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I had a recent viewer ask what does a Naval Aircrewman do?

For what I did in my time in the service I refer the gentle readers to this Naval Aviation News article: A Hunting We Will Go - Naval Aviation News, March-April 1997

In the S-3 Viking community, aircrewmen have the opportunity to fly on jets aboard aircraft carriers that deploy for six months at a time, sailing the world over. This is a major factor when it comes time for an AW to choose the aircraft in which to serve.

Accelerating from 0 to 140 miles per hour in 2 seconds provides an adrenalin rush all its own.

“I like to call it a kick in the pants,” quipped AW2 Thomas Bell, Sea Control Squadron (VS) 41, NAS North Island, Calif. “It beats any roller coaster you’ve ever been on.”

Assignment to a VS squadron also means greater responsibility aloft, because there is only one sensor operator who must be well versed in both acoustic and nonacoustic sensor equipment.

“The platform carries more responsibility with it in regards to the workload. In an S-3, one person does the job of three in a P-3,” Bell said.

As a post script to the article, “Zeebo” Zelasco, pictured on the first page, is sitting in the SENSO station in the S-3 Viking. Tom Bell, if I recall correctly, may have gone on to fly F-14s as a line officer. Can’t recall if he made Radar Intercept Officer or pilot, and don’t know where he is now.

Dramatic quote of the day from the article:

Imagine this. Leaders in the former Soviet Union, strapped for cash, decide to sell one of their older nuclear missile-capable submarines. Diplomats from the third world nation purchasing the sub are, in fact, a front for a fanatical, well-organized, well-funded group of international terrorists. It’s your job to help locate the sub and stop them.

You are an Aviation Warfare Systems Operator (AW), an enlisted Naval Aircrewman…

…and all of 20 years old.

Gives me chills. Ooh-rah. Thanks for the question!

Related Links:

The Cradle of Naval Aviation

So Others May Live | My Personal Heroes

So Others May Live | Personal Heroes Pt. 2

Military: Not a Social Program

Navy’s finest Combat Aircrewmen

Is it possible that something may be brewing? This analyst thinks so…-

Personally, I think it’s just a coincidence that Kuwait’s training exercises coincide with a carrier relief on station. But… Israel might pull something and up goes the balloon.

Today, Memorial Day 2008, I’m sitting here alone writing. The kids are with their mom. My friends have long left for barbeques. The television is off and has been all day.

Today for the first time in eighteen years, it’s about memorializing my friends who will never have kids, who will not see another barbeque or a beer. It’s also about realizing that I lost more friends in seven years of peacetime service than most Americans have in the past seven years of warfare.

Most of my friends died after living only a few short years out of high school. They are my heroes.

As I’ve said before in the postscript of Bug’s Prayer and Core Values these are the types of people I want my boys to hear about when they ask what a hero is.

One hero who might not be remembered was a friend of mine from aircrew school, Rick Tafoya.

Rick was an Aviation Ordnanceman - AO Aircrewman, not directly in my rate. This was before they made all Aircrew jobs AW jobs.

Rick was cool and a great guy to hang out with, full of energy and positive about his future.

Richard (Rick) Tafoya - VP-50 Blue Dragons d. 1991

I remember running into Rick at the NAS Moffett McDonalds just a few months before his death. It was that night that I had a premonition that one of us wasn’t going to make it. Of course I thought it would be me dying, not him, and that part I recall as clear as yesterday.

Had I not picked VS as my platform. it could have easily been me onboard a VP-50 plane. I would have been in the VP pipeline, and knowing those folks at Alameda and Moffett, I probably would have picked orders to a squadron based there.

There I was… Bored on a Friday…

I was bored one Friday night in either in late 1990 or early 1991 and being underage in San Diego I decided to deadhead up on a C-12 transport to Moffett and see if any of my friends up there were having a fun time. I had just started my final school before the fleet and decided, Have Flightsuit, Will Travel. I knew some of the C-12 aircrew from my time at Pensacola where we all shared common survival training.

In fact one of them stationed at NAS Alameda, Scarlett "Sarah" Connor (best said in a Terminator style voice), was an aircrew classmate of mine from 1989 and she and I definitely did the Aircrew ‘cracks’ together, the O Course, and many other things.

She was also one of the roommates of the very first Navy female to complete SAR school in 1989. Scarlett was stationed up at NAS Alameda and was a blonde knockout who always had a great group to party or hang out with. I figured I would see what was going on and return to North Island either that night on the return leg or on Sunday night.

