There's a million sea stories here. I'll tell you a few of them. First you need to know what the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is. A fairy tale starts out, "Once Upon A Time", and a sea story starts out, "This Is No Shit". In thousands of years of research, no other difference has ever been found.
Boot Camp - May 1969 - August 1969 NTC RTC San Diego
Not necessarily my favorite part. The things I remember were hard and intentionally so. They needed to be to convince a bunch of teenagers that it really is better to cooperate with authority. Company 386 billet 30, that's me! There was enough hair on the barber shop floor to make a thousand wigs! I swear! Then they taught us to march. LOL Soon though we didn't look too bad. "First Platoon Column Half Left, Second Platoon Column Half Right..." (yes I remember the whole thing :) got shortened to "Split the Diptsy Dumpster". "Your pants are loose, your shoes are tight, your balls are swinging from left to right, your left, your left, your left, your right, your left." I had the "honor" of being right guide on our seabag drag.
Naval Unit Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado - Navy Photo Interpreter (PTA) School-- September 1969
Two weeks leave wasn't enough, but I did get a school. My last choice, but interesting. Photographic Interpretation, or Imagery Interpretation as the Air Force called it. We started out with the tools, scales, charts, stereoscopes, and progressed to comparing aerial photos of villages with building counts on the maps. The Army Map Service is absolutely fantastic. Moved on to identifying industries by their outstanding features. Seems every major industry has storage containers, tools and buidings that define it. Now it gets fun. Large military cargo is crated in specific ways, and can be identified by shape, and it's manner of stowage onboard ship. Now we get tricky with the film. Infra red (IR), camoflage detection infra red (CDIR), side looking airborne radar (SLAR) It's scary what can be seen on these. They all have their purpose too. Infra red film spots not just heat, but differences in heat. A truck just parked under a tree wont show on ordinary film, but becomes a hot spot in IR. People too! Camoflage detection infra red film shows the difference in the level of chlorophyl in whatever is in the frame. things with no chlorophyl show up blue and live plants show up red. Branches of trees that have been cut off and used for camoflage begin to loose their chlorophyl immediately. It's not long before this film will pick it up. Bad news for anyone using this method of hiding. Side looking airborne radar, like it says, looks put the side of the aircraft. It paints a continuous frame from the results of it's radar scan of the area. Anything metal shows up like a bright star. Using any combination of these three and standard photography, it's scary how much can be seen. And please remember the date I was there, 1969. There's been quite a bit of research since then.
There's still ways to beat the system though. One of the rumors going arpund about that time was about an area that had been a main route to a drop zone in Viet Nam. Suddenly there was lots of anti aircraft fire in the area. Welp, there wasn't much there but a flat field, a road and a power / telephone line going through. The reconaissance flights of the area, usually about noon didn't show a thing. It was getting to be a real problem because this spot was a great way point for troouble points further on. Finally a reconaissance flight caight the road in late afternoon. The problem it seems was that every other power / telephone pole was an anti aircraft gun. No one could see the shadows to find this out until one late afternoon photo. Charlie was great!
Naval Intelligence Processing System Training Facility, Albany, Georgia - Navy Photo Interpreter (PTC) Schoo
Home again, briefly. Never long enough. Albany, Georgia, my first southern city. And my introduction to the south in general. Almost a culture shock. Folks were good though and there was always the base. Here we were taught how to use the automated systems for photo intelligence. The heavy reconaissance squadrons were based here. All of the RVAH units that flew the RA-5C Vigilante.
The automated systems. That would be North American's Stereometric Comparison Viewer (SCV).
Now here's the 'real' navy. The FLEET!!!
Damn, a ship! And what a ship, an aircraft carrier. They don't get any more Capitol than that! 83000 tons. Carries about 100 aircraft and everything it needs to support them. 6000 people and everything it takes to support them. Miles of passages to wax and buff! Four screws, each 26 feet across. Those have to be hauled in on five trailers and assembled on the shaft. I got to see that when we drydocked in Portsmouth. An aircraft carrier in drydock, now that's impressive.
