That's an Outstanding nickname for a good cause, and your namesake still holds some world records Barbers Point, good place for sea duty you turkey. i don't envy those long flights, but you had some 'interesting' stopovers to hang out for awhile. Wished that hadn't closed - y'know it was given to Oahu for affordable housing? It's a good purpose but we shoulda' stayed.

Ha, I heard the temp quarters on D.G. were real lavish. And warm. There was some mythical? great white shark granddaddy s'posed to be in the lagoon there, made Jaws look like a wimp, ate snorkellers when she got bored. I'd like to have met Mike Goss, y'all sound like a heckuva team.

We might have gotten sort of close to meeting -- my guys were always competing for the boat run to PMRF outta' Pearl. One would ride out, do their thing, fly his GF over and hang out on Kuaui for a couple of days. A different rider would fly over with his GF, meet the boat, all four hang out, then the 2nd rider would embark, do the thing, then head back to Pearl while the other 3 flew back. A clear enhancement to duty.

Roger the rush. A few minutes of hot damn! to break up the routine. 'Restricted CONUS'? That must have taken effort, what the heck didja' do? lol, maybe a PM would be better. No s#i! the Whale too? Ours was outta' Guam, what a beast, i didn't partake. After the second landing (not before!) return the newbs would be treated to the flight deck CCTV recording, showing them launch, the cats on full power mofo and steam blowing, then dip outta' sight below the deck (switch to another camera) and skimming along a few feet above the waves trying to climb! climb! climb! Their expressions made for a lot of HoHo's. But kiddin' aside, those things were too heavy, needed more powerful engines.

LOL this has got me going, could be a funny book except for Title 18. Harpoon and Phoenix are/were badass cool. You're right, the Phoenix u-turn make an aircrew famous. Gotta' watch out for that same thing with the MK-48. Other stuff..., for years I thought my home was a SCIF in one place or another.

I think we ought to do it again!

Rex

 

I hate to say it, but.....absolutely - in a heartbeat!

Let's just say we had a "Close Encounter of the 3rd Kind". Since the transfers were most likely related to knowledge we had possibly gained that could be considered detrimental to the US should we be captured and tortured, it was highly classified.
We were never told and we were never really sure. We "guessed" that it might have had something to do with a Sky King 3 egress from a place we were visiting that suddenly became just a little detrimental to our health, with all 4 engines maxed out and Bingo lights glowing pretty red while getting so low our props were throwing up a wake while making a max out effort to get back to Taiwan with the Taiwan Starfighters going the other way to get some very unfriendly party pooper types off our tail.......
Or if it had something to do with a little misunderstanding we had a couple of weeks later off of the Kamchatka Peninsula........

The Whale flights were mostly fun and games. The "Shop Chief" I was assistant to was the one of the Plane Captains (A3 Whale version of an F/E) for the Whales we had. NWC - PMTC had at least one of every single type of Combat Aircraft on Active Duty with the Navy so we could test all weapons systems. We never did carrier ops. If the birds were going up and he was flying, often times if there was no schedule conflict, I would go with him as a "photographer" or just an observer. He would go with us when we went up in the Orion. At the time, the Whales were being used mainly for T & E on the DLQ-3 pods.

As to Diego, White Sharks, White Whales, "Ghost Crews" from aircraft shot down during WWII and Kamikaze's...all of the stories were absolutely true! The amount of booze you had consumed often was proportionate to the "truthfulness" of how big the monster was. One thing for certain. It was exciting standing inside the black plastic curtain taking a shower out of the garden watering can suspended on a spike! The total female population at the time were 24 jack asses left over from the old coccus plantation days.

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Honest to God, everyone of us passed our Rifle & Pistol qualifications and we even passed the mandatory Psych Evals!

 

"Let's just say we had a "Close Encounter of the 3rd Kind."

