I know there are many of you out there who served, some in the Navy, some in aviation, and some as Plane Captain as I did. I was lucky. I did not serve in a time of war. And I, perhaps like many of you who read this, are part of a subset of America who were privileged to see things most other people in the world never will. And most of us learned a lot from it. I took my lessons with me into civilian life, college, and my professional life, and they have served me well. It is one of the reasons I love my country and am grateful to it for this opportunity, and why it pains me so to see where this country is going.
I am writing it for my own archival and memory, since as I age, it is interesting to see what I can recall after 45 years. If some other aviation person reads this and I have something wrong, I sincerely hope they interject and correct me...this is how I remember it. If you don't know much about this, I hope you may find it interesting.
Hey, I thought you might be interested in this. Your question tweaked my memory, so I wrote it down...:)
Thanks for that “trip”!
LOLOL!!! i saw the title and was going to ping you, till i saw you posted it...
good stuff.
Thank-you for writing this.
Very informative!
Thanks for taking the time to post this and for me to know more about you.
Thanks for the memories shipmate. I was one of the NFOs in EA-6Bs watching you!
Thank you for your service and for sharing your memories with us.
Interesting. I was USAF, different rules.
I used to sign off on safety of flight repairs.
One time I bitched about my 48 hour shift.
Maintenance chief asked “did you sign off aircraft forms?”
I said yeah. He quoted violations of AFM’s
“do you really want to push this?
I said, No. That is Court martial stuff.
His answer was take some cat naps and fix my planes.
Very well written...I served as a Damage Controlman (DC-5) on AD-38 USS Puget Sound and AD-19 USS Yosemite 1967-1973....
Very interesting! Thanks for posting!
My wife has a cousin whose husband served in a similar capacity on the Saratoga in the early-mid 70s (been a loooong time since I heard him talk about it, which was rare, since we didn’t get together often).
Wonderful account!
Ping
Absolutely fantastic stuff. I’ve met many Navy vets who can remember the details of their jobs as if it were yesterday. My Uncle worked in the engine room of a WWII fleet boat submarine. He was at a Sub Vets function at the Requin in Pittsburgh and he and one other vet ran through the entire engine start procedure by memory.
Plane Captain here for attack squadron VA-97 from 1987-1991 who flew A-7Es during this time. Did 2- 6 month Westpac deployments aboard the USS Carl Vinson to the Indian Ocean in ‘88 and ‘90.
Thanks for this detailed write up of a lesser known job in the Navy. It brought back some old memories. Some good , some not so good. Like being blown down the deck several yards by exhaust behind the JBD when a bird turned in front me in rough weather and seas. Luckily I was able to grab a padeye before tumbling too far. And I came out unscathed and a better man for the whole experience. We also never had any major incidents, injuries or loss of life on the flight deck. Just a few near misses. In ‘88 we did lose one shipmate at sea. He alledgedly fell overboard but not from the flight deck. Don’t think they ever found him.
It also pains me to see where our country has gone since I served.
The worst part of the job for me was wash jobs. When I was on nights we washed a bird nearly every night while at sea.
Ping.
“Then for the first of three signals delivered in quick succession, after making sure nobody was standing in the way, you would extend your hands in front of you together with your palms together and horizontal to the ground, and open them with a “V” sign, joined at the ball of your hand signaling “Open your flaps.” as you watched the flaps open fully. “
I think this is the signal to open the speed brakes, not flaps. But then, I was an avionics guy, not a plane captain.
Thanks for the write up, I didn’t know that the life of a plane captain was so involved.
Those like me, most of my uncles served in WWII and almost all of them came home. There's so many jobs all our veterans did over so many battles, wars and during peacetime military service that very few of us could ever understand or appreciate without some personal experience stories from those who were there.
Thankfully my Dad did relate some amount of his experience flying 50 missions in a B-24 as a flight mechanic, another was a sailor on a destroyer in the Pacific, yet another worked in Army heavy equipment transport after D-Day, yet another lost his life during the Battle of the Bulge.
I'm going to try to contact my B.I.L. To see if he has any comments on your story from the pilots perspective. Again thanks.
Thanks for your post. I found it fascinating.
My hometown airport has an aviation museum on the grounds - Heritage In Flight. There are several static display aircraft and vehicles. One of them is an A-7E II Corsair and said aircraft has the Clansmen squadron identifier on the vertical stabilizer. Small world.
http://heritage-in-flight.org/
On the website, there is a small image of the Corsair under the heading - General Information.
BTW. If you could provide more information about the John McCain incident I would appreciate it. My late brother Steve was on the Forestall when it happened. He wasn’t involved in aviation, but I know he had a very low opinion of him.
Howdy...
EA-6B Plane Captain here...
VAQ-133...
I went to the line division and refused to leave...
Did my entire hitch there