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Saturday, October 09, 2010
Saturday Flashback
Go get a cup of coffee and come back. Wedge in a half an hour.
Great vid, just prior to my time of the hollow carter years. To echo Grandpa, there's been alot of changes since, and not sure where and why the rudder was damaged and course altered.
This is footage from the Indy's '65 Weastpac cruise...
She was the first 2nd Fleet carrier to make a 'nam deployment (note the orange flight suits which were rapidly going away). And she had a troubled time of it. Her 1200 psi plant vexed all. I know the folks aboard the Coral Sea had to pick up some of her commitments on the line.
Also, this was the first combat deployment of the A-6;s, and they had troubles as well.
Ships bands SH's doing cobblers work, tailoring. Dungrees Short sleeves while underway Crainals with only mickey mouse ears and canvas UH-2s, Traders, Viggies, Whales, Phantoms, SPads Boiler Techs Water hours Undressed working blues Grease boards, reverse writing, bitch boxes
After a rewatch, some of the footage was from aboard the Kitty Hawk as well. There is a clear view of the "3" on the deck as a Vigi is being launched from the starboard cat. A little later there is a clear view of a Vigi with the tail letters in Heavy 13's characterisitc oriental style NH, and that squadron was deployed with the CVW aboard the Kitty at the time. I think the Spad footage was from the Kitty ae well.
Those ready room shots could well have been at Gitmo, as there are some scenes from there as well. That would explain the orange flight suits, as the more I thought about it, I didn't remember seeing anyone headed to points west in orange.
Denton was CO of the Sunday Punchers and was shot down on that deployment. I think they lost two CO's as a matter of fact. He and some others in the squadron were lost due to their own ordnance detonating early.
As I remember, Vic Matula, the CO of Heavy 1 was lost in a non combat accident (broken wire at trap) along with Larry Gronquist, and Jim Bell and Duffy Hutton were shot down.
Lastly check out the hard black smoke as the carrier was pulling away from the pier. 1200 psi plants were just awful in those days. The best think that ever happened to the Indy was getting sent to Japan, as it added years to her life. You can say the same for the Midway and Kitty too.
Sid, it would be another year or so till I was born, and Dad would take VA-35 into action on their first Vietnam cruise. In the meantime, A-6 losses were running about %50 per deployment, and no CO had completed a full cruise. If VA-35 didn't have a good cruise, the whole program was in doubt,
Somehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson).
Actually a few of my family friends remember Orange flight suits were still in vogue up till about 1966/67 time frame and some of them stuck around even into the combat zone cause of supply issues. Simply cause the mind set hadn't fully transitioned from peace time deployments to war time deployments. Especially so for the Atlantic fleet air wings and carriers. It wasn't until later in 1967 going into 1968 that the OD green flight suit became mandatory to all fleet units and the orange was relegated to the VXE and some of the PatWings. The Internation Orange flight suits were adopted so that if an aircrew went down in the water they could be seen more easily during the SAR effort.
As to the ordnance detonating early, it was found after some testing that the Aero-7 bomb racks on the A-6 were too powerful for the older generation of bombs. So that is when it became mandatory then to only carry MER's or TER's with any of the bomb ordnance. After the Mk80 series of bombs came out in the early 70's and was found that they ease the restriction.
I think that it was around 1970 that the IO flight suits were finally all withdrawn and everyone got sage green ones. The exposure suits that P-3 crews had were also in olive drab until the Imperial Wetsuit came online and those were in bright orange. I remember testing those in Casco Bay, Maine, I think it was 1979. Even with them and the hot august day it was still bloody cold in that water.
Oh and I bet dollars to donuts that if anyone set this film to the Safety Center they would all drop dead of heart attacks from all the things unsafe going on. Guys not wearing flight deck gear during flight ops, taking water samples without all the proper PPE. Short sleeves while underway. Guys smoking in spaces and not at authorized smoke pits, electric repair folks wearing watches and rings while working around high power. Oh dear. No ORM posters, no safety posters at all!
I once had the cruise book from this cruise, but its long lost. Shame, since those suckers are now damned expensive.
As for the orange flight suits...All I can say is they were gone from Sanford (that wing supplied RA-5 squadrons to both coasts) by late '65 in the operational squadrons. That vivid color change must've stuck on a naturally pedantic, geeky little kid like me.. ;)
Nobody on the Coral Sea wore orange on the Coral Sea during her '65 cruise either, but then again, she was a west coast boat.
