Don, I thought of your story during today's Father's Day expedition to the National Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center:

F-8 Crusader


Open wide..

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

They're also under some level of classification still, if I remember correctly.

They're also under some level of classification still, if I remember correctly.

I rather doubt it. I've seen Norden bombsights on full display at museums and in privately owned WWII aircraft such as Beech AT-11 trainers. There are webpages dedicated to the Norden bombsight.

The Norden bombsight was a marvel of it's day. It was a gyro-stabilized sight connected to the plane's autopilot. They were pretty accurate for the time but "putting a bomb in a pickel barrel from 20,000 feet" was a gross exaggeration. I've seen in Air Force briefings that the circular error probable (CEP) of daylight bombing in WWII under combat conditions was about 2300 feet.

The briefing indicated that to guarantee two bombs would directly impact a specific target, you needed a force of 1000 bombers each dropping 9 bombs. Each of those bombers carried a crew of 9-10 men and the force required many escort bombers. In all, some 10,000 or more aircrew were required to execute that mission. Today, a single B-1B, B-2A, B-52H (and fighters like the F-18 and F-15E) can hit that target with two JDAMS bombs and then go on to hit other targets until their bombs run out. When the Small Diameter Bombs enter service, they'll be able to do that from up to 50 miles from the target and carry about twice as many bombs as they can today.

I've been telling my son (Cdr, USNR) about this thread, as he's busy building the next generation bombardier/navigator simulators and doesn't have time for recreational web surfing. I have told him about some of BigDon's posts his reaction was " the first thing I learned on a carrier was to get out of the aircraft and off the flight deck as fast as possible."

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"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards." Philip K. Dick
No matter how strong, or brave, or pure of heart you may be; sometimes the dragon wins!

Graybeard,

You see a lot of that because they are ordered to get off the deck as soon as possible. A mid-level oficer will often come up and grasp a lapel or tie and lead them off like a child. sort of funny to watch. Multi-million dollar investment gawking around around in traffic is a risk not worth taking. I agreed even back then, but I still made fun of them.

More than once I've seen a newbie aircrewman stand amazed at the pagentry of the whole recovery cycle and the area just forward of the island is a very busy and dangerous place full of sucking intakes and those gawdawful invisable exhausts blasting out of a stationary aircraft that fool you. Walking into that, close to the exhaust port itself, is as rude as getting hit by a car on a residential street.

I sadly speak from experiance. It took twice. The first time I was on my second or third "work-up" ended up with what we called a "Close Encounters" sun tan and in a pile of fuel hoses more than a hundred feet away. I distinctly remember being fully upright, but upside down, for most of the journey. There were a lot worse things I could have landed in. (I could have sworn that bird wasn't turning*) but at least I didn't get wet! I swore then and there that that was never happening again!

The second time I got blown down hard.

Really freaking hard. The first time the engine was at a low setting and I was fairly distant. It was early in the cycle and there was a lot of empty flightdeck to play "Peter Pan meets Godzilla" in. What was scarier than usual for the forward area was the fact that aft, you usually got blown down in a direction lengthwise to the flightdeck which gave you a bit of a "cushion" between you and an 80 foot drop into the ocean.

Up forward, after landing, the planes park in rows, nose toward the centerline of the ship and parked tail over deck, at least the first rows. The pilots often sit and get their crap together with the engines idling so they have power to use their comm gear or if they have to hot switch aircrews

The second time was a Tomcat I ran past at about arm's length and the engine was at a high idle. When my brain was able to process information other than, "this sucks!" again, I was well away from my original starting position. I was burnt, rolled and beat up. Helmit was still fastened but down around my neck. One pant leg was rolled up around my thigh and strangling the boys...I swore then and there that that was never "bleeping" happening again!

Throwing a shoulder tackle into somebody walking fast looking the other way is a very kind thing to do as you can't yell a warning and you HAVE to stop them. I was saved by this method two more times, once by a purple shirt and once by a A-6 maintanence guy.

