“Hey, Mom – pass the fucking salt. I mean…”
As I said in my post, I understand the deal with the flight deck guys. I was talking about the rest of the crew (and the CO).
A lot of the flight deck personnel seemed to be wearing the old style forest green camouflage utility trousers (instead of blue trousers). I guess they found a use for those after the Army and Marines switched to the new patterns. 
It’s amazing what a great motivator fear is, isn’t it? Your punishment for screwing up is getting chewed up and spit out by your superior and sentenced to more of the same.
Little Creek is a Navy amphibious base in Virginia Beach. Like any shore installation, it has its share of sailors there working shore billets - and some of these are female sailors.
My dad was on the CV(A)-38 Shangri-La from 62-66 and wore a *green * shirt. They’re not on the list. (I still have one, it’s got Velcro on it, which I think was odd for mainstream 60’s.)
I linked to the Navy site earlier in the thread. Green was actually the most common shirt. Even some Electrician Mates wore the Green Shirts.
No, no, no!
Not female Sailors!
Little Creek Lolitas are the civilian women who hang out at bars and clubs specifically looking to hook up with Sailors or Marines station there.
Well done! He was an Electrician’s Mate and went on to be recruited by Ford into their High Voltage Electrican apprecticeship program. W/o the Navy, my dad would have been a jobless drunk who wouldn’t have amounted to much, living in his grandmother’s basement. Thanks to the Navy, he had a job and his own house. Navy didn’t cure the drunk bit, though; I’m surprised at how available alcohol seems to be on the boat.
Another good episode last night, very interesting and touching. I wonder if they mean to be touching?
Alcohol is not “available” on U.S. Naval vessels.
It is a major infraction to be caught with alcohol aboard ship, and the Gates of Hell will open and pour the full force of evil upon a Sailor who’s found to be drunk on duty.
When on liberty in foreign ports is an entirely different story…
What gave you that impression?
This is to give every sailor a mixture of experiences to draw upon. (And spread those experiences to other parts of the fleet.)
For example: Let’s say that you are an aircraft maintenance chief, in charge of sailors fixing F-18’s.
A rare problem develops in the aircraft, one that is a real tough one to trouble shoot and identify. The problem is fixed, kudos handed out.
A few years later (after you have transfered a couple times), you see that problem again. You are able to say “Oh! I’ve seen that, back on the Oriskany in '68. Here’s what it was that time!”
Spreading the knowledge around. Priceless.
I stand corrected. Of course, I wouldn’t have been expected to learn all of these terms, seeing as I led a rather quiet life in Virginia Beach, and only for a few years at that.
I defer to the knowledge of years of debauchery accumulated by our salty colleague.
Speaking of Little Creek, there was a country bar close to there called the Banque. I wasn’t much into country dancing, but this was well known as a place to meet fun and interesting people, if you catch my drift.
Is it still any good?
[Nitpick] The first F/A-18 wasn’t built until Sept. of 1978, IIRC.[/Nitpick]
But, yeah. I get, and agree with, your assertion, mlees.
I believe it was called the First National Bank. It had the gamut of country stuff – mechanical bull, spitoons, sawdust on the floor. And they played both kinds of music – country and western.
I think it’s long gone…
I missed this before, I can say that they took Men Overboard very seriously when I was in. We had two people go over that I can recall. The first was never found and the second was picked up and rescued.
The first guy was lost at night and we never learned the details of why he went overboard. There was some scuttlebutt he may have been pushed, but rumors fly like mad when details are lacking.
The second guy was blown off the flight deck and missed the safety netting somehow. We didn’t think that was possible, but it happened. We were then told it happened other times on other carriers.
It happened during the day and he was seen being blown off. We sent up copters and launched the whale boat to rescue him. By chance I was in the right shop at the right time and was the “battery expert” so I was on the whale boat for the rescue attempt. Very strange being on a small open boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We all barely knew what we were doing. The Captain ordered flight ops canceled* of course and the carrier turned around. I say that like it is simple, please believe me that carriers do not turn around fast.
Well to shorten the story, while we were doing everything humanly possibly to rescue this airman, one of the Frigates that was escorting the Ranger, found him and picked him up. He was fine and flown back to the carrier the same day. We in the boat were drenched but overall the engineman Chief thought we did a good job, knowing we had no training in this drill. Proof that Navy EOS[sup]1[/sup]'s work well.
Jim
- We may have had to wait to recover at least one jet before ending flight ops and turning around, I am a little fuzzy on the details as I was checking the batteries and helping to get the Whale Boat winches to work. My job on the boat itself was nearly useless, so I was reading the instructions to others that were nearly as lost as I was.
