The thing about the skipper of the TR getting relieved is really chapping my ass. so i have to write an an allegory about that since i’m so pissed off at would-be SECNAV Modly and his fellow cast of OPNAV fools. it is way past time to keep treating naval operators as would-be criminals, and return to us the trust of that touch of Nelson. Since i think i excel at telling sea stories and am always competing with Vic, i’m throwing down a gauntlet of sorts. and i think i always have a good story to tell.

Since Tailhook 1991, we in the Naval Aviation community have been put in some kind of a penalty box for now almost 30 years. So enough, goddammit.

We were there in the Persian Gulf in Carrier Operations (CVOA-1), just off off of Kuwait, and knew that the execution order was for Operation Southern Watch, enforcing the no-fly zone over Southern Iraq was pending. Sure enough, it came, and we were in the middle of a cyclic ops event when it happened. The recall order was for everyone to come home to Mother to plan, and in our case, it was no longer Ma Midway, but the now trusty Indy. And of course, it was chaos.

Our Airing Commander (CAG Bud), aka Darth, was flying a Tomcat, and since the order of recovery was now totally fucked up, he was one of the first to trap, but not without a story to tell. While into what was a now ragged pattern, he had witnessed a searing white contrail descending into the vicinity of the battle group. Not knowing better, he called an inbound missile – it was classic, and comical once we figured out what had happened.

As it turned out, one of our trusty squadron skippers (Firckle of VA-195, the Chippies), had been the last Hornet tanking off of the duty Eagle KA-6D, so instead of getting 3k, he had taken almost 5k to burn, and since he had no wingman due to a down aircraft, he zorched off to 50k ft on a different flight ladder to be the overseer of CAP – Hornets are the gods of high altitude flight.

When the recall order came, Firckle was still fat on gas, so he accelerated to something like Mach 1.2 and performed a hard wing-over to get down to the marshall stack. He started to dump fuel on the way down to get to recovery weight, and was blowing a huge contrail. that is what duped CAG into calling in a missile attack, which then awarded him from the collective air wing ready room geniuses a new call-sign – Like the old Soviet medium rocket- SCUD.

Once we had sorted it out in CVIC, we were laughing our asses off – Firckle was just having fun, which is what it really should be all about. then, it got serious, and we went about business. Firckle came to Newport for some reason when i was at the War College, and called me up to say he was in town, along with his lovely wife Sue. i invited them over to our condo and after steaks on the grill and lots of good wine, we spent two hours on my Hornet computer flight simulator trying to bag traps, usually dying in the process. yeah, we might have had too many drinks to be naval aviating; his bitch about it was there was not enough power response in the simulator when you needed it to get out of trouble. i told him he had gotten used to what Uncle Milty called HUD-cripples to enjoying too many bolters. there was no ready room slack. one of his JOs was a guy with the callsign Yoda. His wife was a figure skater and they had triplets and even after all that, she was still drop dead tight- little- assed-to die-for gorgeous.

Yoda had a signature move when he boltered at night; he would utter out on the recovery radio Chewbacca’s Wookie call. He was a Japan repeat offender and came back to Westpac to command a squadron, and ultimately the airwing- CAG-5.

I used to go up to the flag bridge late at night, just to clear my head from all of the chaos which always threatened to consume us, and would take a seat in the admiral’s chair, since it had the best view. It was usually deserted there. But one night, i sensed a presence on my right – it was Brent, the admiral.

Oh fuck. I apologized but he told me to stay right there. He said, this is good training isn’t it? I told him “no sir, this is what we have been training for all along, now it is real.” he thought about that for a moment, and said “You stay right there.” And then he went back down below.

A good officer in a command position does what it takes to take care of his troops first, and worries about himself later. That is what the skipper of the TR was trying to do. If you can’t tell, this is pissing me the fuck off. Acting SECNAV Modly is a designer Naval Officer, so is willing to shit-can a carrier commander for disagreeing with what is now a willy-nilly COVID-19 policy and trying to force him to not sacrifice the well-being of his troops – really? we all swore an oath, and now that somehow is not good enough?

Vic, his is probably worth a Socotra, but for now i’ve got to go out and buy me some guns. i was at the Commissary yesterday and the food shelves are getting a little empty. Thanks to God that the exchange liquor store still appears fully stocked.

Once again, that is the mark of true professionals and what is really pissing me off- amongst other things about the Navy these days – the civilians have way too much control.

If you take the TR as an example, the troops are revolting, which is really fucking bad doodoo. we all took a sacred oath to support and defend the constitution, but the unwritten codacile of command was that we would do what it took to take care of our sailors and our troops.

Time to let the operators do what they do.

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