Vic Socotra

17 March 2009

It is Saint Patrick’s Day today, and naturally my thoughts are elsewhere. I saw that the Free State is offering discount deals on Irish Citizenship. Apparently if you can demonstrate that your Great Grandfather was from the Auld Sod you can qualify for dual nationality.

I have to check that out. Grandfather Mike was the last 100% Irishman in the family, but he, like his father, was also a hundred percent Yank, even if his genes were all shamrock. You have to go back to James, my grandfather's Grandfather, who was born across the sea.

It is not that I need dual citizienship, but times being what they are, a spare passport is always a good thing to have in the hip pocket.

if I had a hair on my butt I would take the day off. There is no problem so large that it cannot be blown off for a day, at least in the private sector. There are no weapons of mass destruction at the office, not real ones, anyway. Nothing that involves rigid two-person control or multiple locks on multiple strongboxes.

It is good to be done with it, I suppose, but when I found the old Cruise book I had to blink in amazement. I knew the kid who wrote this stuff twenty years ago, almost to the day.

knew him pretty well in fact. He had hair the color of a chestnut, and twinkling blue eyes just like his grandfather, the last 100% Irishman.

15 March 1990:

Maps, Charts and Geodesy

It is a lost day off the coast of the Holy Land. Up at 0630 to begin preparations for the Final Planning Conference (I rather like the sound of that). We power through a variety of issues dealing with our next exercise and host a group of thirty-odd IDF officers in Mission Planning as part of their tour of the ship. We take commemorative pictures.

I have some Defense Mapping Agency products on the bulkheads and one on the sliding board at the front of the space, next to the Podium. The dark Velvet Elvis portrait that usually graces the front has been secured in the vault in Multi-sensor Interpretation so that we look our most professional.

One of the Israelis notes that our charts still depict the West Bank as not being part of his country. It is a big deal to him, and the other officers are clearly upset that the official maps charts and geodesy of f the United States of America does not recognize the shifting realities of his region.

I tell him it is an old chart and I will send a message to St. Louis where the map people live just as soon as we get underway again.

I’ll do no such ting, of course. There was no way I was gong to get involved in some policy debate about whose army was sitting where.

I certainly didn’t want to piss off the map people. We had taken at least a ton of their charts with us from Florida, covering every area of the world where we could be ordered to go in every imaginable scale, Jet Navigation Charts that showed huge swathes of the earth down to Joint Operations Graphics that were really cool for target planning. The best ones were the ones we could cut up and fit onto the kneeboards the pilots strapped to their thighs for ready use in the cockpit.

The gold standard was the 1:1,000,000 Operational Navigation Charts (ONC), which had just enough detail to help and not too much to confuse. Naturally, the ONC that had northern Egypt on it also covered the State of Israel, but we were not flying there at the moment, so the charts were cut up to fit the Egyptian exercise and Israel was thrown away.

You can imagine my horror when I realized that the next set of exercises were going to be with the IDF, and all the burn-bags filled with map-scraps were long gone. Hence the frantic message to Saint Louis.

I was relieved that DMA had come through and delivered an expedited pallet of charts. They saved my butt, big time.

The Israelis were on board until 1300, whereupon we lurched uncertainly into our next crisis. This one deals with the dual carrier Battle Group operations coming up next week. Can't wait, everything is changed, crash action.

I have my guys make up new charts and stand by for tasking. We are still on the ship at 1600, nothing seems to be getting any better, so I wander up forward to take a nap. I set the alarm for 1800 and when that happens I blow it off and sleep until 2100. More action items are waiting for me when I get back to Mission Planning.

Hof, the skipper of the Bulls is out of his mind, stalking around the space, making demands and asserting himself. The usual.

I am down at Mid Rats in the dirty-shirt wardroom later when I see Robert Pittman. He has some major league Band-Aids across his nose. I ask him how he got those and he replies casually that one of his squadron mates tried to bite it off. I can see that this has truly been a memorable in port period for everyone.

I secure about 0014 and head for the rack. The reciprocal tour of the Israeli Air Field gets underway at 0730 tomorrow. Great deal, except the operations order specifies Certified Navy Twill (CNT) Khakis, ribbons and no flight jackets. We can’t wear CNT when we are steaming, since the polyester fabric has a distressing tendency to melt to your skin in a fire. Much better to wear honest cotton or leather that only chars.

It was freezing today; I only brought my flight jack on this cruise, and I don't know what we are supposed to do without coats. This is what you get when the US Naval Attaché to the State of Israel is a fucking Black Shoe with a bad case of flight jacket envy.

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