As for the ordnance, the Mk80 "low drag" series were developed in the '50s, and were in production at the start of sustained strikes in '65 SAP, but they very quickly ran short.
It got to the point where A-4s were carrying just two old 500 pounders apiece....Something that was dictated by McNamara himself. An A-4 with that load can be briefly seen in the footage
As for the old bombs, check out the vintage Mk 60 bombs coming aboard from the USS Vesuvius in the video. A couple of years later, the USN would pay dearly for keeping that old stuff around...
SAP, I entered USNA a year after this film was made and remember much of this from my Midn cruises and my first ship. The scenes from the engineering spaces took me back to those days before "repeat back", EOSS, and the Hearing Conservation Program. The only thing they missed were the Morton Salt Tablet dispensers on the fireroom stanchions.
I forgot to mention the shot of the three plane guard DDs following in Indy's wake and the DLG (probably with the DESRON/Screen Commander embarked) coming up alongside.
Oh yea. My dad joined in '67 and he remembers some of the same scenes on his first cruise on the America. He also remembers the change in the aviation community as NATOPS, NAMP, and the rest were introduced over the next few decades. I wasn't complaining, just some observational humor.
I don't doubt what you say. I just remember family telling me the stories of why the MER/TERs were used primarly on the Intruder. That it had to do with detonating ordnance as the racks kicked them away. There was an issue between the rack and the bomb. The biggest thing I remember one of them telling me was that the 2k bombs couldn't handle the pistons kicking into them. So it was a few year of testing and studying to redevelop both the rack and the bombs until they got them working good so that they could be effective in delievery of the 2k bomb post 1969.
"<span>Somehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson). "</span>
I remember the long faces when "The News" would hit with distressing frequency. And to SAP's point below, more times than not, those were not combat related.
Especially given the goofy restrictions in the ROE which allowed the Russians to develop the NVN air defense system into a lethal force equalizer by late '66...And the misplaced notion of symbolic bombing to effect change on the diplomatic effect. Of course, we now have a crowd in Washington two generations on trying to run a war with the same old dusty playbook.
Same for your info SAP...I know they were having severe issues with the early detonation problem...The biggest initial issue was trying to determine what caused the losses in the first place, as the folks who knew what happened were gone.
<span>"Somehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson)." </span>
(thanks Scott...don't like to delete comments, but that one was barely coherent anyway)
xbrad, those were tough days, that folks of today would find outright catastrophic. Not only were the combat losses beginning to mount, but the operational accidents which had spiraled upwards with the introduction of jets a decade earlier were continuing with distressing frequency.
The long faces when "The News" hit; the empty desks of the classmates who had met misfortune;the growing number of single parent households left in limbo not knowing one way or the other...Those things had an indelible influence on the way I see the world to this day.
And, to SAP's point about safety below, combat was only part of the problem.
What I find sad in that video is that the NCA squandered the fabulous instrument of foreign policy that was Naval Aviation in the 1960's. A goofy, impossible to follow ROE, and the silly -"Hope"- of a concept of symbolic application of military force to effect "Change" in the disposition of an implaccable foe just got people killed for little ultimate reason.
Given that experience, it torques me tight to see a crowd in the White House two generations on, using the same dusty old playbook of goofy ROEs and half commitments from the same old dusty playbook....
The orange flight suits hung around for awhile longer in the P-3 community, especially in the reserve squadrons. In Jax in '77, there were still a number of them in unissued condition in the paraloft where I got my OD stuff issued. I had asked about them and the Chief running the place said they hadn't got the word on what to do with them yet, but to not issue them.
My recollection of the discussion of MER/TER was that the previous racks, the MBR, didn't kick enough, and that the bombs were caught in the slipstream and often came right back to the Intruder, or bounced off each other for a while.
IIRC, Deke Bordone lost his A-6 this way.
Also, I know my dad had sage green flight suits for his '66 cruise on Big E, but he also had several sets of Marine OD utilities and I recall seeing a pic of him in flight gear while wearing them.
I've seen that pic before when you linked to it, and have always liked it. When I was around 8 or so, my father bought me a Steve Canyon blue flight suit and white plastic pilot's helmet. Back then, that was the coolest thing in the world. Another fix on my way to an aviation jones.
