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Still compared to ops in my time that was a low number. He was in a squadron out of Oceania and worked on the planes on board avionics best I remember.

We were on alert in 1979 for Iran. We were lucky and JFK got the short straw and had to make the trip down and around to the PG. Following the Six Day War no carriers used the Suez until 1981. Carriers back then going to the PG wasn't ideal because the air conditioning plants {chillers} couldn't keep up with the heat load. That in turn messed up the electronics. They had to eventually upgrade the east coast carriers cooling capacity to handle it. We got our upgrade in 1980.

Yep. At that time, I was an engineroom nuke. With the carriers, even with the upgrades, I think they still had to direct as much as possible to the electronics. 2nd deck and my aft berthing space were air conditioned down to 90-ish F when we were in the Persian Gulf. Outside daytime temp was right around 120F and it was 130-135F in the engine room. It wasn't just the air temperature that was a killer. When the ocean water temp is 85-90 F, nothing is getting cooled like it should, everything is pushing the redline temps, and you're cleaning seawater filters a lot more often.

One trick I learned from the old guys is to put on your jacket for awhile when you come back to berthing from the engine room. Guys look at you like you're nuts because you're putting on your jacket in a space that's 90 degrees. But that temperature is 40-45 F cooler than the engineroom, that's why so many guys were getting sick. It's a temperature shock to your body and you need to do something to slow that down. Doing that really worked for me. (Maybe it was psychological, it works if you think it works.)

It's also amazing that you get used to those kind of temperatures. We were in the gulf for 68 days straight, no port visits, which sucked (this is where the submarine guys pipe up to call me a whiner, I opened myself up, fire away). When we went back through the Suez, it was winter in the eastern med (early November). The temperature in berthing was a perfect 72 F and I was freezing my butt off! I was sleeping in sweatpants & sweatshirt and had to go dig out my blanket again. Freakin' weird.