There I was no s**t… er… never mind… I wasn’t there, there aren’t any pictures, and nobody saw anything… Yeah, yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Best story of the night, Skipper Walker, VP-4 CO in the mid 60s, just after the squadron got the P-3A. They had designed a new logo, and were going to be called the Griffins. BUT, the squadron patch came out a little ‘screwy’…
And they are on deployment in Iwakuni, JA. In the club, and there is alcohol involved… Apparently a waitress named ‘Suzi’ came over to the table, pointed at the patch on his shoulder and asked, “What that supposed to be?” He said a griffin, and she laughed, saying, “Look more like skinny dragon.” They all laughed, and the Skipper said all was good until he heard one of the young maintainers say something about skinny dragons in the hangar. Three weeks later, they proposed a name change from Griffins to Skinny Dragons, which is what they are today.
We toasted him for that one, and the vagaries of the way things get done in the Navy sometimes… LOL
And somebody else brought up that a system was ‘named’ for a dancer at a bar in Warminster, PA, and another system was named for the bar where it was roughed out on a napkin… Good times!
What we didn’t realize was the Air Boss, VADM Martin was standing behind us, and he shook his head and said words to the effect that he was ‘glad’ we were all retired… LOL
And, of course, You’re all ‘glad’ you are all retired, also.
🙂
They changed the big centrifuge at Johnsville into a amusement ride. My wife kin go there from time to time.
Ed- There is that… LOL
Gerry- Wow, didn’t know that!
Yeah, that’s the way things really get done. At least in the Navy, anyway. I like to imagine it works that way in all the branches.
Had a perfesser in college that worked at Los Alamos in the immediate post war era. He had a number of “Sea Stories” from the Manhattan Project and later eras.
One I recall was how a couple of reactors got named. “Clementine” because it was in a cavern near a canyon. Clementine was basically a core of U-235 surrounded by a shell of U-238. The next evolution removed the U-238 shell and thus “Godiva” (Clementine unclad) was born.
That’s some neat historical detail!
Always wondered about the name “Skinny Dragons”. I had friends in VP-4 at Barbers Point and even had orders (that got cancelled) to it.
I remember us drafting a marketing plan in a Santa Ana Hooters. Worked well, after we implemented it.
Rev- Not quite… Navy/Marines, yeah, the others not so much…LOL
NRW/Orvan- LOL, sounds reasonable…
Fluge- I was in VP-4 back in the 70s and had never heard that story either!
WSF- Yep, ‘things’ happen… 🙂
Pretty sure “glad” means “relieved”. 🙂
No s**t there I was, when we launched an “Alert Five Pickup Truck” painted in squadron colors from the number three cat…
Full disclosure: I was there but was ship’s crew, so it ain’t my story. Darnit.
Robert- True… LOL, and ‘things’ did get launched on occasion…LOL
Catapult functional tests. When the officially sanctioned sled was not available.
I was at Pt. Mugu air show many years ago. The commander’s car was Dropped Off during the show. From about 1000′ by a CH-53. Splat.
At least y’all didn’t fly on an airplane that had a pron star for a nickname.
C-5 Galaxies were sometimes called “Linda”. As in Linda Lovelace.
I will not say why it was called that on this blog. However, here’s a hint: we could kneel the airplane to the ground, and load cargo from both fore and aft. You draw the picture.