At the Risk of Getting on Yet Another List ...

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So the page views are still way up, guess they haven't found the switch to turn the bots off yet. I'll run with it.

That opening photo has always amused me, my first thought was that it looked like a bunch of JOs¹ showing up at an NCO² keg party. Yeah, we invited them because the first sergeant told us to, unit pride and all that. What I picture them showing up to ...

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But it did remind me of a story. A short one, mind you, I'm enjoying not slaving over a hot keyboard all day. Not saying I'm lazy, but ...

Well, yes I am.

So there I was ...

I was still a fairly junior guy on Okinawa, a bit older than most of my peers and a bit younger than most of the sergeants. I was still addressed as "Airman," as I would not attain the lofty rank of "Sergeant" until a few months later. (FWIW, I didn't spend much time as an E-4 sergeant, which the USAF no longer has, most of my time as an E-4 was as a Senior Airman. It wasn't long after putting on Sergeant stripes that I became an E-5 Staff Sergeant.)

So it was after a long, hard week (might have been two) in which the 18th TFW performed very well. (So we were told, it felt like we generated a lot of sorties, it also felt like the F-4s all behaved during all those sorties. At least the aircrew were happy, and that was our bottom line.) The powers-that-be decreed that there would be a "beer bust" on the actual flight line (well, one of the maintenance hangars). We would report at such and such a time, in uniform as I recall, to undergo mandatory "fun."

Surprisingly enough, it turned out well, very well.

It was a nice sunny day, not too hot, but just right. There, parked near the hangar, was a flatbed trailer, loaded with beer. Cases stacked 12 high as I recall, lots and lots of beer. Scattered about the venue were tubs filled with ice, loaded with beer as well. The aircrew also, as I recall, were cooking food, ya know, burgers, hot dogs, mighta been some brats as well. But it looked awesome.

We commenced drinking and eating and watching the aircrews throw each other into the large tubs with lots of melting ice (by now, Okinawa being semi-tropical) with still lots of beer. I think the crews might have brought in more ice, but left some of the tubs go to mostly water, for, ya know, dunking purposes.

At one point I found myself standing next to my squadron commander, attired in his blue office uniform (light blue shirt, dark blue pants) with his flight cap on sideways. Yup, not fore and aft, as it is normally worn, en colonne as the French would say, but en ligne, athwartships if you will.

I recall finding myself in a quandary, I am inebriated, though not in any disabling way, but my squadron commander is also inebriated, very much so, had a beer in each hand and he was swaying with the non-existent breeze. As I stared at his hat, desperate to point out the uniform violation, but knowing it was neither the time, nor the place, to do so, he spoke ...

"Airman Goodrich."

"Sir?"

"You're an asshole."

"Um, so are you, Sir, I mean with all due respect ..."

"Shut up Goodrich, you asshole." Then he handed me one of the beers he was holding.

"Uh, thank you, Sir?"

"Let us drink to assholes," he spoke, "here's to us!"

So I had a beer with my squadron commander, great chap he was, wasn't nearly as much of an asshole as I'd thought.

At the end of the day, next day was a Saturday I think, we half expected to be told to report the next morning to clean up the mess. And it was a mess, empty beer cans everywhere, drunken airmen filling the tubs of water, aircrew staggering around in their flight suits offering toasts to all and sundry.

But no, the Deputy Commander of Operations and the Deputy Commander of Maintenance had decided that the officers would all turn to on Saturday morning to clear away the detritus of one of the best parties I'd ever been to.

Did we work even harder after that to maintain our 70-odd F-4 Phantoms? You betcha. I don't know whose idea the party was, but it was brilliant. Morale was sky high after that, and it stayed there for the rest of my time at Kadena.

It was a bonding experience, but nobody was there dressed like those Feds above, nope, no way. They would have stuck out like sore thumbs.

Train hard, play hard, that's the way to do it.

Trust me.

¹ Junior Officer, O-1 to O-3, USA, USMC, USAF = 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, and Captain. USN, USCG = Ensign, Lieutenant Junior Grade, and Lieutenant. I have no idea what the "Space Force" calls them (probably same as the USAF) and I don't really care.