Aha, you're one of 'those guys' that got PacFlt and all of us real excited. The bastids had no problem shooting us down in the SOJ, but we try the same (usually) and the micro-managers upstairs would say "no, no, that's not (insert horses#it excuse). But esp off Sakhalin or the Sea of O and off Petro they took real offense...their backyard. Like if they were flying the Chesapeake Bay here lol.

You guys were a good dance team *wolf whistle*

 

This wasn't the U Turn. the Commander had a missile with a new Mod for a live fire. We were filming the launch and he was just under the barrier. When he took the shot, the missile engine failed to fire and it dropped like a bomb for a couple of hundred feet. Then the missle lit up and went into its ballistic climb to angels 90. Went through the starboard wind rupturing the fuel cell. When the launch fail to ignite was called out Cmdr McDee went to full AB trying to get out of Dodge. The missile impact ruptured the fuel cell and the AB's caught the fuel on fire in the slip stream. He gave it a heck of a run for the money, but the fire kept creeping up and the other jet jocks were screaming "eject, eject, eject" over the radio. At what seemed like the last possible second, the canopy came off and the RIO launched for the moon followed a split second later by Cmdr. McDee. When he got back to the office a week later, he just stared at the wall for 3 or 4 hours and went home. A week after that he was back to his old jokester self.

Of course we were, we were "double Alpha" rated! The elite man, the elite................

 

aah testing, was past my bedtime forgot we were talking about PMTC, a few hours sleep now, java and ready to greet the sun.
That musta' been a bad sight, so glad the pilot made it. New missiles with warheads and you hope the contractor worked all the bugs out of it. Wonder if he was thinking 'they don't pay me enough for this ... but somebody's gotta' do it.'

Once our FCs and AOs were doing quals at PMRF and had a new-fangled man-controlled EO guidance unit on the catwalk that you fit your head and shoulders into yokes and strap yourself in. Fire the missile and guide it to the target (to defeat flares and ECM.) Well the sea was rolling a little and the FC3 might have been nervous, cuz after SAM launch at a drone the missile was describing spirals enroute the target, getting wider and wider. We watchers groaned, FC1 tried to get him stable and I bet the observer aircraft was thinking WTF! It's over in 3-4 seconds, a miss 4 miles away, and the normal Sea Sparrow battery up forward got the drone.

I gotta' dig up some pictures but. the moving contractor Hawaii>mainland went bankrupt, the newly-unpaid drivers dumped their loads on the highway and lost our household goods along with a hundred others. I had a few pics in the express shipment though. Our claim was paid but some things aren't replaceable. I mailed some stuff stateside, will grit my teeth and poke thru the boxes. Have a few photos handy:

A retiring Whale coming home to roost at NAS Whidbey in 2011 for static display. Sniff.
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TMC Moon in the torpedo room of a SSN-593 class. We sometimes slept in the bomb room, not a lot of lay-down space onboard.
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One of our EA-6Bs (retired now) ready to jam
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A boat i det'd on, SSN-711. A few years later it bumped an uncharted sea mount mid-Pacific.
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If that's a bump, I'd hate to see what a collision would look like!

 

Yes ouch, when a 3,000 ton submarine runs into an immovable underwater mountain they were lucky to have survived. It's a testament to the shipbuilders skill that the boat held together. The pressure hulls that I know of are HY-80 steel about 2" thick. I made our part of a Westpac on this boat a few years earlier, they homeported where I was stationed, and always knew them to have tight, professional crews. Just plain bad luck to hit that uncharted seamount in such shallow water 500-600 ft down. We were sorry to see the CO and some of the navigator's careers ruined. (They can't use active sonar, it would give away their position.)

Who in Thailand was throwing hand grenades at y'all? 'Nam was happening so could have been border crossers, or the muslims down south who don't much like the northern King and government, or did one of your crew butterfly a mama-san?

