TBT...
Getting down low...
It was part of our job, especially during rigging operations- That was getting the upright sequences of the ships, the names off them, and anything ‘strange’ that the crew might notice.
This wasn’t us, he’s probably right at 100 feet... We were ‘supposed’ to stay at least 200 feet...
But occasionally the weather wasn’t real good, and you had a mission to do... It did usually get real quiet when you got down low, as you didn’t want to distract the pilots... :-)
But these guys,,,
Gave a whole new meaning to the word low... I got one flight with them out of Hachinohe, Japan back in the day. and they got down in the WEEDS...
There is a seat in the nose, which was the magnetic anomaly detector was, along with being the camera station. You can slide that seat forward until you’re looking straight out and dang near straight up or down. They were rigging some ships north of Hokkaido, and asked if I’l like to go up to the nose. I’d been sitting in the back with the operators, and ‘thought’ we were low on a couple of passes...
So I climb over the wing, weave my way down into the seat, and grabbed the camera as I saw we were inbound to another “Rust Maru”... It was probably a coastal freighter, so not real big...
Normal rig was down one side, 270 turn, stern pass, 270 turn and up the other side. I thought we were pretty low on the first pass, as I got a good shot of the name plate on the bridge wing, but when we did the 270 and came by the stern, I KNEW we were low, because I was looking straight out at the name on the stern...
Probably 50 feet off the water... Sigh... and we rolled into a 270 turn to the right.
At about 40 degrees angle of bank...
And I’m trying to remember what the wingspan is (it is 103 feet)...
And hoping we didn’t get a big wave...
Sigh... Fun times...
And the hair on the back of my neck just stood up remembering that flight...
Great sea story. Or I should say, "air story". Brings back all those "almost died" memories.
Go Navy. FLY NAVY!!!
P.S... going aboard USS Cleveland (LCS-31) today while she's in port here. I'll do some dockside, as well as close aboard rigging.
On my first ship, DE-1027, I recall our LPO was an Anti-Submarine Air Controller (RD1 Melvin Waters). He'd talk to himself on watch..."Tallyho, purple boxcars...MAD, MAD, MAD. Got 'em. Stand by for flaming datum." He was controlling a P-2 while we were deployed with a HUK Group in the North Atlantic. He was fantasizing, of course, while having his P-2 patrol out ahead of the formation looking for a snorkeling submarine so he could drop Julie buoys (explosive echo ranging), sniff it out with an Exhaust Trail Indicator or the AN/ASQ-8 MAD gear (Magnetic Anomaly Detector), find it with Jezebel buoys or rig it if it was surfaced. Waters was amusing himself while ASAC-ing. ASAC-ing is mostly bread & butter boredom. He was fond of Pro-Words and a stickler for correct R/T procedures. I became an ASAC before my third deployment. It was fun working with the Airedales but I never had time to amuse myself. As a novice it was intense, hard work. I was 20. I learned a lot from Petty Officer Waters. He retired a Master Chief. I never got to control a P-2. It was SH-3's, S-2F's, an occasional P-3 and one EC-121.
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Rigging. Flying low. Fast forward to 1984. Our FFG was returning from a WestPac deployment and we were expecting a "surprise attack" from a USAF B-52 in a War-At-Sea exercise, in which we were the target. I was OOD on the bridge when the B-52 announced on 243.0 MHz that it was incoming from dead ahead and it intended to do a fly-by. I called the Captain. We hadn't seen it on radar yet. Then, there it was...incoming. Low. Very low. We got kind of bug-eyed. The Captain and I went to the starboard bridge wing and watched it fly down the starboard side. We could see the top of the B-52's wings. It was loud, we could smell the exhaust after it passed. It was awesome. We got rigged: "OHP Guided Missile Frigate, hull number 9, nothing special, just some bug-eyed sailors standing around with their mouths open."