Got to hand it to you guys with airplane cleanliness. I worked ordnance on the Marine F4-B at RVN airbases for the first 2/3 of my tour. Now and then a navy F4 would divert to Da Nang or Chu Lai.
Usually a much more new bird, like a J model or something, but pristine. We would all ooh and aah at the things, next to our grungy jets. Never knew you guys washed them. Was all we could do to keep them loaded with ordnance. And they were always flying.
LOL, thank you for your service, FRiend, and Welcome Home!
Gaah. Of all the tasks disliked by anyone I knew, washing planes was the suckiest. Well, maybe not as sucky as removing a throttle cable on an A-7, but pretty bad.
Ashore, it was easier because you had water. But trying to clean the accumulated grime and dirt mixed with corrosion, dried hydraulic fluid and oil from around all those dozens of bent tubes was nearly nauseatingly impossible. I liken it to scraping and painting the old, complicated wooden trim you find under the roof lines of some old house. The most unrewarding job ever.
Of course, we would go to the fuel petcocks in the wheel well, and dump a bunch of JP-4 into the tin buckets.
We would walk over and toss the buckets of fuel into the wing roots and wheel wells, where we would let it percolate for a few minutes. It did get them clean, but...all that jet fuel, running into the drains.
That does make me an environment criminal. But I was a young guy. Didn’t care.
Then, I would go back to the barracks in those olive green coveralls, and when I stripped them off, all around my neck, collarbone, waist where the tool belt was, and my crotch were all beet red, raw from the jet fuel you just ended up bathing in.
I know. We were stupid. But there you are.