On 12/4/2020 at 3:28 PM, regis9 said:

Great story, thanks for sharing.  Looking forward to the rest.

If any of you are interested in reading the complete collection of my Me and Lee and Larkin Street stories I have them bundled in a PDF file.  PM me your e-mail address and I'll send them to you.

Noel 

Oooooh...a post about a military stories...this could be dangerous for me. 🤣  @birdguy, I'm known to sprinkle my squidly stories throughout this site,,,with pics and everything...especially when it comes to putting down fellow squids who chose the wrong sub-branch of the Navy to serve in.  @wthomas33065 has been a victim of many of my many verbal attacks of his kind in the past.

Of course, him being a Bubblehead and me being a Brownshoe, specifically in the sub-sub-sub community of Naval Aviation, Helos, ASW....my Squadron's job in the Navy was to hunt down slime like him and destroy him in a most gruesome way. 🙂

He'll probably chime in here and try to retort in his own Bubblehead way....just humor him please...that is what we did when we were playing with his boat like a cat plays with a mouse before he eats it. 🤣

(I hope folks here understand this is the pinnacle of rivalry trash-talk in military circles, and we have fun at it....waiting to see how he replies). 🙂 

 

Steve, your rivalry won't work with me.  I actually served in three branches.  I was a Marine in Korea.  I was in the Air Force in Vietnam.  And when I was in the Colorado Air Guard my weather flight supported an Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Montana Army Guard in Bozeman Montana and the 6th US Army Headquarters at the Presidio of Same Francisco.  We were in the Air Guard for pay purposes only.  We had no mission with them.

I enjoyed my service in each one of them.

But if you want to take me on go ahead.  I can trash talk with the best of them.

Noel 

Steve shouldn't have any free time for trash talking, between his MSFS flights... and repaints for aircraft in older sims..   (A friendly "ping" for Steve to pick up on)

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Steve, your rivalry won't work with me.  I actually served in three branches.  I was a Marine in Korea.  I was in the Air Force in Vietnam.  And when I was in the Colorado Air Guard my weather flight supported an Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Montana Army Guard in Bozeman Montana and the 6th US Army Headquarters at the Presidio of Same Francisco.  We were in the Air Guard for pay purposes only.  We had no mission with them.

I enjoyed my service in each one of them.

But if you want to take me on go ahead.  I can trash talk with the best of them.

Noel 

I need to focus on your Air Force service.  Its fun to mock in its own right, until you walk into an Air Force recruiting station, because you've loved everything aviation since you were born, as a young, impressionable kid, and they tell you they don't have anything for you because of your low ASVAB scores. 😞  Destroyed, my late Dad (Retired Navy Chief), told me he didn't want to influence the branch I wanted to serve in, but did I know the Navy also has planes?  Hehe...of course I knew that, but the Air Force, the epitome of all things aviation....that is what I wanted.  But despite that, I figured I'd give the Navy a shot.  The Navy had a place for me, but like the AF, they said my scores were low, and could not guarantee me the job I wanted in aviation.  When the recruiter said that, I didn't give it much thought (because I was a kid), and wanted to say OK....but you "should" be able to get me in aviation right Mr. Recruiter?....Never got the chance to ask before my Dad spoke up and said thanks, we'll study and take the ASVAB again and come back in 6 months.

The recruiter, now sounding like a used car salesman, tried a few lines I'm sure he was taught in recruiting school to keep me there and get me signed up (you know....he has a monthly quota and all)....My Dad cut him short after the 2nd attempt.  "We'll be back in 6 months Petty Officer so and so....if you have an issue with that...I'll have a chat with your Chief over there and see what we can work out for my son between us Chiefs."  Like in the Marines, "Once a Gunny, always a Gunny"...same applies to Navy Chiefs.  He replied "Thanks Chief, I'll follow up in a few months to see if there is anything I can do to help". 🙂 

Long story short (because I'm a Sailor, and we are the undisputed champions of "Sea Stories" that are long, detailed and full of information...and some of it is even true! 🤣) ...I studied my butt off...in the process figured out exactly what I wanted to do in the Navy, and wound up getting it, and enjoyed a good career in the process. 🙂 

I personally feel the AF lost out on a great serviceman, and in retrospect I should have followed in my Dad's and older brother's footsteps to keep the family service history in one branch.  My Brother's son is now in, is a Petty Officer 2nd class.  My step sister and her husband also served 20 years together, with her being the 1st Officer in the family. 🙂   Very proud of my family history's of service (//Patriotic speech complete...folds up American flag wrapped around him while typing this out) 😆