<span>I forgot to mention the shot of the three plane guard DDs following in Indy's wake and the DLG (probably with the DESRON/Screen Commander embarked) coming up alongside.</span>
She departed Philadelphia Naval Shipyard August 10, 1964 for her homeport of San Diego, Calif., stopping briefly at Yorktown and Norfolk, Va., and then Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She crossed through the Panama Canal, and after a port call in Acapulco, Mexico, arrived in San Diego on September 11, 1964.
USS RICHMOND K. TURNER departed San Diego June 4, 1965 her first deployment to the Western Pacific. She joined Task Force 77 in the South China Sea area and served as missile support ship for the attack carriers CORAL SEA (CVA 43), INDEPENDENCE (CV 62), and ORISKANY (CV 34).
She was reassigned to the Search and Rescue Destroyer Unit in the Tonkin Gulf in September 1965. After participating in missions in which eight aviators were rescued, she departed Subic Bay and arrived San Diego December 18.
Glory Days. Whales, vigi's, tadpoles, queers and phantoms. All star cast.
ReplyDeleteJust awesome. And narrated by The Man with the Golden Voice, John Facenda. Can't beat it with a stick.
ReplyDeletePrecisely. The. Navy. I. Remember.
ReplyDeleteAnd not the one we have, today.
Did we get something wrong that it needed so much change?
Don't forget the mighty War Hummer! Or the CH-46, SH-3 and SH-2.
ReplyDeleteIn that year, there were plenty of S-2Ds around the fleet.
ReplyDeleteGreat vid, just prior to my time of the hollow carter years. To echo Grandpa, there's been alot of changes since, and not sure where and why the rudder was damaged and course altered.
ReplyDeleteThis is footage from the Indy's '65 Weastpac cruise...
ReplyDeleteShe was the first 2nd Fleet carrier to make a 'nam deployment (note the orange flight suits which were rapidly going away). And she had a troubled time of it. Her 1200 psi plant vexed all. I know the folks aboard the Coral Sea had to pick up some of her commitments on the line.
Also, this was the first combat deployment of the A-6;s, and they had troubles as well.
The days of past.
ReplyDeleteShips bands
SH's doing cobblers work, tailoring.
Dungrees
Short sleeves while underway
Crainals with only mickey mouse ears and canvas
UH-2s, Traders, Viggies, Whales, Phantoms, SPads
Boiler Techs
Water hours
Undressed working blues
Grease boards, reverse writing, bitch boxes
After a rewatch, some of the footage was from aboard the Kitty Hawk as well. There is a clear view of the "3" on the deck as a Vigi is being launched from the starboard cat. A little later there is a clear view of a Vigi with the tail letters in Heavy 13's characterisitc oriental style NH, and that squadron was deployed with the CVW aboard the Kitty at the time. I think the Spad footage was from the Kitty ae well.
ReplyDeleteThose ready room shots could well have been at Gitmo, as there are some scenes from there as well. That would explain the orange flight suits, as the more I thought about it, I didn't remember seeing anyone headed to points west in orange.
Denton was CO of the Sunday Punchers and was shot down on that deployment. I think they lost two CO's as a matter of fact. He and some others in the squadron were lost due to their own ordnance detonating early.
As I remember, Vic Matula, the CO of Heavy 1 was lost in a non combat accident (broken wire at trap) along with Larry Gronquist, and Jim Bell and Duffy Hutton were shot down.
Even in the hard to maintain Vigi world that first 'nam VA-75 deployment was legendary for the not ready for prime time electronics on the A-6. These guys were some seriously hard working souls....
Lastly check out the hard black smoke as the carrier was pulling away from the pier. 1200 psi plants were just awful in those days. The best think that ever happened to the Indy was getting sent to Japan, as it added years to her life. You can say the same for the Midway and Kitty too.
Sid, it would be another year or so till I was born, and Dad would take VA-35 into action on their first Vietnam cruise. In the meantime, A-6 losses were running about %50 per deployment, and no CO had completed a full cruise. If VA-35 didn't have a good cruise, the whole program was in doubt,
ReplyDeleteSomehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson).
Actually a few of my family friends remember Orange flight suits were still in vogue up till about 1966/67 time frame and some of them stuck around even into the combat zone cause of supply issues. Simply cause the mind set hadn't fully transitioned from peace time deployments to war time deployments. Especially so for the Atlantic fleet air wings and carriers. It wasn't until later in 1967 going into 1968 that the OD green flight suit became mandatory to all fleet units and the orange was relegated to the VXE and some of the PatWings. The Internation Orange flight suits were adopted so that if an aircrew went down in the water they could be seen more easily during the SAR effort.