Of course this was before cell phones, remember what it was like to try to connect with anyone before cellular? If all else failed, I reasoned, I would bomb around the base until I found someone I knew.

I landed at Moffett and couldn’t locate anyone I knew by phone so I decided to take the Duty Driver up on his offer to grab some McD’s before the return flight to San Diego’s NAS North Island. We headed over there and as I walked out I saw Rick.

Rick had a scruffy beard growth and had just broken his arm. He had a grin on a mile wide when he saw me as I was going in and he was coming out.

"You’d better get a shave there shipwreck!" I shouted to Rick, "…don’t you remember that from P-cola?!?"

Rick was laughing as he had seen me at the same time and threw his arms halfway around my back as we shook hands.

We stood there for a short time, catching up.

Rick told me that he didn’t have to shave because he was on light duty, having just broken his arm snowboarding. I told him that I was headed back to NAS North Island but that I would come up again when I had a chance so we could hang out.

He also offered to teach me how to snowboard the next time I was up. According to Rick, the snow was killer in the Sierras. I think he mentioned Mammoth but it could have been Big Bear.

I was on a clock for the return flight so Rick gave me his squadron duty desk phone number and we parted company, me walking out and him walking to the counter to make his order.

I remember it like it was yesterday what happened next. When I walked out those doors a small voice in my head said,

You better turn around, because this is the last time you’re ever going to see Rick.

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I’ve lost a few friends while in the service. There have been times that I didn’t know if I would make it myself - whatever scrape or close call occurred I made it out.

Those who didn’t still deserve my remembrance. I have a few friends, some close, some not so close.

All were brothers

I recall five years ago I was at the gas pump at Costco here in San Diego and saw a helo patch and aircrew wings on the flight suit of the guy next to me.

I introduced myself, rattled off four names and he brightened when he recognized one. I told him that guy used to be my roommate off-base.

He stuck out his hand, saying, Good to meet you, Brother.

We all ran the seawall. We ran the obstacle course and the cross country course. We sweat together. We bled together. We learned our inner limits and then we pushed them farther than we thought possible.

In doing so, we grew up together and as such, we were brothers.

The first two fleet S-3 Viking AWs I met are both dead. Both died outside the combat zone by violent means. One as the casualty of a robbery in progress, the other from self-inflicted wounds, perhaps from scars we all share.

We all hurt when one of us hurts

I remember one fall day in 1989 Millington, Tennessee when I was in A School going out to the flight line to see the Viking. I had wanted to fly in jets since I found out it was possible for this 17-year-old volunteer to do so. McCracken and Mongo (at least I think it was Mongo) were standing by the jet.

Trevor McCracken - VS-38 Red Griffin Viking SENSO d. 1992

I remember Crack particularly because he was the one who let me, as an 18 year old sit in the SENSO station for the first time on a cold Sunday in Tennessee. Climbing in, I remember the smell of the aircraft I would later fly nearly 900 hours in, I remember the walkthrough he gave me on the ejection seat. I promised myself I would fly in one of those jets.

Crack served with VS-38 during Operation Desert Storm, got an air medal, and would later return to Millington as an instructor. It was his unexpected death only a few months after starting his first shore duty that shocked all of us who knew him.

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[Pic] The USS Lake Erie launches a Standard Missile-3 at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 20, 2008.

A good conceptual / historical look at the Halo II Lake Erie Aegis SM-3 Standard Missile shoot-down.

I don’t know about you but I feel pretty darned safe from ICBM attack here in San Diego.

More video below the fold…

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According to the article… S-3 Vikings were originally designed as an anti-submarine warfare aircraft, but are now used mostly for maritime surveillance and as an air refueling plane.

However, some have been modified for electronic warfare and intelligence gathering.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US Navy surveillance jet lost its way during a counter-drug mission and strayed into Venezuelan airspace, US officials said Monday following a vehement Venezuelan protest.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel called the overflight "a deliberate action" and "another link in a chain of provocations."

Rangel said the Venezuelan air defense system tracked the S-3 Viking over the Venezuelan island of La Orchila on Saturday at 8:40 pm (0010 GMT Sunday).

The island is a military base and a presidential retreat that lies in the Caribbean just north of the Venezuelan mainland.

This is almost funnier than the time one of the Hoovers lost an engine cover over the Hotel Del Coronado….

