It's jazz baby

I posted the below in comments of this post by Lex about aircraft ground crew. I respect the humility in his words -- especially coming from a single seat fighter jock. That appreciation and respect shown by Lex for maintainers wasn't always present in guys I supported in the fleet. More than a few come to mind that prolly are best left unnamed.

One squadron skipper in particular comes to mind. He changed his nametag to "God" at one point and expected to be addressed as such in the squadron spaces back at Miramar (Hanger 6 if you care to know). Looking back, north of 50 myself now, I realize now just how young he was even as an O-5. Where we saw hubris, he probably intended humor. But that's another sea story for another day. Rock on Rocco, where ever you are.

Different airframes allow for more opportunities for in flight teching.

As for the tech styles. I compare it to the difference between classical and jazz. One guy can’t do a thing without every note in front of him. The other guy just needs to figure out the key and then he’ll work it out.

Those calls for an IFT to run to CATTC and talk a ‘FO through a systems troubleshoot were both enervating and terrifying. No pressure. No pressure at all. 4th down baby. You got the ball. ha

Twas both an honor and an albatross to be the AT tagged for the job. Usually came down to coaching them on sequence of tripping, resetting, seating and reseating different modules in hopes of clearing the homo-trons that had gone wrong way on the cat shot and plugged the system up.

I found it helped if I closed my eyes and ignored all the pressed and starched operators and watch officers wondering about the greasy greenshirt before them. /heh/

Tubes, tape drives, ferrite core memory, mechanical tuners, trailing wire antennas and wirewrapped motherboards couldn’t always be relied on to behave after a catstroke. Often what was needed was a swift smack of the hand on a daughtercard to wipe a contact clean. Or a reset of a memory module or A&C. That posed a dilemma though. It’s not like you wanted to give a ‘FO permission to get in the habit of hitting the avionics gear. We had enough equipment damaged in flight by overconfident NFO’s troubleshooting.

Hard to believe a guy could actually twist the rivets out of an IFF cabinet Deutsch data buss connector (they pop off, not twist like a Cannon plug) — but stranger things happened. Even harder to believe an officer and gentlemen would let W/C 210 take the fall for the damage and the downing of an a/c pending replacement cabinet from Bethpage (he fessed up to Tech Rep after cruise). So you made your play based on your judgement of the “O” on the radio. Some would get more help and longer leash than others.

Truth is, often I hardly knew where to start coaching the NFO on the radio. This was jazz not classical music. Improvisation was called for. It was hardly the time or place to admit much troubleshooting in flight was just moving as fast as I could and faking it like crazy. Need to let the crew know you understood their sense of urgency and were “all in” for them and the mission. Sometimes there was nothing to do but make a show of a**holes and elbows and pray mightily that my brain would catch up and the good Lord would give me a revelation (PS 18, “By my God I can…).

Just remember it’s jazz not classical. If you miss a note in classical music it’s a mistake. If you repeat it, confidently, it’s jazz. Faking it baby. Fast as I can.

Movement generates thought.

Might be something in that for daily living too...

The Gipper: Haze Gray and Underway

Got back from the pier about midnight and wrote this...

Haven't been to that pier since '87. Memories of a younger me and my wife saying goodbye in the dark on the same pier. It was a different ship but with a strong emotional/historical connection to this ship (Connie then, USS Reagan now).

Sounds and smells of ship pierside don't change.
Kiddies in carseats in the dark parking lot with the hulking carrier looming dark overhead. Men standing quietly with wives and girlfriends putting off the final goodbyes.
Small groups of sailors walking through the base streets returning from one last night in town.

Anyway,
Dropped the Son&Heir and brought his vehicle back home to stash for the duration.
Wife and his girlfriend along for last hugz and kissez. Huddled up for a brief family prayer.
Hug and handshake and the expected cliche'd advice from me.
"Make 'em a hand. Keep your head on a swivel. Remember Grandad's advice. Remember to read your Bible." and finally, "It's your turn now."

Not to be melodramatic but it's late and especially mindful of all those deployed and serving. Aware of Norks recent adventurism, and rioting in Africa,...

It reminds one of the uncertainty of even a routine deployment of a Carrier group. Hymns always come to my mind at moments like these. Tonight rolling around in the back of my head the old favorite "... I can face uncertain days because He lives."

postscript:
Made it out to Pt Loma before work this morning in time to see them clear the channel.

Godspeed to the crew of the USS Reagan and fair winds and following seas.

90 years ago...

90 years ago today marxists on Tower Ave in Centralia who were wanting to "transform America" by force of arms, killed 4 veterans on parade during the first remembrance of Armistice Day.

One of the killers who was caught that day, made it safely to jail but didn't see the light of another day -- thanks to some young vets who took matters into their own hands in the dark of night.

Did they do the right thing? Those Vets with their midnight justice?
Certainly not by today's standards.

Put yourself in the historical context...
Sons of pioneers who'd settled hostile lands and fought Indian wars;
just returned from a war in Europe;
some like Warren Grimm who'd served in Russia and seen first hand the reality of a rising communist tide.
What did the threat of armed takeover of the US by IWW communists look like to them?

