Another one…

LL, in comments to the sea story post said this-

I sat in the back and feasted on in-flight rations (back before MRE’s), drank their mud, and told a few war stories. But it was a long frigging trip and everything settled down as it is want to do on a P-3. Some of the crew read well used (and loved) Penthouse and others read equally loved comic books.

So we’re mid-Pacific in the middle of nowhere and I am looking out the window at the endless ocean. I ask one of the aircrewmen, “Is that what a snorkel looks like from this high up?”

OMG

Everyone just about swallowed their tongues. So they dropped a buoy or two to get a propeller signature and then went active on him.

Turns out it wasn’t Ivan, it was an Aussie on his way to RIMPAC who never expected a P-3 to be flying in the area.

Which reminded me of ‘another’ story…

This was Northern Japan, in February, in the late 70’s…  Snowing to beat hell, windy as hell…

Standing the Ready One (max 1 hour from notification to wheels in the well), we’d preflighted and slogged over to the club to grab some lunch.  As per usual, right as the food was delivered, the beepers started going off.

We drop lunch, jump in the truck and haul ass back to the ramp.  Everybody grabs what they are supposed to, we man the airplane and get in the air under an hour.

The tasking was to go 2 hours Northeast and drop a pattern and see what was there.

So we ‘bounce’ along for about an hour and a half (P-3s are NOT known for their comfortable ride) through snow showers, clouds and occasional hail.  About 1/2 hour out, we finally break through the front, and all of a sudden it is CAVU to the moon, seas laid down, and it’s actually a pretty nice day.

Spit the pattern, and we gain contact!  Damn, THIS is unusual… Somebody actually guessed right!  So we track for two hours and then get a recall notice.  Slog back to base (weather was degrading), more wind, more snow, etc…

On debrief we’re asking how did they ‘guess’ right on this one, and they only say they had a phone call.

Fast forward four months, we’re back at homebase.  I’m in the shop working on some training stuff and I get a call to report to the duty office.  Trudge down there, and here’s a Squadron Commander wanting to ‘talk’ to me.  WTF (thinking did I do something wrong, or worse, did I get ‘caught’)???  Turns out he wants to know about the flight on the sub above.  I ask him why, and he chuckles and admits HE was the one that called it in, FROM HIS AIRLINER…

He’s a senior captain for a well known airline, was flying the polar route, bored and was looking out the window.  He’s a P-3 guy, so he knows what a submarine wake looks like.   He sees one, knows roughly where our guys are (he’d drilled the previous weekend), and decides to let somebody know.  He has the forward base’s ASWOC number in his brain bag, so he does a phone patch via his base in Tokyo to the ASWOC, which is what prompted our launch!

We both start laughing at the incongruity of the situation, considering how often we launched on “BOREX” flights (hours and hours of nothing) trying to find the bad guys…

I think I told him something to the effect that he needed to look out the window more often… 🙂

Told the rest of the crew, and you can guess the reactions!!!

Comments

Another one… — 6 Comments

  1. It’s amazing how those sorts of things happen. Particularly in ‘open ocean’ where submarines feel that there is nobody looking.

    Maybe it’s a metaphor for life?

  2. Lemme guess about the reactions from the rest of the crew: YGTBSM! or some variation.

    Sucks to be the subdriver in those cases where the big ocean isn’t so big.