When I was on the Connie, the SH-3 birds were all given American Indian (excuse me, Native American) names.
One of them was called “Rain in the Face”, and at least once a Westpac it was sneakily renamed “Pain in the Ass”, by some wag with stencils, black paint, and a sense of humor.
I doubt it was the Plane Captain, but hey — who knows?
The Connie, eh? That was the first aircraft carrier I went on when I was a kid.
I lived in Yokosuka, and I used to go down to the ships every chance I got. I remember looking at these huge gray ships with those white numbers on them. I would ask the sailors going on and off the ship if they would take me aboard to look around. I tried everything, destroyers, tugboats, tankers, cruisers, submarines, and got to go on nearly all of them. It was great. The coolest thing ever was when I went on a sub and they let me look through the periscope...I took that thing and looked all around the harbor, at all the structures I knew so well, the roads, the hills and so on.
The sailors were completely cool with me. They would take me all over the ship, into the machinery rooms and such. I was an altar boy, and when I went with the chaplain to perform a service aboard the USS New Jersey, they took me down to the chow hall and said “what would you like?” I asked what I could have, and the guy said “Whatever you want!” So I said: “Jelly donughts!”
They brought me a whole plate of the sugared jelly donughts...I ate five in a row and was removed by the Chaplain before I could finish the rest...:)
Anyway, I remember going down to the pier and seeing the USS Constellation there...as big as a city block. The planes all had their tails sticking out over the side of the deck, like too many birds trying to sit on the edge of a shed that was too small.
I got a guy to take me aboard, up to the flight deck. It was the closest I had ever got to one of these planes I had been obsessed with as a model builder. Plus, I think I drew the things incessantly...:) So it was really cool to actually sit in a cockpit, look down the intake, look in the wheel wells and such. I remember sitting in the cockpit and thinking “I have to remember this perfectly so I know how to paint the cockpits on my models...”
When I lived in Subic Bay a few years later, I would go down to Cubi Point and just walk out on the tarmac to look at the planes. Just amazing. Eventually, a sailor would drive over in a jeep and tell me to keep away from the planes, but it was remarkably low key.
I did get busted for abject stupidity one time, though. The runway at Cubi Point extends like a finger into the water, with the Officer’s Beach on one side of the runway, and the Enlisted Beach on the other. I just wanted to go to the other one, and didn’t want to walk a damn mile or two just to follow the road out and around the end.
So I cut across the runway, walked right by all the signs. I stopped on the way to investigate the old bare carcass of a Hudson, stripped of everything, used for who knew what or why it was there...as I was halfway across the runway, a jeep with a flag came flying out, the two guys grabbed me by my arms and hustled me into the jeep. We went back to the control tower, and they grilled me about who I was, what was my phone number. I gave them a false name and number, and when they called it and nobody was home, they let me go. (My dad was the XO on the base at the time, and I would have got screwed if he had to come over to pick me up.) I am not proud of it, I wasn’t a bad kid (I don’t think) just brainless for the most part.
I think my parents were always worried about me, but not because they thought I would get into trouble with the law. I was accident prone, and wasn’t thinking too many steps ahead in many cases.