to the fuel pits is relatively short, and once we have set the brakes I will have to perform another one of my collateral duties i.e.: helping Dave bag out the bird. Now keep in mind that as the plane is taxiing along the crewmembers need to exercise extreme caution with their movements, otherwise bodily injury could result before the plane even gets off the ground. A heavily loaded aircraft rumbling along a taxiway does not have the smoothest ride. Anyone who has ever taken a commercial flight will realize that an airliner does not even get pushed back from the gate unless all the passengers are seated and buckled in. Now back aft, I retrieve the grounding wire from its storage location under one of the galley seats, and assume a position directly behind the aircraft ladder. The orangutans are getting short on time, and as soon as the props stop turning the door needs to be opened, and the ladder extended in the timeliest manner possible. Failure to execute this maneuver smartly will at the very least turn senior’s wrath in my direction, and that is a situation I always tried to avoid. The plane jerks slightly, and the nose dips a bit as we come to a stop at the fuel pits. I tense slightly, and wait for the flight station to cut the engines. Number three gets chopped first (turned off), followed almost immediately by number two, as the turbines are spinning down, I spring into action. Depressing the foot pedal on the right side of the ladder I pull the ladder back to its rearmost position in the guide tracks embedded in the plane’s floor. I through the main cabin door handle from its horizontal position to the vertical while simultaneously reaching down to fold up the lower panel on the main cabin door. The door now fully open I dash around to a position directly behind the aircraft ladder. Depressing the pedal again, I push the ladder to its most forward position, and then kneel down on the left side of the ladder in order to connect the cannon plug on the ladder to its receptacle in the aircraft bulkhead, the plug provided electrical power for the motor that raised and lowered the ladder. As I stand up I actuate the toggle switch that will extend the ladder, rewarded with the whining sound of the ladders motor, I pause a moment to catch my breath. Sensing someone close to me, I look over my right shoulder and see Dave waiting for me to give the all clear to descend the ladder. I hear a small pop and glance down to verify that the ladders safety pin is fully extended indicating that it is safe for Dave and I to descend the ladder. Rewarded with the sight of the extended pin I snatch up the grounding wire from where I placed it on the floor, and dash down the ladder with Dave at my heels. Once on the ground Dave and I proceed with a level of speed and competence normally only demonstrated by a NASCAR pit crew at the Daytona Speedway, Dave heads over to the electrical enclosure that powers the fuel pumps as I drag the fuel hose under the plane. After connecting the grounding wire and placing a set of chocks around the plane’s port main mount, I open the cover protecting the aircraft’s fuel panel, which is located on the bottom of the wing just left of the center line, after I attach the hose, I give Dave the thumbs up he turns on the pumps and then sprints over to meet me at the fuel panel. Dave gives the fuel panel a quick glance to check that the fuel line is at the proper pressure, and then actuates a series of toggle switches allowing the fuel to start flowing into SG-6’s tanks.
For now the story ends but we all anxiously await the next installment (The Webmaster)