If not the "right thing," did they do the necessary thing?

Given their setting and worldview could they have done anything less?

Here we are today. 90 years later. What's changed?

Now there are Marxists still wanting to transform America, but, they've made it from Tower Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue. They have learned to use a different type of power and have a complicit media and the power of earmarks to bribe the self serving in Congress.

The spirit of the Wobblies lives on in America -- does the spirit of Warren Grimm?.

It ain't over yet...

Word 'o day

"Fifth Column" A concept tarred and feathered as un-PC and McCarthy-ite to even consider?

Put this on your reading list,

“* Navy Signalman Hassan Abujihaad last year was convicted of tipping off al-Qaida to battle group movements in the Persian Gulf, including disclosing classified documents detailing the group’s vulnerability to terror attack.

• Army reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage war against the U.S., confessing he enlisted “to receive military training to use against America.”

• Army reservist Semi Osman in 2002 was arrested for providing material support to al-Qaida and pleaded guilty to weapons charges after agreeing to testify against other terror suspects.

* Marine Abdul Raheem al-Arshad Ali trained at a suspected al-Qaida camp and was charged with selling a semi-automatic handgun to Osman.

• Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed trained Green Berets at Fort Bragg’s elite special warfare school before stealing military secrets for al-Qaida and helping plan bombings at three U.S. embassies in 1998.

• Army Spec. Ryan Anderson in 2004 was convicted of leaking military intelligence to al-Qaida terrorists, including sensitive information about the vulnerabilities of armored Humvees.

• Army sniper John Muhammad was put on death row after fatally shooting 10 in the nation’s capital a year after 9/11.”

h/t to Lex. This showed up in comments

Colonel Ed has died...

If you've paid attention to the news lately you probably know where this story is headed. However, just in case it got lost in all the news of Michael, Farrah and the OXY-CLEAN shouter...



He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College. When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His primary flight training was in Dallas and then he went to Pensacola, Florida. He was carrier qualified, which means he knew how to perform a controlled crash of his single engine fighter, onto the rolling deck of a Navy floating runway. It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight training. His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed flight instructors. He had a great command presence and public speaking ability, which landed him in the classroom, training new baby Marine pilots. His orders to the Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat missions off a carrier came in the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Of course his orders where changed. He never went to sea and he was out of the Marines in 1946. Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became a successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw combat. He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and were gone in seconds. Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire. He stayed with the Marines as a reserve officer and retired in 1966 as a Colonel. The world knows Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight Show. One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel McMahon earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former Navy officer, understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged it off, saying that if you flew enough combat missions they just sort of gave them to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea; he earned every one of those Air Medals. The casualty rate, for flying forward air controllers in Korea sometimes exceeded 50% of a squadron?s manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten home from that war. Once a Marine, always a Marine. When the public was spitting (taking their personal safety into their own hands) at Marines on the streets of Southern California during Vietnam, Colonel McMahon was taking Marines off the streets and into his poshBeverley Hills home. I spoke to a retired Marine aircrew member the day Colonel McMahon died and he personally remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases in California in the 1960s. He was known for going to the Navy hospitals and visiting the wounded Marines and Sailors from this country?s conflicts, even in the last years of his life. Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow Marines and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps Birthday Ball. He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps Aviation Museum. After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one night on the Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on stage. Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air Guard in front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You will not see anything like that on TV anymore. The three core values of a United States Marine are; honor, courage and commitment. This is what a Marine is taught from the first day of training and this is what that Marine believes. That was Colonel Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a true combat hero and a patriot the nation needed then and this country needs now. Your war is over. Thank you Colonel McMahon. Semper Fi sir.

23 June 2009

Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
vanharl@aol.co


The scale of this pic sort of puts in perspective, no?

June 6, 65 years later

I'm beneath the task of adding to all that's been written today.

Simple day of working on house/yard projects.
Got up, ran the flag up out front. Was a few too many minutes after 0800 so I passed on blowing colors this morning.

Posted a wakeup txt message to the Son&Heir reminding him of the date (he was away overnighting closer to the beach with a buddy for morning dawn patrol surf).



Here's a couple posts that set me to fighting with dust in my eye.

This is a note from a French LtC to the 82nd, serving together with them in Afghanistan currently. LINK


h/t MajorZ

Most Omaha Beach first wave stories ended before they began. Yet a few flames survived to flicker and then flame to life and liberty. LINK

h/t Lex

Eyes.... Right!

from the mouths of babes...

Ceiling or Floor?

Really was grabbed by this quote from Ken Blackwell's column today...

Racial preferences harm minorities. Quotas—the purest form of racial preference—often disadvantage the very people they are intended to help. They are originally intended as floors. If a school has a 20% African-American quota, then the school must have at least 20%. But studies show that the floor eventually becomes a ceiling.

...whole article

I have not been a fan of quotas. Blackwell's turn of phrase stopped me cold and got me to thinking. You could say it was a "striking thought."

