Originally Posted by
Hydro Junkie
I have a friend who worked combat com in the AF, had a similar story to yours. I have nothing but respect for anyone who's landed in hostile territory and at times was under fire. I was shot at in Manila, kind of changes the way you look at things. Gee, Tacan, VOR and ILS, I worked on the other end of those systems. Too bad GPS is taking some of those systems are being made obsolete. Glad to hear you liked being in my world for a few hours. When you're on a warship, going up and down ladders is just a way of life. My "rack was under the angled deck on the O-2, in the area that overhung the water. To go eat, it was down 3 and across the ship to the starboard side, flight deck was up two, my shop was either up one/down one or down two/up two, either way I had to cross the ship to the starboard side. Needless to say, it's something you learn to live with, considering there is even a procedure you have to follow to get around the ship during General Quarters. It's up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side and, if you try to go the wrong direction, plan on getting squashed since there's no room to squeeze by the flow of people.
Yep! In the Sudan we were on an Embassy Evac mission. Only mission I ever went on where the pilot told us to chamber a round in our weapons before landing. Usually that would be an AF Bozo No No!
In the end they decided not to evac but, we had several C-130s nose to tail on a secondary runway where we set up our compound. About 1,000 yards from the terminal. Third day there we heard the "thwak" of a round hitting aluminum skin. They were shooting from the roof of the terminal. They weren't accurate enough to take out a person except by pure luck. But they could hit our rides home. We didn't like that. After 5 days, well....................the sniping stopped.
One year we went to Morocco the day before Thanksgiving. So we packed 2 turkeys in dry ice in mobility bags. When we got there we realized we had no way to cook the birds. Then we realized we had a bunch of Hickory Tent Stakes. So we dug a fire pit. Ran a ground rod spit through the birds and wrapped them in aluminum foil someone had. For seasoning we raided a whole bunch of MREs for their salt, pepper and tobasco. Turned out pretty good. Definite moral booster.