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To: Arrowhead1952

I think it’s more me than a lot of you guys. I do have a hard time falling asleep....and EVERYthing wakes me up!


88 posted on 09/02/2014 7:35:27 PM PDT by luvie (All my heroes wear camos! Thank you David, Michael, Chris Txradioguy, JJ, CMS, & ALL Vets, too!l)
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To: LUV W

I need to get to bed soon. I have yard work to get done tomorrow and want to be finished early.


106 posted on 09/02/2014 7:50:56 PM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (Guns are like parachutes. If you need one and don't have one, you'll probably never need one again.)
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To: LUV W

When I was in the USN, I slept in a berth RIGHT under the wires on a carrier, for two deployments.

I also worked night shift on one of them. And on one of those cruises, I was in the top bunk of a triple bunk, with the flight deck about three or four feet above me.

I could hear it all day long, in my sleep, as the planes would come in to land:

The whine of the approaching engine, throttled back usually, being goosed up and down getting closer, and closer. Then...WHAM! The plane would hit the deck and the whole place would shake. The arresting wires would screech, as they let out, and the whining engine turned into a full-throated roar as the pilot shoved the throttles to military. Then, abruptly, the sound would stop, followed by the slithering sound of the thick, metal cable being retracted back into place, ending with the soft, metallic “click...click...click” as it straightened out on top of the metal bands that looked like leaf springs from a truck whose purpose was to elevate the cable off the deck so the tail hook could more easily snag it.

Three little metallic clicks, and the process would begin again. I knew all the planes by sound. The high, sharp whistling engine of an A-6 Intruder. The loud sound of the F-14 Tomcats with their two TF-30 engines. The pedestrian sounding Corsair, and the hot sounding Crusader. But most of all, the big E-2 Hawkeyes whose beating propellers you felt rather than heard, and from much further off.

Yeah. I learned to sleep through it, but even doing it, I heard it all, all the time.


136 posted on 09/02/2014 8:20:27 PM PDT by rlmorel ("Every kid worth his salt has one scar from a flaming marshmallow, and a story to go along with it.")
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