I've seen the way quotas harmed men I served with in the Navy (and later in industry) who'd been to very fine colleges. Some were Officers, others were enlisted who'd quit college to enlist. The men of color I'm thinking of had made it to college on their merits. Schools like Stanford...

Sadly their achievement was tarnished by the impression that maybe they'd needed a hand up to be accepted to those colleges. In fact, they'd often outdone, out achieved and worked to a higher standard to get to the same level as their lighter pigmented brothers peers.

I knew these men, respected and loved them based on the content of their character. I resented the shadow cast on their accomplishments by quota systems at the colleges they attended.

On the upside, their military accomplishments were never called into question. The US military is as close to a pure meritocracy as you'll find in our culture. For the most part, in the military -- if you earn it, you wear it.

It used to be if you had an African-American doctor you know you had the best and brightest -- he'd swam upstream all the way and had to out perform at every level just to get a fair shake. Now because of quotas you might wonder if perhaps he had gotten to this place based on some consideration for his ethnicity rather than just his merits. Not good. Not good at all. Not good for him or his patient.

The floor becomes the ceiling.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..."

God BLESS America!

He's blessed us with these who reenlisted in theater on July 4.
All 1215 of them. Together.
In the "largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military."
In one of Saddam's old palace buildings.

This year’s event,... saw the equivalent of two battalions extend their service in America’s military.


Now if it was the Navy I'd ask how many of them were re-upping early to get PCS'd off cruise or away from a crazy Capt Quigg skipper. ;^) ...but that would diminish the moment.
h/t Bob Krumm. See his site for a more complete writeup.

Flag Day

Human Statue of Liberty
18,000 Officers and Men at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, IA
Col. Wm. Newman, Commanding
Col. Rush S. Wells, Directing

Reportedly taken in 1918

Victors and Vanquished

"He conquers who endures." Persius

It's become cliche' to tell kids "You only lose if you quit." Well, not quiite. You can struggle, strive and fight to a bitter end and still lose the game, the day, the war. Bummer.

Still, Yogi Berra had it right when he observed, "It ain't over, til it's over." Useful words to keep in mind when there's still 1 minute, 1 second left on the clock. When there's still life, breath and opportunity for just one more effort.

Case in point, I'm thinking there's 20+ million people in Iraq who are glad we surged when many fainthearts called for retreat. Good news and great progress there is going largely unreported. Consider this a late Memorial Day post. Thank goodness for stout hearts and "finishers" who refused (and still refuse) to quit.

"Iraq violence falls to four-year low" Link
Mookie's militia is pretty much toast too. 4 years later than he shoulda been put down but still... "Iraqi army seizes Sadr's Baghdad bastion" Link

"He conquers who endures." Persius Indeed.

Memorial Day '08

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Uncommon valor remains a common virtue among our men and women in uniform. Thanks today to all who have served and continue to serve.
Lest we forget...

Medal of Honor Posthumously, Operation Redwing June 28, 2005. link to official summary of Action and Citation

Shipboard Fire

Thanks for the sea story Lex -- I think. Memories and cold sweats.


Somewhere along the line after a real live "no s*&%" GQ I wised up and started sleeping w/ nomex flight suit and boots in the open and ready for a GQ run.

The 1MC still echoes in my mind
"General Quarters! General Quarters!
General Quarters routing is up and forward starboard, down and aft Port."

Interservice Translator

Today's post in honor of nephew Jack who is currently lounging in Lubbock at the Spa (aka USAF basic training).

It'd be funnier if it wasn't mostly true.

h/t Lex for this

Of wooden ships and iron men...

Uncle Tommy served on board a subchaser during WWII. He's full of stories of those days. He's in his mid-80's now. We should be capturing some of those stories for posterity. This came in e-mail from him recently.

Found this website when I googled U.S. Navy subchasers - Splinterfleet.org. I was on SC664 in 1943. You might be interested in reading about them.
We escorted Roosevelt out over the horizon (He was on his yacht, the Potomac). Later the world was told he was at Yalta to meet Stalin and Churchill.

110 ft stem to stern, narrow abeam, shallow draft. Made for a ride with serious rocking and rolling. Like PT boats they were a wood hull, no armor, but not as much speed as a PT(20kts vs 40 kts max). Designed to go in harms way. To put themselves between shipping and enemy subs. Sacrifically if need be.

Pretty hardy duty that...

Golden Bear Background

...and a golden moment foreground.


I was doing pretty well until Jon's Grandpa (who was commissioned an Ensign during WWII) did the honors and swapped out the cadet shoulder boards for Ensign shoulder boards.

The greatest Generation hands off to the Millenial Generation. May they be as great.

It was a beautiful sunny day at Cal Maritime Academy at the north end of San Francisco Bay. The morning commissioning ceremony was small, short and moving. It's a fine thing to see young men and women stepping outside of themselves and committing themselves to service and possibility of going in harm's way for their country.

Later in the day the graduation speaker was Roy Disney. Unlike most graduation speakers he actually was worth listening to. Approximately the takeaway was about how film making, going to sea and life are about teamwork, risk taking and expecting failure to come as an expected part of the venture. The lessons are in the failure and the character is in moving beyond the failure. Well spoken Roy.