Postcards from Deployment
As some of you are aware, Southern Air Pirate has departed on his 6-month deployment and so postings on his site may be few/far between due to bandwidth and PC access. We’ve offered our services as an intermediary – and so this first missive (actually a combination of two) from SAP.
Haze grey and underway for about a week now, finally got into my routine of working hard, then getting off grab a luke warm shower, and finally crawling into my rack to sleep. Get up and repeat. The E-2 bubbas and we (the Prowlers) were able to get carrier qualified in a day. The F-18 guys took two days to get all their aircrew done. Even better we were able to keep all 4 of our jets up in the process, no major gripes. Unless you count our ECMO’s complaining that the box lunches sucked and the relief tubes too short. So now I am making the transit across the pond to the Med and our first port visit.
We have been flying hard and furious and just so you know SJS, the Bear hasn’t come out to play yet. It has been cool to work the roof again. I can’t really explain it, just the smell, the feelings as a Hummer goes by at the speed of a turtle, feeling your fillings rumble out from a Prowler, watching as some pilot with a Top Gun patch on his shoulder just sighs hard as he walks up to an F-18E configured as a Texaco. You get down for chow and it feels nice to get into the A/C of the ship. The feel of jet blast on my skin. I just can’t explain it well enough.
We have been hauling butt to the east, because of this we haven’t flown for a few days. I shot some photos and thought I would share it with you.
Not to worry – those of us who’ve been there know well of what you speak, and no doubt (like YHS) are more than a bit envious as we are now beached. For us, we’ll just have to live it vicariously – so keep those postcards coming! Here’s some more shots he sent along, underscoring the haze grey aspect of being underway…
The battle royale between the Air Wing and the Chief Engineer and his fresh water gang is rejoined anew…
Hummers — don’t leave home without ’em…
Reason #365 why we’d rather be at sea than behind a desk ashore…
…and this shot sent along by Dangerous Dan of SAP…
Dang…what excellent photos (and narrative)!
Can we get an explanation about “The battle royale between the Air Wing and the Chief Engineer and his fresh water gang…” Water conservation? Washing jets? Something else?
Fresh water has always been a precious commodity – whether it was carried in oaken barrels or created from evaporators onboard. A maritime environment is a harsh one that seeks to corrode whatsoever it coms in contact with – especially modern aluminum airframes. The best counter to the salt spray build up is a freshwater washdown which is a part of regularly scheduled maintenance. And that is the intersection between those that make the water (ship’s company – CHENG and his freshwater henchmen) and those that use the freshwater in copious amonts (those wastrel, good-for-nothing, slacker air-wing types).
They (CHENG & co.) think the maintainers use too much water and just play around with their precious commodity while the airwing guys, who, truth be known, are not all that fond of having to wash these big beasts (it ain’t like cleaning the ol’ car…) think CHENG and co. are somewhat, umm what’s that word – oh yeah, anal about it. As squadron maintenance department head it usually fell to me to go and assuage the hurt feelings of the freshwater gang (usually not without CAG MO) after ensuring my guys weren’t, you know, deliberately wasting the stuff to pull CHENG’s chain as it were…not that any airwing bubbas would deliberately tweak ship’s company personnel’s noses… 😎
– SJS
That’s about what I expected, SJS. SN2 was the CHENG on Monterey (CG-61) on his last sea tour and told me a little bit about the “water wars,” Hollywood showers, and the like. But I imagine it’s a LOT different on a CVN… if not ENTIRELY different.
SJS,
I think its ironic that I had dinner with SAP and his squadron the night before they got underway and I didn’t even know it. One of my friends is in the same squadron.
SJS how do I link to a Photo?
DD:
Easiest way is thusly (be sure to replace the “{ }”s on the outside with “< s ): {a href="URL of your photo"}Name of your photo{/a} and it should come out looking looking like this.
– SJS