ReplyDeleteAs to the ordnance detonating early, it was found after some testing that the Aero-7 bomb racks on the A-6 were too powerful for the older generation of bombs. So that is when it became mandatory then to only carry MER's or TER's with any of the bomb ordnance. After the Mk80 series of bombs came out in the early 70's and was found that they ease the restriction.
I think that it was around 1970 that the IO flight suits were finally all withdrawn and everyone got sage green ones. The exposure suits that P-3 crews had were also in olive drab until the Imperial Wetsuit came online and those were in bright orange. I remember testing those in Casco Bay, Maine, I think it was 1979. Even with them and the hot august day it was still bloody cold in that water.
ReplyDeleteYeah... me too. It would be nice to, if nothing else, get some color back on the birds.
ReplyDeleteOh and I bet dollars to donuts that if anyone set this film to the Safety Center they would all drop dead of heart attacks from all the things unsafe going on. Guys not wearing flight deck gear during flight ops, taking water samples without all the proper PPE. Short sleeves while underway. Guys smoking in spaces and not at authorized smoke pits, electric repair folks wearing watches and rings while working around high power. Oh dear. No ORM posters, no safety posters at all!
ReplyDeleteI once had the cruise book from this cruise, but its long lost. Shame, since those suckers are now damned expensive.
ReplyDeleteAs for the orange flight suits...All I can say is they were gone from Sanford (that wing supplied RA-5 squadrons to both coasts) by late '65 in the operational squadrons. That vivid color change must've stuck on a naturally pedantic, geeky little kid like me.. ;)
Nobody on the Coral Sea wore orange on the Coral Sea during her '65 cruise either, but then again, she was a west coast boat.
As for the ordnance, the Mk80 "low drag" series were developed in the '50s, and were in production at the start of sustained strikes in '65 SAP, but they very quickly ran short.
It got to the point where A-4s were carrying just two old 500 pounders apiece....Something that was dictated by McNamara himself. An A-4 with that load can be briefly seen in the footage
As for the old bombs, check out the vintage Mk 60 bombs coming aboard from the USS Vesuvius in the video. A couple of years later, the USN would pay dearly for keeping that old stuff around...
SAP, I entered USNA a year after this film was made and remember much of this from my Midn cruises and my first ship. The scenes from the engineering spaces took me back to those days before "repeat back", EOSS, and the Hearing Conservation Program. The only thing they missed were the Morton Salt Tablet dispensers on the fireroom stanchions.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful half hour spend...not wasted.
ReplyDeleteHere is an A-4 launching on a strike with just two single 500 lb'ers (mk80 series) in March '65
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention the shot of the three plane guard DDs following in Indy's wake and the DLG (probably with the DESRON/Screen Commander embarked) coming up alongside.
ReplyDeleteOh yea. My dad joined in '67 and he remembers some of the same scenes on his first cruise on the America. He also remembers the change in the aviation community as NATOPS, NAMP, and the rest were introduced over the next few decades. I wasn't complaining, just some observational humor.
ReplyDeleteSome things are definitely different, but it is amazing how much is done the same way as 50+ years ago.
ReplyDeleteSid,
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt what you say. I just remember family telling me the stories of why the MER/TERs were used primarly on the Intruder. That it had to do with detonating ordnance as the racks kicked them away. There was an issue between the rack and the bomb. The biggest thing I remember one of them telling me was that the 2k bombs couldn't handle the pistons kicking into them. So it was a few year of testing and studying to redevelop both the rack and the bombs until they got them working good so that they could be effective in delievery of the 2k bomb post 1969.
"<span>Somehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson). "</span>
ReplyDeleteThose were tough days xbrad...
Its dawned on me that I've ben lurking about Naval Aviation for better than half its century old existence...
Here I was, ushering Heavy One -with 18 A-3's!- off to the Indy's first deployment.
I remember the long faces when "The News" would hit with distressing frequency.
And to SAP's point below, more times than not, those were not combat related.
Especially given the goofy restrictions in the ROE which allowed the Russians to develop the NVN air defense system into a lethal force equalizer by late '66...And the misplaced notion of symbolic bombing to effect change on the diplomatic effect.
Of course, we now have a crowd in Washington two generations on trying to run a war with the same old dusty playbook.