"A US S-3 aircraft conducting counter-drugs operations lost navigational situational awareness causing it to fly into Venezuelan airspace off the mainland coast," the Joint Interagency Task Force South said in a statement.

The aircraft was assigned to the military-led task force, which directs US counter-drug operations in the Caribbean from its headquarters in Key West, Florida.

Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the S-3 aircrew was queried by Venezuelan air traffic control at Maiquetia after experiencing "intermittent navigational problems" while on a mission originating in Curacao.

The US Air Force operates a base for US counter-drug operations in Curacao, one of the Netherlands Antilles near Venezuela.

I wonder who was flying that bird. If it was truly a nav error, that’s whatcha get for not having a SENSO onboard!

Guam - The Next Subic Bay / Clark AFB?

I think this concept is a winning idea. Having a superbase on Guam brings forward deployed reaction forces into the Pacific Rim much closer to potential 21st Century conflicts.

Adding deep water port capability and a shipyard to repair damage would bring the Navy into the picture like it hasn’t had since Subic was closed fifteen years ago. Damaged warship repair capability would be critical in a China / US conflict.

Quoted from Guam hosts talks on military buildup:

The U.S. and Japanese governments plan to spend a combined $10 billion moving 8,000 Marines to Guam from the southern Japanese island of Okinawa by 2012.

The Navy and Air Force also plan infrastructure upgrades on Guam that are expected to cost about $5 billion.

The buildup comes as the U.S. military looks to Guam to play a bigger role in U.S. defense strategy, given the isle’s proximity to potential security flashpoints in Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.

Over the past few years, Guam has slowly become more of a center of US military operations. Why not - it’s closer to Korea, the Philippines and China / Taiwan, and the Japanese are probably much happier without US servicemen on their soil.

Get Some

I recall the recent Ted Koppel GWOT / Iraq documentary which mentioned that Guamanian National Guardsmen were involved heavily in the Ethiopian Army training just prior to the Ethiopia / Somalia conflict that kicked the Islamists out of Mogadishu. Get some, Guardsmen.

Additionally, check out this Stars and Stripes article, enhanced by the US Pacific Command’s sidebar:
Details on military’s plan for Guam expansion coming soon:

The Guam Integrated Military Development Plan will set the stage for military buildup, strategies and lifestyle on the island for years to come, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Leaf, deputy commander of Pacific Command.

Once approved by commander Adm. William J. Fallon, the plan will serve as a blueprint on how U.S. Air Force and Navy forces are to grow to complement the arrival of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa, Leaf said.

…The development plan will include more information about sites for operational units, estimates of military housing and infrastructure needs. Leaf said it also will include an introduction of “joint-basing” on Guam in which different branches of the military will share such support services as health care and family services to save money.

Great supplemental analysis from Military Thoughts:

Consider the scope of this expansion IN ADDITION to the Marine brigade:

* “the Navy might station as many as six additional nuclear submarines at the island, already home to three subs.”
* “the Air Force plans to station some of its F/A-22 fighter jets on the island”
* “three massive Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles”
* [an] “aircraft carrier, which would bring with it roughly 5,000 sailors on the carrier and an associated air wing.”

Bottom line, Guam is going to figure large into our forward strategy.

Navy,China,War at Sea,GWOT,Guam,Pacific Fleet,WestPac,Naval Aircrewman

Watched this abortion that lived of an aerial flood rescue on TV yesterday. Couldn’t help thinking that a simple rope harness would have made life so much easier for everyone…

Quoted from ASRC Seat Harness

This is the webbing seat harness used by the ASRC. If you have a Commercial harness, by all means use it. The harness shown here is the best tied harness that we know of and works very well on all vertical and Semi-technical rescue.

Rescue Swimmer,RSS,SAR,flood,swiftwater rescue,climbing,knots

Quoted from FOXNews.com - Submarine Carrying 5 Tons of Cocaine Seized off Guatemala

A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said.

Where’s the S-3 Viking when you need it?

Navy,submarine,ASW,DEA,Cocaine,War on Drugs

Judge sentences man to clean War Memorial with Tooth Brush!!  
Judge must have been a sailor.

China buildup seen aimed at U.S. ships - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper: “China’s military buildup includes new missiles and naval weapons designed to sink U.S. aircraft carriers and deny U.S. forces access to the Asia-Pacific region, a congressional commission official said yesterday. “

THE HANGAR - website for AWs