In all seriousness of course ...thank you for you multiple stints in the different services...I look forward to more of your real stories, and I hope you can put up with any "Sea Stories" I may relate back if I've had a similar experience in the one branch you didn't serve in...the best branch of course...the Navy. 🙂

As far as trash talk....I'll be the judge of how good you are once you've replied to my notion that the Navy is clearly the best branch of the service. 🙂 

If it starts out with "a few sailors walk into a bar"...save it...I've lived that story. 🤣

38 minutes ago, HighBypass said:

Steve shouldn't have any free time for trash talking, between his MSFS flights... and repaints for aircraft in older sims..   (A friendly "ping" for Steve to pick up on)

Don't have a clue as to what you're talking about (old age you know....forget a lot of things....) 🤣  However, If was on a nice Islander, I may know what you're referring to....but if I didn't, I could ask my butler, Norman...I'd bet he'd know.  He also gets me my BN-2 vitamins each morning. 😉 

On 12/5/2020 at 12:09 AM, regis9 said:

I read the whole post substituting a different four letter word  🙂  I'll read the next one correctly!

You guys have to be witty and use an aviation word that can't be WNA'd because its not a bad word....its just the ICAO for the Rapid City airport....I use it ALL the time and it never gets WNA'd 🙂 

You should try it @birdguy😉

 

Well, Steve, the Navy certainly is the best service if you don't to get your butt shot at.  Except for the Navy fighter pilots of course.

In the Army and the Marines the Captain says, "The enemy is on that hill over there sarge, take you men and go get em!"

In the Navy and the Air Force the enlisted crew chief straps the captain into the airplane and points to the sky.  "The enemy is up there sir, go get em!"

Having said that I admire Navy corpsmen who serve in Marine Corps units. 

I'll bet you didn't know that the first troops on the ground in Grenada were Airmen.  Para-weather troops were were dropped in to provide aviation weather forecasts.

What I liked about the Air Force was the ability to cross-train into another career field when you got tired of the one you were in.  During my Air Force career I was a bomb loader, electronic technician, seismologist, and a weather forecaster.  Never had a job long enough to get bored.

In the Marine Corps I was an EOD specialist.  I have story to post here someday about that. 

Noel

19 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

Of course, him being a Bubblehead and me being a Brownshoe, specifically in the sub-sub-sub community of Naval Aviation, Helos, ASW....my Squadron's job in the Navy was to hunt down slime like him and destroy him in a most gruesome way. 🙂

He'll probably chime in here and try to retort in his own Bubblehead way....just humor him please...that is what we did when we were playing with his boat like a cat plays with a mouse before he eats it. 🤣

What Stevo fails to tell you is that US submarines were almost single handedly responsible for ending the war in the pacific.   While tragically under documented, the submarine force effectively choked Japan off from all the raw materials they had started their invasion of SE Asia for in the first place.  In many cases, the ships were destroyed in their own harbors prior to unloading.  The Japanese saw the submarine as only a spy or reconnaissance tool and failed to learn from the lessons the US and Britain learned during WWI.  (We almost repeated those same mistakes in WWII as excessive convoy losses in the Atlantic can attest).  Without those materials they could not replace the ships and planes that Nimitz and his crew sent to the deep.

Steve's use of the words "slime" and his glee at trying to destroy us in the most gruesome way, exposes his fear.   You don't use words like that for ineffective foes.  Steve, like all ASW helo folks, have this big fear that their large floating target may without warning develop holes in them causing them to go beneath the surface like submarines, but without the means to keep the dive to surface ratio of 1.  

It's ok. though, we're used to instilling such fear into our prey.  It's a tribute to our effectiveness.  Stevo's tools ARE an annoyance for any submariner who wants to maintain that D/S ratio = 1, especially dipping sonar, or sonarbouys.   But again, he fails to tell you that Steve's helos are only really effective when they are being told WHERE to look.  And if he has that information, then the sub has usually done something to expose themselves, or they are restricted to a "limited" area of operations during the wargames which tilts the scales in his favor.

If Steve and his gang know where we are before the game begins, we're history.  But IRL.  that is rarely the case.  

 

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

Having said that I admire Navy corpsmen who serve in Marine Corps units. 

I've worked in the healthcare field for the last decade or so and have since worked with many corpsman who were deployed with MARDETs. Its quite the noble position and I respect them tremendously.

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

I'll bet you didn't know that the first troops on the ground in Grenada were Airmen. 