PHOTO IS PRIVATE, AND YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO VIEW
ReplyDeleteWe sure could use something like the A-1 Skyraider in the 'stan.
ReplyDelete<span>I don't doubt what you say.</span>
ReplyDeleteSame for your info SAP...I know they were having severe issues with the early detonation problem...The biggest initial issue was trying to determine what caused the losses in the first place, as the folks who knew what happened were gone.
Bet xbrad's dad could wax eloquent on this.
<span>"Somehow, through hard work, a steep learning curve, and a ton of technical help, they made it with one combat loss (McDaniel and Patterson)." </span>
ReplyDelete(thanks Scott...don't like to delete comments, but that one was barely coherent anyway)
xbrad, those were tough days, that folks of today would find outright catastrophic. Not only were the combat losses beginning to mount, but the operational accidents which had spiraled upwards with the introduction of jets a decade earlier were continuing with distressing frequency.
The long faces when "The News" hit; the empty desks of the classmates who had met misfortune;the growing number of single parent households left in limbo not knowing one way or the other...Those things had an indelible influence on the way I see the world to this day.
And, to SAP's point about safety below, combat was only part of the problem.
What I find sad in that video is that the NCA squandered the fabulous instrument of foreign policy that was Naval Aviation in the 1960's. A goofy, impossible to follow ROE, and the silly -"Hope"- of a concept of symbolic application of military force to effect "Change" in the disposition of an implaccable foe just got people killed for little ultimate reason.
Given that experience, it torques me tight to see a crowd in the White House two generations on, using the same dusty old playbook of goofy ROEs and half commitments from the same old dusty playbook....
Sid,
ReplyDeleteThe orange flight suits hung around for awhile longer in the P-3 community, especially in the reserve squadrons. In Jax in '77, there were still a number of them in unissued condition in the paraloft where I got my OD stuff issued. I had asked about them and the Chief running the place said they hadn't got the word on what to do with them yet, but to not issue them.
GBS, its dawned on me thast I've been lurking about on the edges of Nava Aviation for better than half its century old existence.
ReplyDeleteThis pic was taken as I was "marshalling out" Heavy One -with 18 A-3s!- enroute to the Indy's first deployment...
And its pretty amazing how many things end up being back "back to the future."
My recollection of the discussion of MER/TER was that the previous racks, the MBR, didn't kick enough, and that the bombs were caught in the slipstream and often came right back to the Intruder, or bounced off each other for a while.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, Deke Bordone lost his A-6 this way.
Also, I know my dad had sage green flight suits for his '66 cruise on Big E, but he also had several sets of Marine OD utilities and I recall seeing a pic of him in flight gear while wearing them.
As close as I'll get to watching a Barret Tillman story unfold.
ReplyDeleteEven from behind, you look so serious! A man to be reckoned with!
ReplyDeleteSid,
ReplyDeleteI've seen that pic before when you linked to it, and have always liked it. When I was around 8 or so, my father bought me a Steve Canyon blue flight suit and white plastic pilot's helmet. Back then, that was the coolest thing in the world. Another fix on my way to an aviation jones.
Er, I typed John Facenda, I meant Scourby. The OTHER golden voice.
ReplyDeleteof Victory at Sea fame.
ReplyDeleteThat's the guy. Great narrators of NFL Films (Facenda) and Victory at Sea (Scourby).
ReplyDelete<span>I forgot to mention the shot of the three plane guard DDs following in Indy's wake and the DLG (probably with the DESRON/Screen Commander embarked) coming up alongside.</span>
ReplyDeleteThat was the then spankin' new RK Turner...
She departed Philadelphia Naval Shipyard August 10, 1964 for her homeport of San Diego, Calif., stopping briefly at Yorktown and Norfolk, Va., and then Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She crossed through the Panama Canal, and after a port call in Acapulco, Mexico, arrived in San Diego on September 11, 1964.
USS RICHMOND K. TURNER departed San Diego June 4, 1965 her first deployment to the Western Pacific. She joined Task Force 77 in the South China Sea area and served as missile support ship for the attack carriers CORAL SEA (CVA 43), INDEPENDENCE (CV 62), and ORISKANY (CV 34).
She was reassigned to the Search and Rescue Destroyer Unit in the Tonkin Gulf in September 1965. After participating in missions in which eight aviators were rescued, she departed Subic Bay and arrived San Diego December 18.