Plus ça change…

(1988)

plus c’est la même chose

(2008) (photo of VAW-126 by way of Southern Air Pirate)

…for the uninitiated – those would be the back-ends of the E-2C, then and now.

Oh, and Lex — per your query:

subfamily: Talpinae;
tribe: talpini;
genus: talpa; Talpa caeca;
sub-genus: hummerus

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6 Comments

  1. So, how do they get their eyes ready for daylight at the end of the hop? Shine flashlights in each other’s faces? 🙂

  2. Nope — flashlights are reserved for, uh, training aids (which, BTW, explains Skippy’s condiiton…). We actually get to drop the flaps and peer out of the miniscule portholes the thoughtful folks at the ironworks provided so we can grasp a glimpse of sea/sky right before we trap – just to make sure they are in the right position. Remind me to relate the story sometime about the USAF AWCS exchange guy who claimed he could tell our height by the size of the bubbles in the wake…damn near caused a riot in the RR one time. 😯
    -SJS

  3. How did you ever do it… with light pens? It seems so… primitive. I did get a kick looking over Lex’s post… seems he has quite the following of Hummer guys.

  4. Dutch — light pens are a crutch — as are track balls… Real moles can eyeball it all… actually, because of a batch of bad light pens I did all my initial AIC quals using a grease pencil and raw video.
    – SJS

  5. I flew with some really hard flashlight thumpers………………Thank God for the helmet!

    Re Light Pens-I hate track balls- even now. A good guy with a light pen can work circles around someone doing the same thing with a track ball. Besides-Radar is a crutch anyway. Real E-2 NFO’s know where the bogies are in their Karma. Adn for the ABCCC mission all that is needed is a copy of the ATO, a map, and good strong pad of paper and a grease pen.

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