² Non Commissioned Officer, i.e. sergeants.

Hovering Things

Spanish Navy EAV-8B Matador II Plus
PxHere

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"
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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.
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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.

One Late Night at Kadena AB, Japan ...

A very cool aircraft, the B-47.
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Bombers, something you'd think that I, a retired airman, would know a lot about. Well ...

In my 24 years on active duty, I spent the first eight working on the F-4C/D Phantom, when I wasn't in some sort of training. Training was six weeks basic (as the Air Force doesn't attack hills, beaches, or anything other than a bar with cheap drinks, that was deemed sufficient), training to work on the Weapon Control Systems on the Phantom took nearly seven months.

And when I got to Okinawa I soon learned that I didn't know Jack. A couple of very good Staff Sergeants taught me the ropes, I was probably useful on the flightline after about six months at Kadena.

So yeah, I was a fighter guy, okay, fighter-bomber guy, the Air Force doesn't really have Attack wings, though we do have one of the finest attack aircraft ever built, the A-10 Warthog (officially the Thunderbolt II, but no one calls it that).

I was part of Strategic Air Command for four years at Offutt, SAC Headquarters. But I worked on the software the Air Force used to schedule training routes and Military Operating Areas (MOAs). I did get to see the occasional bomber, we had a lot of different aircraft coming and going at Offutt, everything from the Junkers Ju-52 to the Lockheed SR-71.

The Ju-52 was privately owned, Martin Caidin I believe, and she was parked across from my office one fine morning, all decked out in full, authentic WWII colors (swastika and all). Mind you, this was back before we hid things from the faint and delicate wienies of the world. It's history bruh, get over yourself.

Anyhoo, had a B-52 land just over my head as I was driving down Fort Crook Road. Impressive sight indeed, those eight engines made a lot of noise and a lot of smoke (on take-off).

Saw a B-1 (affectionately known as the Bone, ya know B-one) do touch and goes on the field. Guy flew the beast like it was a fighter plane. Beautiful aircraft.

Saw the B-2 after I retired, back before the idiots in government bankrupted the nation and started printing money hand over fist to give to Ukraine. It flew down the parade route where I live now in Little Rhody on Independence Day. Damn thing was scary-looking and ominous as hell. Flew low she did, got kind of excited I did. Most impressive.

So there I was ...

So bombers, I've seen 'em. One lonely night on Okinawa, we heard tell that a flight of B-52s were coming in from Guam on typhoon evac. We thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to track them on our radar?"

Where we were situated was the radar calibration dock overlooking the runway. We could legally radiate from there (that's my claim, not sure how "legal" it was, but we were young ...).

Anyhoo, we went to Operate (see below) and commenced to picking up one, two, then three aircraft out a ways to the south.

The OPR inside the red circle, that stands for "Operate,"
the radar transmits while in that mode.
This is in the back seat, BTW.
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So we thought that was pretty awesome, we're actually picking up B-52s on our AN/APQ-109A radar set, Someone, might have been me, might have been someone else, thought "Hey, let's lock on to one of those beasts!"

Okay, scanning is pulse radar, pulse goes out, bounces off object, pulse comes back. Tracking is a little different, I couldn't tell you exactly how it works, that was a very long time ago, but the B-52's systems can tell very quickly if the B-52 is being tracked.

B-52s do not, I repeat, do not like being tracked by fighter aircraft radar. I can venture a guess as to why. But that night on Okinawa, our little fighter radar antenna went from a graceful sweep of the skies, to pointing like a hunting dog at the incoming B-52s, to slamming against every stop on the radar mount. I mean, it was shaking the damned plane it was slamming so hard!

We quickly shut the radar down (back to STBY - Standby) so we weren't radiating anymore, and the antenna ceased its insane dance.

Those of us there, I think there were three of us, quietly agreed that we would not speak of this to anyone else. We were young, we were green, most of our NCOs were Vietnam vets and would no doubt look at us as if we were insane for trying to track a B-52.

We also made damned sure that we hadn't damaged the radar by giving it a very thorough check (which is what we were there for in the first place). Yup, no harm, no foul.

Scary stuff!

But cool, very cool.