I did not....I surely thought it was Clint Eastwood and Mario Van Peebles with the Marine Recon Platoon!

8 hours ago, birdguy said:

What I liked about the Air Force was the ability to cross-train

Wasn't aware it was like that in the AF...heard just the opposite in fact...probably trash talk from other sailors I listened to when I was young and impressionable, hehe.   When we went on small, 1-helo detachments, we only took enough ground crew to get the job done.  Due to operational tempo, we frequently were understaffed, so we all cross-trained each other's jobs while on Det, and after a few Dets, you literally knew every rivet of that aircraft and to a degree, could perform the basic tasks of any rating, be it engine mech, structural, hydraulics, electrics, etc.  As you can imagine on a large, old helo that spends most of its life hovering 40ft over salt water...there is a LOT of maintenance to keep her airworthy. As and electronics tech I had it pretty easy compared to other rates, so I'd be up on the engine deck, pulling bad starters, and other basic mech stuff, when all my gear was working fine, or helping the structural mechs change a main rotor blade, or rivet patch over a stress crack in a window frame, etc.

 

9 hours ago, birdguy said:

In the Marine Corps I was an EOD specialist.  I have story to post here someday about that. 

Oh my!  I bet whatever the story is...the content will be explosive! 😉  Can't wait to hear it.

 

32 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

If Steve and his gang know where we are before the game begins, we're history.  But IRL.  that is rarely the case.

Owned.  I submit to defeat.  You win.  And @birdguy....if you want to know the only job an ex-submariner can get who served on a nuke sub...especially if he worked on/near the reactor...this is pretty much it:

 

59 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

.if you want to know the only job an ex-submariner can get who served on a nuke sub...especially if he worked on/near the reactor...this is pretty much it:

Ironically I've spent my entire post Navy career in computers and software development.  Started off as a PC Technician for King Country Library system.  Boss said if I hadn't melted down any reactors in the last decade, he figured I could handle fixing PC's

Moved from that to Games Testing at Microsoft,  After that, started working for Apex PC solutions as a Windows Software and firmware tester, and then moved to technical support because the testers knew how the stuff worked better than the support guys.  Been in support for the last 20 odd years.  And no, I don't glow, ironically my lifetime gamma exposure was less than the typical resident of Denver Colorado receives in a year, thanks to radon.   I imagine our pilot friends get more radiation than I did.

I had the benefit of shielding from our source.  Flight crews, especially ones at high altitude, not so much.  The CDC recommends flight crews be limited to 2 REM a year average exposure (20 mSV/year) (100mSv/5 years).   Comparably, I was limited to 500 mrem/year by the Navy. (5 mSv/year) and never even came close to that.   Adm. Rickover may have been a Sierra Oscar Bravo, but he was a stickler for crew and reactor safety.

 

Edited December 7, 20205 yr by wthomas33065

OK, squid wars should now cease! I was onboard 2 aircraft carriers with EKA-3b Skywarrior squadrons.  ANY squid is a good squid! 😄

3 minutes ago, charliearon said:

OK, squid wars should now cease! I was onboard 2 aircraft carriers with EKA-3b Skywarrior squadrons.  ANY squid is a good squid! 😄

Oh, it's not war, Steve an I partake in playful banter.  I respect anyone who served their country with the utmost of respect regardless of their service.  Since he worked on things designed specifically to shorten my life (or rather my soviet counterparts lives), we have a little fun rivalry at each ones expense.

7 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Ironically I've spent my entire post Navy career in computers and software development. 

Same here.  Now in the sub-field of healthcare...where it's referred to as HIT (Healthcare IT).  My last duty station before I got out was NAS JAX as an avionics instructor.  I was fortunate enough to go through Naval Instructor School and get my Master Training Specialist qualification, which helped me tremendously when I went into the civilian sector.  It opened a lot of doors, and landed me in what has now been a full 2nd career (3rd if you count the current work I'm doing which is not teaching MDs and RNs the hospital software anymore).

 

53 minutes ago, charliearon said:

OK, squid wars should now cease! I was onboard 2 aircraft carriers with EKA-3b Skywarrior squadrons.  ANY squid is a good squid! 

Like @wthomas33065 mentions, the friendly banter flies quite freely when Submariners cross folks in the ASW community. 🙂   I agree any squid is a good squid....just so @wthomas33065 knows his place...that in the realm of Triton, his kind will always be beneath ours! 🤣  (both figuratively and literally as it were) ...sorry, couldn't resist that one. 🙂

Of course as you know Charlie, as Brownshoes, we were above all squids!   EA6 huh?  Massive beast!  I remember we lost one in the Med when I was in as our ship tagged along the Carrier taskforce. 😞  Was a night trap, got past bingo and could not refuel, took the barricade but was too fast and broke thru it.

