Sea Stories

Want stories about about actual flying? Here you are...

Material on this web site is generally chronological. This ususally works well, but one consequence is that stories on actual flying are intermixed with background materials: training events, aircraft descriptions, operations, lessons learned and the like. This may be boring to some. So the links on this page are only to articles that describe actual flying events, as experienced by the author. These are not fairy tales.

BTW, old salts will tell you there is a difference between sea stories and fairty tales: fairy tales start, "Once upon a time..;" sea stories start, "This is no sh!t..."

Recon

1967-03: The longest flight Sometimes more information is not an advantage. Monopulse radars are great for terrain avoidance and resolution improvement as well as coventional mapping. Contour mapping? Well....

1967-04: FCLP(Field Carrier Landing Practice) Before you hit the boat, you have to hit the ground. Hard.

1967-05: Hitting the boat Sometimes I hate to see the sun go down...

1967-0620- First Time Downtown Flying against the heaviest air defenses on planet earth wasn't a walk in the park. Or was it?

1967-08 The PECM mission At last, an easy flight flying long straight legs at altitude out over the gulf collecting SIGINT. So how did we lose a plane and a crew?

A Day of Rolling Thunder Flying off an aircraft carrier on the line is not your typical 9-to-5 job. Similar question at the end of the day, though.

Violent Skies Presentation We were told In training that flying above 3500' over North Vietnam was suicide. So how did we survive flying at 12,000'?

Crew Coordination Sometimes non-verbal communication is the best kind

Watching Ivan Checking out the Soviet Navy at their anchorages was a routine mission for the RA-5C. So why was the navigation lead an F-4B backseater?

Patrol

P2 Days Flying a plane older than you are can be a challenge

Subtime Hanging around the b-girls is always a lot of fun

Off to Dodge AKA British Indian Ocean Territory AKA BIOT AKA Diego Garcia

PT 27 A Soviet Type II Nuclear submarine trying to creep back to base undetected, bless his heart!

Alpha Sierra Where that unwelcome command--"extend to prudent limit of endurance"-- is received.

Navigation by Driftmeter Oceanic navigation before GPS sometimes required extreme effort, like opening a hole in the side of a P-3 three miles above the North Atlantic.