AND I got to jack up a very distracted officer who wasn't aircrew OR flightdeck and looking the wrong way for danger. I noticed him because he was wearing his flightdeck gear wrong, with an obviously bladderless lifevest. Sort of screams newbie don't you know.

He was running a message from the island to an aircrew up forward by the bow cats and had no clue what he was doing. I'm sure he was a good officer but dang! What confidentail stuff needed him to do that I wonder to this day. I handed him off to some locals who hand led him to where he had to go.

Not an insult, you have to do that for the occassional non-flight deck type who has to navigate the deck during operations. And you don't take their hand, but hold their collar or shoulder. Verbal communication is impossible sometimes and you don't have time to mime stuff and hope he gets it. You can stop them short easier. Because if he gets killed it looks really bad for you for a long time.

That's the running joke that wasn't a joke on newbie watching. A newbie who is supposed to be up on the flightdeck is assigned to a not-new guy and is/was called his "shadow" because that's where you stay while the senior guy tries to do his job, your job and keep you both alive. When I was a newb I was the shadow of then AQ3 Armaunde "Swaino" Swain, a caujun from New Orleans.

Almost ended up being injested my very first day on the flightdeck. Long story. ****ed off Swaino no end. After I was not going to die a horrible death he grabbed me by the collars and rattled me around for a bit bellowing "Do you know how bad it would have looked if you had gotten killed!"

Note to some others. He wasn't being cold blooded. We were already friends. This is said as a half joke to relieve the adreline from a close encounter with death. I say half joke because I've seen two men whose shadows were killed and it sucked to be them. It was ...well they sort of droop, pale out and fade away is the best way to discribe it.




*In Nav-speak an aircraft is said to be "turning" if its engines are running. If it's actually turning as in changing facing or direction on the flightdeck or runway, it's said to be "spinning"

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Ah comshaw! It's much more than that my friend! One of those noun/verb things. Comes from the phrase "community sharing". Not so much Black Market as McHales Navy. An underground economy if you will.

If you belong to a well integrated squadron of guys who trusted each other you can get elaborate to the point where even the senior enlisted get jaw dropping stunned at the deals pulled off. But there were rules that had to be abidded by when others were watching.

Comshaw can get you things money or rank can't. Comshaw as trade works on an availability scale.

This deserves a better write up than I have time for a the moment. Got to do my parent's yard. I bought two neon magenta perenial mounding petunias. The veining in the petals is positively metallic in the sunlight. I'm trying to decide where I want to look at them for the next couple of years. I'm thinking maybe going the countainer route but that leaves them vulnerable to drying out if I get sick, as my brothers don't seem to know what a hose is for. Ground planted flowers survive dry spells a bit better but aren't nearly as mobile.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Suspense, suspense....Comshaw, comshaw.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

Now comshaw.

Your "community sharing" of Navy property. Yes, you can keep it seperate from thievery which is the stealing of money, personal property of any kind or any project big enough to land you in Levenworth. Has to be straight up barter, cash crosses immediately into dangerous ground.

It also has to benefit more than just yourself. You have to share with at least one other. Preying on your own squadron is sooner or later found out and frowned upon by all. Unless there is a specific war between shops. Though these should be dampened and then squelched because they are bad for squadron unity, which is overall bad. Inter-squadron, on the other hand promotes better security. Maintain your watchs like you are supposed to and this can't happen. (Except to the Airforce, we did a Hogan's Heroes to them once or twice.)

Marines were off limits. Not only not worth the trouble, but if you scratch their backs often enough you and your guys get treated...not harshly when you have to do brig time. They treat you harshly because your rule abiding shipmates are working for a living. You have an 18 hour work day, every day. You're constantly active with some serious ten-hut! Jarheads* standing right there making sure you are constantly active. This is mainly refering to at-sea time BTW. On base its more human-like, but still non-fun. Some young men can't handle the work load sometimes and just try a sit down. More on that later...

The Army we left alone basically from lack of opportunity.

A newbie isn't really drawn into the comshaw chain until after he has been overseas and learns to barter. Until then he just benefits from his elders largesse, depending on fitness and personality. The time also allows you to gauge the person's proper place in the organization, if at all. Some do get in early though. But even the guys not picked for the "A" team still got icecream because they cover for you.

