Yes, P-3 "stuff". During this time frame, Midway - Sand Island, Henderson Field, was still a very active Naval Air "Facility". There were only a very few civilian scientist types on the Island.
We would go out there for a week or two every once in a while flying mostly ELINT and Photo Recon. It was always very interesting. Especially when we practiced "close" formation flying with the Bears.
We were spying on the Russians spying on us or the other way around. Usually depended on who it was firing the ICBM into the splash down area that also covered the vicinity of Johnston & Bikini Atolls.
For "recreation", we would go scuba diving. It was neat looking for WW2 stuff, which was pretty rare to find by this time & for all intents and purposes "off limits". If you found anything, it had to be left in place and had to be reported.
Also just before dark, we would go out to the end of the old WW2 Fleet Oiling Pier and catch pier perch to use for bait for Amber Jacks that came onto the reef after dark. The only other vices was to sit and watch the Gooney Birds (have a couple of hours of 8mm movies of that) or play poker with the numbers on your paycheck.

 

old thread but can i pick it up again?...

Re the OP, Greywolf was having a ball on birdfarms- an airwing AT would be putting in 12-16hr days keeping the birds flying. I was VAQ squadron intel onboard the younger sister of your Nimitz, the Ike (CVN-69). Nice new ships make for better living Before that ship's company on the Kitty Hawk (CVA-63), she was just 10yrs old so not bad. A couple of small boys and a few boats. Right, that's an EA-6B Prowler amongst the F-18s, and right mete the ones at homebase NAS Whidbey retired (I live 25mi away) replaced by EA-18Gs and the pilots love them, fast, armed air-to-air+air-to-ground, and jamming. Not sure if the EA-6Bs with the VMAQs out of Cherry Point are still in service, but they're slated for Growlers too. The old Prowler airframes were long past their metal fatigue limits, limited to 300kts or lessd and no full loadouts *sniff*.

It's great the brain just wants to remember the good times, cuz ship living duty kinda' suks. But what a way to get the job done, flattops can flatten a lot of things from far away.

Midway Island?!? Better place to visit than live

 

I cheated - I was AIMD almost all of my career except as a NAMTRA instructor for 5, and ships Co. for two years on the Nimitz.

For those in the know: I reported to CVN-68 exactly two weeks before "Jerold Harms" handed it over to CAPTAIN Richardson, and by then the "HARMS'S WAY" cancer had completely and totally infested the ship. 'Nuff on that, but Nimitz sailors from that era through at least 2004 know exactly what I mean.

When I was seriously looking at the Navy as a way out - the recruiter took a bunch of us to see what F-14's looked like close up at NAS Miramar. I was amazed that they were as long as a semi truck... Up in the sky they looked so small.

To see the Corsair II's, Tomcats, and other aircraft rotating out at just about the same time I was felt sort of fitting. A lot of changes happened. E-2 Hawkeyes fitted with six bladed props, plastic lawn darts taking over the A6 and A7 roles, H60's replaced the venerable H3, the Vikings were gone - I suppose they are being used for fire fighting trainers now.

The philosophy behind replacing the A-7 was that it was a single place, single engine platform. But on the other hand it was almost like a "Tractor Designed to Deliver Huge Payloads of Ordinance"


Those and the H-3 were the first aircraft I saw go by-by

 

An AIMD guy! and ship's company too. The ultimate shorebird on up to haze gray and underway. We've got some awesome electronics don't we?

In prehistoric years, I got a joyride with a friend in the S-2 Tracker on the Kitty Hawk before S-3s came, and saw the F-14s come to replace our F-4s. I was elinting for heavy squadrons then, RVAH squadrons flying RA-5C Vigilantes. During an airshow the RA-5C was loping on a flyby about 400kts, and a F-4 came up behind the big beast as if to gun it down. The A-5 jockey wanted to show off too and kicked in the after burners. The F-4 did too and the A-5 slowly left it in the dust (air-vortexes?). The F-4 was one quick killer, but the A-5 is a faast airframe originally as a nuclear-strike fast ingress bomber. And we shouldn't have gotten rid of the S-3s you mentioned in 2009 - they were a good sub-hunter and tanker aircraft. Now the CV's only ASW is the excellent but short range SH-60 and TG assets, or a P-3 off shore. F-18s have to be wasted as tankers now. Not a good move by my Navy but saved a lot of money. Until we need them.

 

When the E-2C was getting long in the tooth, some of them got sold to Japan, and guess what the very first thing they did was?

Anyone remember the memory cores on those birds? A couple of hundred pounds of theoretically EMF hardened gear that was equal to about 256M of RAM?

They replaced all of that with up to date PC's that were "Off the Shelf"...

 

256MB of RAM...about $40 a MB then for a Packard Bell, milspec would be $400 or $4,000 a MB lol...how far we've come. The Japanese don't waste much, so they upgraded everything they could and kept them in the air. Good aircraft, strong enough to freedeck launch which is a lot for a big unit like that.

Didn't they have gold-coated viewing ports, like the EA-6Bs, and (oh yeah just remembered) pull-down panels inside like a shade over the ports, to shield from the high power RF coming off the radome?

 

I think back then we were at what? WIN95 or so - that means we were going beyond a gigabyte right around then.

But the big deal was that even if a PC got "EMF'd" it might have transmitted it's info in an up/download recently, so "HARDENING" of the hard and software really didn't matter...

And now we have both civilian and secure military nets. It opens up some ideas, especially with AUV tech moving along as it is, doesn't it?

My basic point though is that the Japanese were quick to use their "CURRENT TECHNOLOGY" to upgrade their military hardware instead of going through decades of contract negotiations in order to do what was (F)ing obvious!

I mean look at that - a quantum leap, without milspec bullfooling around...