Those Were the Days My Friend...

Jay "Jaybird" Riedel (R) being congratulated by Dick "Batman" Swope (C) Sq Ops Officer
and Mike "Smiley" Deloney after landing and reaching 4000 flying hours milestone November 2, 1979.
(Source)

Juvat's lovely post on Monday, dealing with "special" weapons and Operational Readiness Inspections brought back a couple of memories of that very same ORI juvat mentioned. Whilst he was observing his flight lead threaten the very life of an inspector (a sight I would have paid good money to see), Your Humble Scribe was pursuing less glamorous things. Such as calibrating the radar on one of the mighty warbirds that juvat and his ilk would fling into the sky on a daily basis. While wearing full chemical warfare gear. Or "MOPP" gear as the young'uns call it these days.

Normally we just had to wear the gas mask, steel pot (helmet of WWII vintage), and a flak vest. The latter looked rather substantial and was (I am told) stuffed with layers of cardboard. Enough layers (I am told) which should prove sufficient to stop shrapnel (yes, I know what that means, I'm going with the vernacular here) and other small bits of stuff propelled hither and yon by explosive means. Not that I would like to test the theory of the effectiveness of those vests. One day we even had the opportunity to wear the mask, vest, and helmet for a full eight hours straight, and yes, that sucked, thank you for asking.

Yup, same vest, same gas mask carrier strapped to the left hip and the same steel pot.
Minus the cool helmet cover and the M-16, that's what we wore for the ORI.
(Source)

There are three incidents that I recall from that ORI, but before I relate those I will say this. The ORI I went through at Kunsan was not my first, nor my last. However, I recall that the ORIs at Kadena entailed much mopping of floors, much cleaning of extraneous gear, and very little actual aircraft maintenance. The ORIs at Kadena made me wonder just what sort of Air Force I had joined. We usually had advanced notice of the inspection and had plenty of time to prepare.

At Kunsan, in the Mighty Wolf Pack, it was a different story. From the first day I arrived until the day I left, it was obvious to me that the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing took war a little more seriously than my old outfit on Okinawa. I suppose when you don't have an ocean between you and the bad guys, Okinawa is an island, and when you are not much in the way of flying time from the NORKS, it tends to get your attention.

Ask me someday about the 12 hour night shift I pulled in the shop over a weekend and heard artillery banging away, not far from where I sat. Or the night we watched outgoing tracer fire from the South Korean positions on the waterfront (the base is on the Yellow Sea) as some poor fisherman (or perhaps a sneaky NORK pretending to be a fisherman) strayed a bit too close to the coast.

The Koreans are serious about that sort of thing.

At any rate, ORIs were usually a surprise, at least to us down in the squadrons.

Anyhoo. The three incidents, in no particular order because it was a Hell of a long time ago.

Incident the 1st: My buddy Tank and I were strolling from the off base bus stop down to our shop. It was a bit of a haul but the buses were making themselves scarce that day so we decided to hoof it.

Before we reached the large open area between the living quarters and the operations area of the base, the damned air raid siren went off. Damn. Donning our gas masks first, we then ran to the nearest barracks, Where we waited for perhaps 45 minutes while the base played air raid. Yes, when we finally arrived at the shop, our boss, one TSgt Skip Sipes kindly inquired...

"Just where have you two knuckleheads been?

We explained about air raids and ducking for cover and the donning of gas masks just for the fun that was in it. Our words fell on uncaring ears for there were radars to be calibrated and aircraft components to be checked and aligned and "this damned exercise" had cost our dear boss quite enough "fire trucking time." Off to the hangar we went, suitably chastised and vowing to low crawl down to the shop the next time rather than incur Skip's wrath. (Magnificent to behold.)

Incident the 2nd: We were ensconced in the offices of our Radar Calibration hangar, doing paperwork in preparation for sending our latest jet back out to the line where the zipper-suited sun gods could once again break it, er, fly it, when wouldn't you know it, the damned air raid siren went off.

We shut the lights off, it was still fairly light out, and continued our paperwork. That's when the phone rang. Only two people ever called us, Skip (woe betide the airman who didn't answer the phone if Skip called, the shop was a scant fifty yards from the hangar and Skip could sense whether or not we had power on the jet) or someone at Job Control.

Those latter chaps one could sometimes ignore, they would assume that we were on the jet, but as Ops was panting at the leash to get the jet we had back, and we had said it was close to complete, I decided to answer the phone.

Some last minute inspiration caused me to muffle my voice with my hand to simulate wearing a gas mask. Which caused the chap on the other end (a Job Control type) to misunderstand damned near every other word I said. Which caused Ed, my partner in crime, to giggle hysterically. Which also set me off.

"What's the status of that jet?" a non-muffled voice queried, which made me realize he wasn't wearing his mask, the bastard, wasn't even pretending. I answered to the effect of...

"Mumble, jet, mumble, buttoned up, mumble mumble, come and, mumble mumble, 30 minutes."

"What? Ready in 30 minutes? I can't understand you."

"Mumble, jet, mumble, buttoned up, mumble mumble, come and, mumble mumble, 30 minutes."

"Damn it, take your damned mask off and talk to me!"

"Mumble, a, mumble, violation, mumble mumble, , mumble mumble, could die."

"Damn it! Can we have the jet or not?!?!"

"YES!"

Yeah, that was fun.

Incident the 3rd: We're working on another jet, might have been a couple of days later, and Skip is at the hangar helping us with a rather knotty problem. As we're looking at schematics and trying to figure out why the damned Target Intercept Computer won't compute target intercepts (like it's supposed to, making it as useful as a 2nd lieutenant), when an inspector guy rolls up in a vehicle at the front of the hangar.

"You men are all dead, this hangar has been destroyed in an air raid."

As Ed and I start to head back to the office, might as well be dead sitting down, Skip yells out, "Not so fast you two, we need to figure this shit out!"

At which point the inspector said, to Skip, "I just told you sergeant, you and your men are dead, this hangar is destroyed, this aircraft is destroyed, you can't work on it, report to the NCO Club immediately!"

Once again, Ed and I prepared to head for the Club, might as well be dead sitting down AND drinking a beer.

"You two gott-damned freeze, Ed go get the other tech order in the office."

Inspector: "Sergeant, you're not paying attention!"

Skip, walking over to get in the inspector's face, "Sir, I am fire trucking dead, I am one angry fire trucking corpse and the fire trucking colonel wants this fire trucking jet as soon as fire trucking possible. So unless you want to explain to him that the fire trucking jet is destroyed and that we're all dead, get the fire truck out of my hangar. This is an illusion to you, we're three fire trucking dead men working on a destroyed fire trucking plane in a destroyed fire trucking hangar, this is the fire trucking afterlife, to you it's just burning fire trucking wreckage. QUESTIONS?"

The inspector just kind of looked at Skip for a second, shook his head, then drove off. Now I'm quite sure that Skip caught holy, unshirted Hell from somebody for that little incident, but it wasn't from our squadron commander or the deputy commanders for maintenance and for operations (DCM and DCO) both of said worthies being colonels of the full bird variety, both of whom had probably seen real war at some point in their careers.

Good old Skip, a good man, a good comrade.

But that's what I remember from that ORI. Nobody threatening to shoot an inspector, but I swear Skip probably could've scared that one to death had he the lack of common sense to stick around.

And yes, fire trucking Ops got their fire trucking jet back in record fire trucking time.

I was there.