Detachments…

Better known as “Dets” always were, and still are the bane of an aircrew’s existence, or a welcomed break depending on what was going on where…

If you were a straight stick crew, you might get one or two dets a year. If you were a ‘projects’ det, you might get one or two a MONTH…

And of course they weren’t usually to the ‘fun’ places, unless you had a pretty twisted version of fun…

Midway, Kwajalein, Adak, Kodiak, Eielson, Misawa, Keflavik, Kinloss, Stavanger, Thule, Lajes, Rota, Roosy Roads, etc…

Two days, two weeks, maybe a month, depending on what or ‘who’ we might be chasing.

One of the constants was always the maintenance crew that went out with us. Five or six sailors with enough cross training to fix pretty much anything on the airplane. They did the servicing, maintenance, required inspections, or anything else that came up.

Without them, none of the dets would ever have succeeded…

But there were times when other folks stepped up and played a major part in those successes…

One det comes to mind- In the late 80’s we needed to take two West Coast P-3s to Iceland to support some testing. Simple, right?

Not so much. In addition to the seven hour time difference, there was a ‘flap’ in process when we started setting up the short notice det. So billeting had to be arranged, and fuel, and parking spots (critical issue), and working spaces in the operations center (critical issue), and the right comms codes (critical issue).

Rooms were located out in town (ouch, per diem cost just went through the roof), overflow parking was arranged (out in east bumf**k),  but no joy with comms or workspaces…

I walked into our secretary’s office grumbling about the problems I was having, and Barb said words to the effect of, “What’s got your tit in a wringer?” (She was married to a gunner’s mate, so she could out cuss most sailors). I explained the dead ends I’d run into, and headed off to the afternoon staff meeting.

The next morning I stagger in about 0600, planning on continuing to try to get things sorted. I walk into the break room to make coffee, and there is already a fresh pot! 🙂

So I grab a cup and head to my office, only to hear Barb call me. I stop, go back to her office, and she hands me two Navy messages and a page of notes. It’s authorization to draw comms from NAS Brunswick enroute, and the other message assigns us a space in the operations center.

As I read through the notes, I see she has provided phone numbers, points of contact that are current, and some other information. I look at her with a stunned expression and ask, “How?”

I’ll never forget how she patted her Rolodex (which was a BIG one), and said, “Never underestimate the power of the secretary.”

She had simply called the Admiral’s secretary in Kef, then the Admiral’s secretary in Maine and they worked the secretary’s network in less than an hour to get us everything I’d been working on for five days.  Sigh…

After than, I just took stuff to Barb, and asked her to ‘fix’ it. But I also made sure to:

a. NEVER piss her off.

b. Always bring her some kind of souvenir from the det.

c. Always try to answer any questions she brought to me as quickly as I could.

d. Gave her (and her replacement) good chocolates every Christmas.

Good times… Sigh…

Oh yeah, and everything worked like a champ on the det, EXCEPT the system we were testing… What a PITA!!!