[sup]1[/sup] I think I am forgetting, was it EOP for Engineering Operating Procedures? I am losing my Navy acronym knowledge. Crap!
:smack: I hate it when I screw up a perfectly good anecdote.
Off a carrier, it seemed like two or three guys a cruise would fall overboard. Some are recovered, some are not.
Also, one or two aircraft may have to ditch, as well.
Edit: Also, it seems as if there is usually a fire onboard, somewhere, as well. At least, there was on the Ranger everyone of my “at sea” periods…
Primarily the speech he gave the LTJG who was coordinating the search about how they were going to search all day, all night, the next day, and the day after that…
Why was the little speech necessary? The LTJG would know this. The only possible reason for the speech was for the benefit of the cameras, in my mind. It just came across as a bit phony.
I may also have been a bit jaded because the guy had already been in the water for nearly 12 hours before the rescue operation even started, which is always a bad start to a man overboard recovery. 
Listening to the admiral’s speech sounded a bit hollow when both men had to know there was little chance of finding the sailor after so much time had passed.
The best time to attempt a recovery of a man overboard is as soon as he/she hits the water. Even then it can be difficult, as noted by What Exit?.
In this case, the sailor wasn’t even reported missing until the next morning, more than three hours after he missed watch, and 10 hours or so after he was last seen, IIRC.
I don’t recall any numbers like 2-3 per cruise. I know as a snipe I could be out of touch, but didn’t they call Man Overboard for every incident. If so, your numbers seem very high. (Or by Cruise do you mean strictly the Westpacs?)
I do recall losing two jets while I was on the Ranger. We also lost a copter right off the elevator, someone failed to tie her down correctly and she rolled off the side. No one was on board though.
As to the fires, we did average at least one per sea period but most were either mattress fires started by Airwing reservists smoking in their racks and falling asleep or waste bin fires. I recall a few electrical fires; one was a fuse box and one a faulty light fixture. I nearly forgot, we had a 400mhz generator fry on us and pour out a lot of smoke, it was quickly contained and required only securing it, no actually fire fighting. I only remember one fire where we actually broke out the hoses on the Ranger. I thankfully missed our massive main space fire that I think was in 1983 and cost 7 sailors their lives.
Then we had that dark day in port when they called for the help to fly over to the Connie to help put out a massive machine space fire. Were you around for that one? I think the Connie lost 3 men in that fire and had a dozen injured. I am not sure.
I also recall one Code Blue on the Bridge I think and the 25 year old died of his heart attack.
I think just after I left, so early 1989, there was a sabotage in one of the pump rooms that led to some flooding. Do you recall that? It was relayed to me by friends still onboard at the time. I might even have a letter with the description.
Jim
Cruise = deployment (westpac), for me.
There was a helicopter lost during a vertical unrep. One of the twin blade types. Crew ok.
There are a crap ton of those little fires, yes. But I was thinking of a fire either on the flight deck, or in the main machinery spaces.
I don’t recall that, but then again, I was not on the “at sea” fire fighting or damage control teams. I was in my duty sections inport fire party. (Manning the sound powered phones.)
Ranger had a guy have a heart attack on the mess decks, as well. IIRC, heart related ailments are not that uncommon in the U.S. population as a whole.
No, sorry.
We were lucky on my ship - never had a Man Overboard for real. Plenty of Oscar drills, but never one for real. The only fatality was an apparent suicide, but there were a number of questions - not just from the family. It even ended up being profiled on Unsolved Mysteries.
As for fires - we usually had at least one a deployment. By that I mean a fire that was called away for full fire-fighting team, not something put out by the watchstander on hand. The worst was when Mr. Happy* decided to short out the main electrical plant crossconnect circuit breaker, causing it to try to repeated close with the two electrical plants some 90-120 degrees out of phase. Not only did we have a lovely electrical fire in the circuit breaker from the huge over-currents, but it brought down both engineering plants and reactors. Fire-fighting while DIW, and with only emergency lighting makes regular fire-fighting look fun.
*Mr. Happy was the nickname given to the spirit aboard ship that would ensure things like this happened. He was placated by the placement of clean chicken bones in the dead spaces in the RPCP (Reactor Plant Control Panel). The fire I mentioned happened after an over-eager LPO took out the chicken bones, because they were senseless superstition, and by gum, that sort of shit wasn’t going to happen now that it was his RPCP.
The chicken bones were replaced within 24 hours of that fire.