When were you in?  East or West Coast? What Carriers?

 

2 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

What Stevo fails to tell you is that US submarines were almost single handedly responsible for ending the war in the pacific. 

Then why did the US Army and US Marines have to invade Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa?  And have you forgotten the Enola Gay?  I would say if anyone were responsible for single handedly ending the War in the Pacific it was the crews of the Enola Gay and Bock's Car.

BTW...how many of you remember that today, December 7th, is Pearl Harbor Day?  How many of us even remember it in real time?

You were wanting another Marine Corps story.  Here's one that I hope will end these arguments.

    The Young Marine

I was standing by the rail at the bow of the ship watching the flying fish soar out of the bow wave. It was my favorite spot on the ship and I spent hours there watching the fish and gazing out at sea.

The klaxon sounded as it did three times day and the voice boomed out over the speakers, “Now hear this.  Now hear this. Sweepers man your brooms.  Sweepers man your brooms.  Clean sweep down fore and aft.  Empty all trash over the fantail.  Restricted men sign in at the purser’s office.”

Shaken out of my reverie I made my way to my bunk in the troop compartment to read another chapter of  Forever Amber, which even though written almost a decade earlier was the porn of the day.  It was a well worn copy having been passed from Marine to Marine and some of the pages were missing.  Probably the most erotic ones.

The ship was the USS Calvert, APA32, an attack transport that had seen action during World War 2, carrying a thousand or so Marines to Korea.

We had already traveled from San Diego to Pearl Harbor and were now in the middle of the Pacific Ocean about 3 days out of Honolulu sailing toward the eastern horizon.

The noon meal announcement drew my attention away from the pages of the book and I made my way along with a thousand other Marines to the galley where we stood in a long line waiting to be served the standard lunch fare, a hard boiled egg and a ladle of beans.

After getting my tray filled with chow I went to the stand up bench about chest high where we hurriedly gulped down our food and left the galley to make way for the troops behind us. 

By the time I got back to the deck to make my way to my spot on the bow to start day dreaming again the klaxon sounded.  “Now hear this.  Now hear this.  There will be a talent show for the Marines in the forward cargo bay at 1400 hours.  There will be a talent show for the Marines in the forward cargo bat at 1400 hours.”

Well, that will be a break from the boredom I thought.  And at 1330 hours I joined the crowd of Marines clambering down the ladders and through the passageways and hatches to the forward cargo compartment.

The cargo compartment was empty except for a makeshift stage.  The Marines in the front were sitting on the deck and for the rest of us it was standing room only.  But it would be something different.  A break from the boredom.

Most of the acts were pretty terrible.  A wannabe juggler who couldn’t juggle.  A harmonica player who played off key.  A trio of singers trying to sing a parody of Good Night Irene that went something like:

“Sometimes she sleeps in pajamas, sometimes she sleeps in a gown, but when they’re both in the cleaners, Irene is the talk of the town...”

The rowdy Marines in that cargo hold hooted and hollered and whistled and cheered and booed at almost every act.

Then a very slight, blonde, young Marine ascended the makeshift stage and took his place.

The crowd were still hooting and hollering and hurling friendly insults to the young Marine on that stage when he began to sing acapella in the most beautiful tenor voice you ever heard.

“Oh Danny Boy, The pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone and all the roses falling
It’s you, It’s you, must go, and I must bide......”

Within seconds after the young Marine began his song all the hooting and hollering and cat calling and rowdiness disappeared from that cargo hold.  The only sound was that song echos bouncing off the bulkheads.  The transformation of that group of rowdy Marines into a silent audience was like magic.  

I’m sure we were all thinking of the homes we left behind and the place we were bound.  And I would guess more than one of those rugged Marines had a tear in his eye and a lump in his throat.

The Marines demanded two more encores and when that slight, young Marine left the stage he was crowded with Marines patting him on the back and wishing him well.

I don’t remember what that young Marine’s name  was.  I had never seen him before or since.  But once in while when I reflect back on my service I think of that young, slender Marine who could hold a cargo bay full rugged Marines in the palm of  his hand on that one day long ago.

And I wonder what ever happened to him.
 

Noel

Edited December 7, 20205 yr by birdguy