Lots of hours in these seats…
Any guess at to what airplane it is???
If you guessed a P-3B you win the old fart’s award… In the irony of ironies class, the new P-8 has gone BACK to a tactical rail where all except the pilot are sitting side by side…
We caught more submarines with these old birds simply because we sat together and could look over and see what the other stations were doing…
L-R SS2, SS1 TACCO, NAV, Radar
Funny, I once did turn-counts on yer P-3 in WesPac. Still had to come to PD to give them a clue.
No time in B model. I was the first P3C trained NFO to report to VP-40 in 1974. They had just returned from deployment to Iwakuni and were just beginning transition to C models. Picked up 8 of 9 brand new C models beginning with QE-1,159321.
Mighty rich lookin’ finish on those seats, but…
Where are the cup holders? 🙂
It’s a venerable old war bird, flown by dauntless warriors.
Sometimes I miss the old days, and sometimes not. But there are still aspects that bring a smile … nice to see one of yours.
Glenn- 😛 LOL
SoCal- Yep, that was back in the day… I didn’t get into Charlies till VP-50 in 76…
GB- They were mesh seats, and the cupholders folded down… 🙂
LL- That and a few crazy bastards! 🙂
Rev- True! 😀
Looks like more leg room than the back of an EH60.
A very old one…probably dating to the late 70s.
+1 for LL
Technically a p3b(difar)
Pulling high Gs while sitting longitudinally can’t be comfortable.
Not bad accommodations. But I think that I had more room my old EC-130E’s. We could stuff about 15 operators on board. Then again, we didn’t do low-level or anything else as crazy as you did in our birds. Just circle around for hours, hook up to a tanker for more fuel, then back on track. “Screwing your way through the air for 14 hours or more.”
ABCCC or Commando Solo? I did a tour in the former (Keesler and Davis-Monthan) in the mid-90s. Longest mission was 14.9 over Bosnia. Was also part of the mission crew when we took one of the birds over 30,000 hours of flight time.
AQA-7(V)3 (hard to tell without getting a closer look at the buttons) I’ve got a couple of thousand hours sitting in front of one of those. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
Ray
Drang- Yep, a ‘bit’ more! 😉
Fargo- 1975ish…:-)
Dammit- 🙂
Mike/Ray- Correct!
WSF- Seldom over 2G’s, but it did occasionally get interesting… 😀
WN- LOL, yep a bit more room! Thankfully we didn’t refuel!!!
Dang! And they’re still flying strong.
Never got to fly in one, or even help support it.
My time was doing AWG-9/AIM-54 and AMRAAM radar development, and then the ground terminal stuff for MILSTAR.
After those assignments, I’d have to kill you if I told you…..
I remember the pilots taking them off at Adak when you couldn’t see the end of the runway and there was so much rainwater on the runway that the props threw spray over the wings.
Good airplane. Reeve Airways thought so, too. They flew the civilian version – the Electra.
I built some simulators and trainers for the next generation. Those were what, mid 70’s units?
During one of my deployments, I got a trip from Naples to Sardinia aboard USS SUNFISH. Their cupholders were bigger, designed to accommodate ceramic cups instead of paper. It was neat to see that they appeared to be of the same design, and almost certainly from the same manufacturer as P-3 cupholders. It was almost like “home” in many ways.
Euripides- That they are!
drjim- LOL
jim- Oh yeah, ‘fun’ times… slipping and sliding down the runway!
B- Yep, you got it, and yes you did.
Randy- LOL, figures they’d copy us! I had a ride on SUNFISH back in 86 for five days…