Now there was one bright young man who was once forced by circumstance to become a coffee mess kingpen. As part of being onboard ship the squadrons augment the ship's company in routine ship functions that are more labor intensive than usual.

*We* through a wonderful twist of fate were given charge of distributing the the coffee ration to the rest of the CAG. A wonderous day indeed for the thoughtful man.

Now the Coffee Mess is sacred.

You cannot; steal, extort, thumb the scale, boondoggle, hornswoggle, blindside, slight of hand, or pilfer assigned goods. Your life might depend on somebody else being awake at the wheel.

But you can do this.

Coffee is assigned by the amount of men you have and what you order. All men. And God bless us, we are a varied nation of people. Including in our number Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. And here is how we played it like a fish. For those who have to be told, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses don't drink coffee. And there is your wiggle room. Nothing in the rules says they can't order coffee. Just drink it.

The previous holder of the position had no imagination or tact. But was publically thrown out by the ship's storekeeper for not maintaining the paperwork properly and the storekeeper pounded home the point that ration chits had to be thoroughly inspected and nothing not checked was to be given out. Straight forward enough. But some people aren't good at paperwork. Well now, life also flourishes in an intelligence gradient. (It was how I got to reproduce.)

Now the "coffee mess" includes all the wonderous things one can mix with hot water to come up with a tasty beverage. Teas, hot chocolate, bouillon plus all the side stuff you need. Sugar, a big one and number two on the hit parade, non-dairy creamer, those skinny red stir sticks.

The show begins with:

"Oh, yeah, five boxes of creamer please."

"I'm sorry I can't give you any. You didn't check the little box next to creamer, though I see you wrote down how many you needed."

The ration chit is stamped "approved" earlier in the process. *I* don't know he didn't pencil whip that in there while waiting in line. Tsk. Tsk. Some people are so conniving.

"What! You can't be serious! My Chief will kill me! I need that creamer!"

Now here is where I become a swell guy.

"Wait! Don't panic! We can work this out!" Knowing full well they are doing the same thing with their abstaining religeous as well.

"Two pounds of sugar and three pounds of coffee and the creamer is yours"

"Oh thanks man! You saved my butt!"

And thereby the separate inventory and economy begins. If one is sitting amid stacks of this stuff like in a scene out of MASH, only aboard ship, and at the end of the evolution all the floor space is clear, the paperwork jibes and all the little squidlies are giddy with their packages, then nobody cares if I finaggled a small initial stake into 50 pounds of coffee, 120 pounds of sugar, and enough bouillon to reconstitute a cow on top of my shop's duely alloted ration. These go into the stock of future trade items.

BigDon's Rule Of Comshaw One: If you are near where Stuart and M live, and they have to send back to where they make the damn item you need, look for a closer one first.

BigDon's Rule Of ComShaw Two: If you can't find a "loose" one, trade for it.

BigDon's Rule Of Comshaw Tha-rhee: When screwing somebody out of their shoes, smile, be respectful and make sure you are both happy with the deal.

Obviously, this needs an illustration.

The wiring and schematics of the airplanes are kept on heavy guage aluminum bound binders some one by four feet called "pubs" short for publications. Don't open like books, but the other way. They get banged around so much that they need to be metal bound as even the metal binding doesn't last a whole cruise and needs to be replaced.

So when the request chit for a four by eight sheet of aluminum came back "2 weeks" we had to seek other sources. We weren't airframes or engine mechs who got first dibs on such things.

So suddenly I was asked to do an "A"-team assignment. "Go swipe a sheet of aluminum from airframes" This is all done E-5 on down. Above that rank and it gets sort of like misuse of authority as opposed to creative living. We were at sea, under red light and it was 11 PM. I was told I had til one.

Now this wasn't "our" airframes department. This was AIMD. Aviation Intermediate Maintenance Department or Depot, memory is being fickle tonight. If the bad guys blow a big hole in your wing and you still get home, these are the guys who make you a new one.