 

Thai's had a number of rable rousers, and in those days it was not completely uncommon for the Khmer Rouge to make a few forays looking for women, drugs or who knows what. Usually not a big deal, but "Patio" Beach was lucrative as it was a major tourist attraction and just about all of the embassies were represented on the weekends, usually at the Pattaya Hilton.
Kind of like the Hucks in the PI. Usually nothing to worry about until after the Huck's came out of the jungle...then it was too late to worry, you just reacted.
If you heard the bang and saw the gray cloud of smoke, there was nothing to worry about and the one not needing a change of pants, bought the beer at the Acey-Duecy club that night.

 

How do all your posts include "beer" or "Acey-Duecy club" and such referencing alcohol? Are you thirsty or just thirsty?

Wet farts are a hazard even when not being blown up. We lost a dashpot on the periscope once (on that same old boat as picture of TMC), the water stream lasered to the IC power panels, sparked and tripped, the boat lost hydraulics on a down angle, the secondary hydraulics piston cylinder blew and spewed hot oil everywhere, hot enough to burn eyes. (The hatch was open for maintenance, one-in-a-billion bad timing during 3 months on station). The Ballast Control System was down cuz no power after IC blew. Engine room guys ordered to stern planes manual. All stop, full reverse, no emergency blow. Won't stop the 30 deg down angle so hang on. Had maybe a minute before forced to blow or hit real crush depth. We were moving at 12 knots passing 300' when DC team of TMC and a couple of A-gangers charged the sail planes' hydraulics crawling over gear, with spanners to loose the planes and they feathered. But inertia. That style of 'floating' hull decks is noisy anyway, but we were getting worried. Skipper was getting set to Eblow when we slowed, went neutral, then started inching back up. Two days to fix the rams and pistons at 150', outstanding job by the A-gangers, normally a shipyard job. About a half-dozen of us on the con, incl sonar, licked oil off our lips and thought it tasted real good. (An emergency blow is very noisy and to be avoided at all costs except one.) But this part is what would be the killer for you Jim -- we couldn't have a beer.

Welp, we're in the middle of watching recorded big-bowl college games, Ohio State and Clemson are next.
And a couple of beers.

 

Wasn't always beer, there were the Mai Tai's and Tequila Sunrises too. And if we were just bored, straight shots of tequila. Every once in a while we would try to poison ourselves on Pepsi or Coke. One of these days I'll have to tell you about a certain promotion party and how, during the course of said event, someone stole the steering wheel out of my 69 Mach 1..........Besides, where you going to roll the dice if you ain't at the Acey-Deucy club.

Gave most of the partying up, about the time the Warden entered my life 38 years ago and forced me to "see the light". She made me give up Scuba and Sky Diving too, but it took her about 4 years to accomplish that.

 

38 years is a long time, congrats to her fortitude

Yea, hard partyin' had to take a back seat to real life but it was fun while it lasted. Whew.

That's a crime to mess with somebody's wheels. Did you get it back or drive with a visegrip?
I had a '73 Mustang coupe, real good car i could afford, but sometimes looked longingly at the Mach 1's with a 390 or 428, mo' fasta'.

 

It was my promotion party to AMS2. My command "supposedly" had a tradition where the promotee was required to rent the party room at the Acey-Deucy club for the promotion party. All persons in the command (O's opetional), were supposed to stop by to congratulate the promotee. All persons senior in rank, (including time in grade) were required to provide the promotee with 1 shot of Tequila. It was mandatory for the promotee to consume said shot in one swig while saluting the provider. (Give guys things that go bang to play with and they come up with all sorts of silly traditions!)
At some point around 0200 they wanted to close the club down.

We had gone through 2 kegs of beer and according to Neptune, I had consumed 23+ shots of Tequila during the course of the evening turned night turned early morning hours.. Garbonzo was the last guy and he slipped me a double shot of Tequila Gold. Mr. and Mrs. Neptune, AKA Mike Williams and his wife were going to give me a ride back to the barracks.

