Postcards from Deployment: In the Gulf

Another day underway and another note from Southern Air Pirate for your consideration. 

Steel Jaw,

    Well as of a couple of days ago we entered upon Yankee Station. That isn’t what it is actually called, but it best describes it to some other people I talk to. We made the transit through the straits with out issues. The biggest thing was a couple of their patrol boats rushed out at a couple of our escorts, our guys gave them the international sign of peace. We were also overflown by one of their P-3’s and a bunch of us wants to drop our pants and show then our naked fannies, but that was squashed our flight deck coordinator. So we all just stood near our jet and gave them the international sign of peace. You know to improve international relations. Other then that we have spent the last few days prepping for our missions. Mail call is catching up with us though I think that we now have enough food in the shop to last us until at least February. 

    I am sure that some of your readers would be interested in a "normal" day out here.

    It usually starts at around 0515 in the morning. Though I usually don’t actually roll out of the bed for about five to ten more minutes. Because nearly everyone else I live with in my berthing compartment is getting up at the same time. There are thirty people in my compartment and only ten of them work at night. So I hope to try and get up in time to head down to the mess decks for breakfast. Breakfast onboard is usually composed of some sort of meat such as sausage or corn beef hash, either potatoes or grits, and you have a choice of scrambled eggs or you can wait for a simple omelet. The fanciest they get for omelets is diced ham, diced tomatoes and diced green peppers. Once you through that then it is a choice of bread or bagels. Sometimes they have donuts out sometimes it is Danishes. After breakfast it is up to the shop and do turn over with the night check guys.

    Some days I come into work at around 0530 to 0550, mainly because days takes over at 0600. Most of the time nights is there finishing up their paperwork and sitting around rocking out to their IPods. That has been the biggest boom to creating tranquility with in the work center is the invention of the IPOD. Plenty of different tastes of music so it used to be that only one or two tapes or CD’s were in constant rotation. Now with something close to 300GB’s of music floating between nine or ten different IPOD versions I honestly think we have just about every taste in music going on. After that it is a fight to get to the computer and dash off a quick email home while tools are being checked by the supervisors. Tool control is a big thing out here and actually no matter where you are. But when compared to being at home where one can miss a sortie, out here at the front of the war; missing a sortie is a big thing. Also while tool check is going on nights gives a pass down to what they did to the day check supervisors. After all of that the supervisor heads off to maintenance meeting.

    After maintenance meeting it is off to work on the major projects of the day. It usually involves covering the flyers for the day and making sure they are good to go. Then it becomes that all day until lunch time or launch time. Work what you can on the workload and not get into anyone else way. Catch a debrief or two, decided whether it is an actual gripe or a need for further aircrew training. For example just a few days ago, we had pulled out a radar of an airplane but still sent it flying it for an functional check flight, the ECMO (electronic countermeasures officer) that operates the radar came back and said the radar was good to go and we could sign it off. They reported they could see all the various ships and found the battle group. I just smiled during that debrief session and shook my head at the amazing ability of a college education.

    After seeing the missions off it is back to the shop and then trying to finish off emails that were put off to the side, download the ship’s newspaper and the NY Times Digest for the local and world news, and paperwork. That covers everything from fixing previously signed off maintenance action forms (aka MAFs) for discrepancy, training and logging said training, routing other paperwork such as pay adjustments. From there we break it up for chow between 1100 to 1300 and then back to paperwork, other jobs on the workload, and just find a way to keep busy. If that doesn’t happen it is because we are dealing with a red monkey.

    "A Red Monkey?" What is that you ask? A red monkey is a situation where some thing major breaks on the jet that will prevent it from flying its mission and every one has to jump through a series of hoops to get the spare ready to go and to get another spare ready to go. Some times it is our stuff some time is it someone else’s equipment. Overall at the end of it all usually leads to a lecture of some sort from the maintenance controllers. Which usually feels like being spanked and the controllers are throwing their hands around like a bunch of monkeys, hence the term red monkey.

    Some how, some way night check starts to come in at the end of the day and the turn over cycle begins again. Days filters out and heads off to grab a bite to eat. At the end of dinner it is off to the berthing, read any mail that one had gotten that day. Grab a shower, brush your teeth, and then climb in to your rack and settle down listing to a CD player or MP3 player and read a book. Some of the super motivated guys stay up and head off to the gym to work off stress. Others sit in a lounge and play on their computers or portable game boxes. There is also time spent just BS-ing before heading off to bed.

Finally fall asleep and repeat the next day.

 

Oh and you asked about the IT Nazi’s supposedly it came down from someone in the flag division they were up for restricting internet access to only dot mils and dot govs.

 

Sincerely,

Southern