They have a lot of raw material, most under lock down, but they make mistakes. Most of their excess basic stock was kept under lock and chain in the forward part of hanger bay one. To prevent it from becoming a projectile hazard you see.

Now I was nervous and a newb. I was BAD at this. I wasn't afraid, just awkward. When all of a sudden I heard the voice of one of our senior E-6's Sam A., who I mentioned earlier in the thread, call out load, "What are you looking to steal, (my last name)!"

He continued, "Jesus you're bad at this I could see all the way across the hangerbay you were looking to steal something. What is it you need?"

And since I was caught I bluntly and completely told him what I was up to and he laughed out loud in that gravel voice of his and said, "Tell you what, go stand in line for midrats for me, take the food to my shop then come back here to that side passage."

I did as I was told and lo and behold! There was a four by eight sheet of aluminum where I was told to pick it up! Woo hoo, with an hour to spare!

So I drag my prize back to the shop, to the delight and amazement of those who needed it and was promptly handed a ruler, scribe and hacksaw and told to get busy. There was a time when I was adept at such things. I fully expected to kick this out in little under two hours, (hack saw, not bandsaw)

But it didn't want to cooperate. First I had a hell of a time getting a scribe line drawn then I messed up and broke a hacksaw blade like a newb, then another and then the E-5's started getting impatient with me saying they thought I worked better than that and I'm getting ****ed off because I can work with tools better than that.

When Chuck the old WWII vet who worked for NAESU, and apparently couldn't sleep, walked in and said, "Where you get the sheet titanium?"

"Say what?"

"See that slight gold sheen?"

"I thought it was anodized"

"And you can't scribe it or cut it with a hacksaw" (I did get a bit a start after a bit of work)

"Yes"

"That's titanium"

I did notice it was wonderfully light for what I thought it was.

Chuck suggested I take it down to AIMD and have them cut it for me. Obviously they should have the equipment to do so. BUT that little bit chichanery required more stones than I packed at the time and the job fell to the guys for New York City and LA.

THEY bartered the sheet of titanium BACK to AIMD claiming a supply error and were given precut panels of heavy guage aircraft aluminum for ALL our pubs. And everybody was happy.

The punchline? I went to the wrong passageway. Sam confronted me later and wondered why I didn't pick up my end of the deal.

Now conshaw can also be extorsion. One time a particular bomber squadron left a confidential, multi-million dollar piece of test equipment unsecured. Went home for the night and just left in closed, but out in the weather. To admit to authority they "lost" it is a serious loss of face. Especially when all it took for its return was 5 cases of beer, 8 cases of coca-cola, four cases of those small ice cream cups, 80 pounds of art magazines, a dozen educational films and a pig. At the end of a loooong supply line no less.

It was that sensitive. The way we saw it was "we" had the clearance for it, who better to hold it hostage? Plus it was unlikely to happen again after this and nobody above E-3 lost their job.

Pilots are more expensive to get back, but that's another story. This one true.





*So named because their haircuts look like the lids on the jars of coldcream from back in the forties, according to my Dad. Who also called them Jarheads. He loved them too, several having saved him from being eaten alive by sharks. Normal mundane Navy stuff, for later.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Sheesh, I am giggling my rear off. Titanium you said.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

I was going to take you to task for implying that the southern tip of Africa was like being on another planet, but then I remembered: Anything I post appears on BAUT 25 minutes after I post it. And that's at 2/3c^*! Things take a long time to get here (back in the 80's, TV shows took up to a decade). Also, everything s_l_o_w_s d_o_w_n, in Africa, delaying delivery to or from us even more.

What do they use titanium for? I was under the impression that only really exotic planes that never fly from carriers (think SR-71) used much titanium, but clearly there's a gaping hole in my education here. Or is it used for the ship itself?

And you say the titanium was observably lighter than aluminium? That's another new thing I've learned today, as I'd kinda assumed that the difference was quite slight. I love BAUT! It reminds you that you're never to old to learn.

I believe it's bad luck to use this term if you're not Marine yourself, or at least firm friends with a bunch of them. Not "bad luck" like "breaking a mirror" bad luck, more like "having your behind kicked by Navy-issue boots" bad luck.

