Hovering Things

Spanish Navy EAV-8B Matador II Plus
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Back in the day, circa 1976-78, I was a young airman assigned to the mighty 18th Tactical Fighter Wing upon the sunny Japanese isle of Okinawa. While the food at my local eating emporium (what we called the "chow hall" in the Air Force) wasn't bad, it also wasn't great. Which, for an Air Force base was odd, my general experience with Air Force dining facilities was that they were uniformly pretty good. (With the exception of Medina Annex at Lackland AFB back in '87, that food was dogshit bad.)

Now there came a day off where I was feeling a mite peckish and didn't wish to visit the Chow hall, there were other places to eat, of course, but I was in the mood for something different. Now word had come to me at some point in time that the MAC¹ terminal snack bar served a rather nice cheeseburger. So I ventured forth to discover for myself, the veracity of the intel I had received about the MAC terminal snack bar's burger.

It was a pleasant day, not as hot as an Okinawa day could be, so I presume my trip wasn't during the summer. Or if it did, it wasn't an abnormally hot day, I did eventually acclimatize myself to Okinawan weather, so it could have been summer, but I digress.

So on the walk I heard a most unusual engine sound, a jet engine mind you, didn't sound like an F-4, didn't sound like a T-39, didn't sound like a KC-135, and it certainly didn't sound like an SR-71. As I pondered what jet would make such a sound, an apparition appeared in the trees between me and the MAC terminal.

I stopped walking, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, my brain was wondering, "What the hell is that?"

Then it appeared, it was an AV-8 USMC Harrier, the first of that species I had encountered outside of picture books. It was pretty damned cool, seeing a jet aircraft, hovering there in front of the MAC terminal. Smokey sumbitch as I recall in later years.

As to that burger?

There was another time, I want to say it was 1978, which I'll explain in a moment, when I encountered a hovering thing in front of the MAC terminal on Okinawa. I was sitting on an Air Force "Blue Goose," one of these ...

USAF "Blue Goose"
Source

Now why was I on a "Blue Goose" in front of the MAC terminal in (probably) 1978. Might have been to ride out to a C-130 for a flight to Korea, but as I recall (I took that flight frequently from '77 to '78) the bird was normally parked within walking distance of the terminal.

I may have been on the bus in order to go to M-16 training, which occurred on a Marine base on Okinawa, I believe Camp Hansen. (Their rifle range is sort of in the middle of the artillery range as I recall. One could hear 105 rounds going downrange when we weren't actually firing our own weapons. Kinda cool, not everyone thought so. Some of my fellow airmen weren't as attuned to actual firearms and things which went BOOM.)

So the reason for being on that bus are lost to memory. Suffice to say, I was on a "Blue Goose" sitting on the ramp in front of the MAC terminal at Kadena AB, Okinawa. Also on that ramp was this big-ass helicopter, one of these -

Crew guides CH-47 Chinook for sling-load training support at Fort McCoy.
Source

Whilst awaiting the bus to depart, to take us to our destination, said helicopter, officially known as the "Chinook," affectionately known as the "Shithook," wound up its engines and its rotor blades began to turn.

"Oh cool," says I from the bus next to a window facing the helicopter, "I get to see a Shithook up close and personal."

Said helicopter, rotors up to speed now, begins to taxi, in the direction of the "Blue Goose" within which I am ensconced.

Now those rotor blades are rather long, I was beginning to think that those rotors were beginning to come uncomfortably close to my bus. The bus within which I am trapped, next to a window, with whirling blades of helicopter death approaching inexorably.

I do think I was close to (a) jumping off the bus, (b) soiling my trousers, (c) screaming like a little girl, or (d) all of the above, when all of a sudden, the big helicopter stops rolling forward and instead goes up into a hover, turns, then heads towards the active runway.

As the Shithook receded into the distance I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was cool and terrifying, at the same time.

Which describes parts of life in the military very well. The rest is all rather boring, one's specific branch and career field determines the relative ratio of terrifying to boring. For instance, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) in the Air Force can have a high ratio of terrifying to boring, clerks in the USAF, much lower. Marines, Army, and Navy all tend to have higher ratios compared to the USAF, unless one is engaged in operating aircraft in the USAF.

Coast Guard, holy shit, you have to go out, you don't have to come back? Damn, I'm guessing they have a very high ratio of terrifying to boring.

Anyhoo, that's my experience with hovering things. Have I ever been in a helicopter, yes, a CH-46 aboard USS Midway, have I ever flown in a helicopter? Hell no. My SWO son, The Naviguesser, assures me that it is something of an unnerving experience, especially at sea, out of sight of land.

He's been there, done that, doesn't want to do it again.

I'll take his word for it ...

¹ Military Airlift Command, now it's called something else. I should, some day, post a rant about the Air Force's nearly constant, insane, changing of names, and uniforms, some day.