Couple of shakedown cruises to the Carribbean past Cape Hatteras and through the Bermuda Triangle. Stop at Guantanamo Bay and take a look at the rest of Cuba across the wire. No UFOs, damn. Cuba itself was a no fly zone, so we didn't, really! The pilots would just roll the reconaissance aircraft so that the cameras were pointed in a good direction. The rest of the exercises were interesting, always something happening. Time between too, just to be. Gets a little lonesome out of the sight of land, but there's always things to do. I've sat for hours on a weatherdeck just watching flying fish. Those and the porpoises are fascinating.
Off to the Mediterreanean. I can't believe we're really sailing all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.
Just before we get to Gibralter, we hear the command to launch the ready CAP (Combat Air Patrol). We've had a jet hot (engines running) and ready to launch, pilot in the seat (5 minute CAP) for a day now. We can hear the launch from where I work and the ships closed circuit television is broadcasting flight deck operations. He's off...
Rota, Spain;
Didn't see a lot of Spain here. Mainly just the base and the exchange. Just to look. I don't think I actually realized I was in the Mediterranean until were on liberty in Athens, Greece.
Barcelona, Spain;
The Rombolus! Wow what a street. What would you like, we can probably find it here. I'm serious. Looking for a good time sailor? Try the Pan American Hotel. Probably the most notorious on the Rombolus itself. There were more bars and hookers in the back streets, but the Pan Am was right there on the Rombolus.
Palma, Majorica;
Outdoor Cafes! Drinking coffee and watching the Scandinavian vacationers. Tough job, but someone has to do it. I still have music books from a store, La Guitaria, there. It's fun to see that address in Majorca once in a while.
Valetta, Malta
Landed at the fleet landing. Rode an elevator up to the city. Best guarded harbor I've ever seen. Of course.They've got a really funny coin here, it's octagonal instead of round. It's the main one for the slot machines. That had to be an engineering headache.
Naples, Italy
Saw Vesuvius (stinky :) The oranges here are the best! Naples Lil (Humpty Dumpty) sitting on the wall selling pictures of herself. Stopped in a cameo factory here and watched for hours as the old gentlemen with the huge callouses on his hands hand carved cameos.
Waved at Sicily as we transited the Straits of Messina.
Athens, Greece.
Damn, the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Never dreamed I'd see them in person. Not only see them, climb the Acropolis, walk through the Parthenon, drift down the other side to the ampitheater. Yeppers, we tried it put, the acoustics really work. You can almost hear a whisper on stage from the top seats. The way, as far as I'm concerned, to see Athens is to walk from the piers to the Acropolis. As you go, just pick the most interesting streets. You wont go wrong. Notice, along the way, that two thousand year (and more) old columns and statues are surrounded by modern buildings. The juxtaposition of different ages is absolutely fascinating.
Souda Bay, Crete
Rumor has it that there's one whorehouse in town. It has 20 rooms and one hooker. If you don't get over in one of the first launches, you get the sheep. I know it's true, 'cause Bob Hope said it! We caught his USO show aboard the JFK, anchored there in the bay. Do you have any idea what it's like that far away from home, to be sitting on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, a warship! watching Ursula Andress (look her up kids:) strut on a stage twenty feet fr this close to people like that.
Another thing that sticks to me from that stop is swim call. They lowered an elevator to it's lowest position and hung a cargo net over the side of it. That's about 30 feet above the water. Makes a normal "jump in" into a nutcracker, or maybe worse, a cold saltwater enima. Of course there's a right way to do it. Keep your feet together and point your toes... Are you really gutsy? Dive in! The Marines ran a shark patrol for us and I'm happy to say, were bored.
We did some real work too!
Torremolinos, Spain.
Norfolk, Virginia.
Portsmouth, Virginia
Home on leave.