And as usual, your stories are great fun in their own right, as well providing a fascinating insight into how things really work in the military. (As opposed to what naive senior officers actually believe to be happening. )

As for your descriptions of a working day "on the deck": I can't imagine a worse place for me to work (and I've been 2,000 metres underground, so I have some dangerous places to compare it to.)

If I somehow didn't flunk the psych eval, I would last about 10 minutes in that environment. You see, I am both clumsy, and absent-minded. I can easily see myself wandering, deep in thought, directly into the jet blast of an F18. The best one could hope for is that I didn't take someone with me when I finally bought it!

Of course, the South Africa navy's biggest warships are a couple of frigates. To own even a small destroyer is just a dream for our naval personnel. All three of them would give their right arms for a chance to serve on an actual carrier.

^*) 2/3c is the speed of an electrical impulse in a cable, IIRC. Light-speed comms requires actual EM waves, but since those have to be bounced off satellites for anything long-range, it's even slower.

Stuart, each engine on a Tomcat is encased in two tons of titanium armor three inchs thick. Keeps all the parts together when a turbine gives up the ghost.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I've seen main mount explosions blow pieces of the hub through that armor.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I'd say more but I'm up way past my bedtime., Its quarter to 5 am local and I was up at 8 am yesterday. It's bedtime for bonzo

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I believe it's bad luck to use this term if you're not Marine yourself, or at least firm friends with a bunch of them. Not "bad luck" like "breaking a mirror" bad luck, more like "having your behind kicked by Navy-issue boots" bad luck.

As a former paratrooper, I share a certain similarity with Marines. Both paratroopers and Marines go in with mostly the equipment on their backs and, as mentioned in "Band of Brothers", "Son, we're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded."

When I went through satellite operations training, one of my instructors was a former Marine and a Vietnam vet. He wasn't a big guy was he was very proud of being a Marine (with good cause). While in-country, he'd lost an argument with a hand grenade (presumably not one of our own) but survived.

Now, Marines and paratroopers like to rag on one another. It's just the way we are. One day, I told him that "I tried to enlist in the Marines after high school but couldn't pass the physical."

My instructor perked up and smiled until I said, "Yeah, I couldn't get my head in the jar."

He deflated like a toy balloon. Priceless.

Mr. Jacks, the last moving company I worked for, one of the drivers was a three tour Marine with the Third Herd back in 'Nam. He's a 53 year old black man who's been a prize fighter since he was 18. Shows up everyday pressed, creased and shined.

When you tell a Marine joke around him you, "have to hold your mouth a certain way".

Edit to add: 56 now.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

One of the fun things about working where I do is that everyone but two people in my office is a veteran (and one of those is married to a retired Air Force enlisted man). We have every branch represented but the Coast Guard (and it'd be great to add a Coastie to the roster). Of course, that leads to a lot of ribbing and jokes. They're all good natured and just about all of them are true. As we said in the Army, "**** them if they can't take a joke."

I've worked with a lot of civilians before and most of them were boring. Living in a town surrounded with military installations (Air Force Academy, Cheyenne Mountain, Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, and Schrieve AFB) and working for a defense contractor gives me the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people. I've met a lot of WWII vets ranging from a guy who at Bastone with the 101st to a Tuskegee Airman to fighter and bomber pilots. Back in 1988, I was up at the Air Force Academy for a graduation. There were a bunch of old people running around wearing AFEES nametags. I didn't give them any thought because I thought AFEES stood for Armed Forces Exchange Service (the folks who run the base exchanges). I later found out they were the Armed Forces Escape and Evasion Society. They were people who had been trapped behind enemy lines (usually after being shot down) and managed to evade capture all the way back to friendly territory. I was heartbroken that I didn't find out in time to listen to them for a few hours. The things I could've learned! Likewise, I missed meeting British legend Douglas Bader by one day back in 1980. He came and visited the Ramstein Aero Club (I was a member) and I didn't find out about it until the next day. Bader died a year or so later. To blazes with rock muscians and movie stars - I'd much rather meet and learn from people like him any day.