I, on the other hand was firmly convinced that I had drank myself to stone cold sober state and could get back there myself. Mike and his wife were convinced I couldn't and they really couldn't figure out why I was still walking. Well, I showed them! I got out in the parking lot to my 1969 Mach 1 with the 390 and Holley 850 Twin Pump 4 bbl and proceeded to unlock the car and crawl in showing all sorts of dexterity. Seemed much more crowded than I remembered, hit my head on the overhead and then I discovered the steering wheel was missing. Then I started griping because the pedals were gone too!

That's when Mike and a couple of other goons pulled me out of the trunk of my Mach 1 and "escorted" me back to my private room in the barracks.......Mike's wife drove the Mach 1 back to the barracks parking lot, but gave the keys to the Barracks MAA on duty and I didn't get them back until much later.

 

I wonder how many cactii you killed drinking that night. Makes my head hurt thinking about it..."One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, Floor. Rest a minute, gimme More!" On a tequila odyssey I'd have seen the steering wheel and pedals in the trunk. You know that stuff is hallucinatory right? Of course ya' do. I probably shouldn't say this, but my sister outdrank me on tequila and she's only two years younger. If i remember the night right, which ain't guaranteed, she out tequila'd the other three of us at the table. The 70's were great. The late 60's. The 80's. The 90's started slowing down ...

Remember after long dets you just want to howl a bit then relax back into creature comforts on shore? After a cruise, or sea trials, or a long workup, a RimPac. The ears hurt from flight ops, the eyes are gritty from dirt blasted off the deck (or distillant for the blackgangers), 2 minute showers, no good sleep unless you're below the 2nd deck, tired of living with 5000 of your closest friends. Get ashore, max libs on 4-section duty so hop in the wheels and head into town. Get a couple of guys together and rent. We'd get a place down the road on the Coronado strip, nice apartment, go out on the beach across the highway. Bay at the moon, throw kelp, swig beer, roll in the surf. Breakfast? Us, or a couple of days later, one of the girls would keep a milk gallon jug of Sunrise in the 'fridge for breakfast. Old pizza. The ladies usually like a guy who wants to spend money. Teens and 20-somethings livin' the life for a few daze. Wash everything out of the system.

That s#it would kill me today.

 

Loved RimPac. We always hosted either the Australians or New Zealand. Absolutely grand group of guys. Threw wonderful beach parties at Barbers Point!

 

Yes, those Aussies were a party, eh? We got their boat-riders over at Pearl. A lot of fun and proud professionals too.


I remember talking with shipmates about things that had happened '...they aren't going to believe this.' Like jammed planes on a submarine deep underwater. Or a fire on the Kitty Hawk that killed 6 and had 3,500 of us on a listing flight deck preparing to abandon ship in the mid-Pacific. Or weeklong parties on liberty after months at sea. The ladies? Not hard for a 20's-something driving an old GTO and later a big road bike with money to spend from saved paychecks after months at sea. The Shah of Iran onboard for an airshow? Happens all the time for visiting dignitaries - and to practice air strikes.

Or full-bore wave-hopping in your big four-engine plane to escape enemy fighters from a country we're at peace with (China or N.K. or USSR.) Or getting grenade'd in then-backwater Thailand. Sailors and Marines, soldiers and aircrew were getting shot at and sometimes killed.

Details? Sure. 30 years ago... we might have been at a 10 degree down angle instead of 20.Depot-level repairs at 150 foot depth? Sure. We have some of the best mechs in the world not afraid to work in dangerous places.

S--t happens. In conflict areas with thousands of sailors in big ships and hundreds of aircraft patrolling the seas. With all the former military here, and a couple who said they'd been on cruises before and thought a WestPac thread was a good idea, join in or ask questions. Or if you just hung around the dozens of bars on the waterfront, there's good stories there too. Like that bar in Barrio Baretto where ...

This thread has 134 'views' with just 29 posts, so I know you're out there.

Rex
CTTCM(SS) (Retired)
And proud Ford owner since I was 17.