Editor’s Note: Point Loma has some thoughts on identity in the institution we served. There is nothing more personal than your name, right? One of the most important characteristics in the culture of Naval Aviation was the re-naming that new arrivals in operational squadrons received. In no small part it was the establishment of an identity associated with the people you flew with, your character in situations of stress, the aircraft, the ship and the maintainers who kept you flying. The name was earned, not invented. “Point” and “Vic” are part of a tradition that is ending, and it is a significant one that may affect the way we fight. More on the political circus tomorrow.

– Vic

The Death of the Ready Room

Bombing Six on Enterprise – Waiting for the Call to Launch at Midway, June 1942

Author’s Note – I don’t condone call signs that are outwardly sexist, racist, or otherwise personally demeaning. We never tolerated that – but pushing the buttons of prudes and pressing the edges of prudence were always acceptable back in the day. It was part and parcel of the Ready Room – the great equalizer and destroyer of overblown egos – if you couldn’t make it there, survive and thrive, then you were soon to be just another statistic in the great weeding out of those found wanting.

Well, here we are in the COVID-19 La La Land, where every day is like Ground Hog Day. Those of us high-risk individuals take our temperatures every day and pray that the passing cough or runny nose is not the precursor to a one-way ticket to the ICU. Meanwhile, the twinkies and snowflakes that we used to abhor and knew would rue the day that they would be in charge, running our Navy and Naval Aviation, are now pretty much there, at least in the PC Navy run amok.

I was a huge advocate and proponent for the genius of the Ready Room and its peculiar ways, to include how one earned or was assigned callsigns. You could literally make your reputation in 15 seconds, and it would follow and/or dog you the rest of your life. Now, I’m not so sure.

We could see the end coming, starting with Tailhook ‘91, which served to undo everything of operational excellence that we had achieved in the first good Gulf War. I was an attendee at Tailhook ‘81. Those of you who know me well know that when I think there is something wrong with something that involves liberty, alcohol and our female party guests, then it’s really fucked up.

I knew that we had a problem then, and it was only a matter of time before it bit us in the ass. Top Gun actually put some distance between reality and hype, but our greater demons did rise out of the earth to ultimately devour us Naval Aviators in the midst of our hubris.

Callsigns were assigned or earned by reputation or individual acts of bravery or outrageous reckless stupidity – that was sort of the law, and you could pull all of those at the same time. The Ready Room gave you your callsign, and that was that – you wore it either as a red badge of courage, honor or shame. You couldn’t change it (unless you changed coasts) or order up your own – not allowed. Since I was a Westpac sailor but operating in the eastern US, I caught a few guys trying to pass themselves off as someone else by assigning themselves a new callsign. My favorite example was “Flounder,” who as an XO and A-6 war hero from USS Midway (CV-41) told all of his now Hornet JOs that his real East Coast callsign was “Duke” – it was fun to pierce that balloon. But that was then, and this is now.

I got my callsign 40 years ago, the day my orders hit the squadron’s read board. The aviators had a hard time trying to figure out my last name so they went to “Point Loma,” since it was easy and the Ready Room does move on to other business. “Point” I was and remain to this day. As I said, you can’t fight it or change it, just accept it. You may not like it, but the Ready Room of that day
could give two shits for what you like or don’t like – but if you didn’t like it and were stupid enough to complain, then you became a “special case” which is where no one ever, ever wants to be (see my earlier piece on Wog Day for more about that). You might as well have clicked a stopwatch on your career because you weren’t going to last long in that environment – one that suffered no
fools.

However, you can get your callsign changed – by doing something even more stupid that surpasses what, when, how or where you were when you originally were awarded with it. My favorite story involves a young stupid-ass Hornet pilot who got the callsign “SIR,” which was an acronym that translated from “Stuck In Room.” It seems he had managed to lock himself into his bunkroom- the “BK”- and wound up missing a hop, which was a cardinal sin. He was an amiable little moron, smart enough to know how to fly a Hornet but not the sharpest – which I guess was one of the reasons that he was awarded a new Ready Room moniker.

During battle group work-ups, there is a never-ending series of drills, or what we call the SOE – Schedule of Events. Over two-week period or so, the SOE gets more complicated to the point where you start to simulate combat, battle damage drills, and rescue operations for downed aircraft/aviators. Here is where SIR made his true mark. We were operating off SOCAL, and air wing operations were centered on our training areas and ranges on San Clemente Island.

San Clemente is a paradox – it is both a bombing range and also a nature preserve. At some point, we had to simulate a downed-aviator rescue – which meant that we had to helo in a volunteer survivor, who then had to enact all of the rescue protocols – radio authentication, visual signals, helo extraction, etc. Most aviators forced to do it hated that shit, since it meant a day when they couldn’t fly. I actually volunteered to be the designated survivor one slow day during work-ups, since I was on flight status and used it as a means to get off the ship and get some fresh, non-jet fuel-laced air. This day, however, belonged to SIR, who was volunteered by his squadron mates to demonstrate a degree of stupidity that still defies description.

Helo Rescue – Thunderball

So, SIR gets helo-lifted on to San Clemente Island, where he is set down on a promontory on the south end of the island. The Mediterranean climate of SOCAL is actually arid, semi-desert, so it was dry, and ripe for fire. The normal rescue evolution can take several hours, so down time is sort of expected – but leave it to you dumber-than-average Naval Aviator to find a way to liven up
his existence. When flying, we are afforded a whole lot of survival gear, to include those little screw-in red pencil flares like the one James Bond used to mark his location in the coral reef outcropping in the movie Thunderball.

So, here is SIR, on a semi-arid desert island, with too much time on his hands – three hours to wait for his “rescue” and lots of cool James-Bond kind of shit in his survival vest. So, our hero decides to do an inventory, and finds his screw-in pencil flare kit, and screws one in. With a 10-15kt cool breeze blowing from the north, and a six-hundred foot sheer cliff behind him a couple of hundred yards to the south from his designated pick-up point, he aims said screwed-in flare horizontally into the wind, and depresses the firing button. Said flare does its thing – working to perfection. It flies a hundred yards or so, and then torches off a brush fire in the dry conditions, which is now advancing on SIR with flames growing across his dim-witted but now alerted horizon. Not looking good for our hero.

SIR, now horrified at what he has accomplished, takes off running to the south where-there-is-the-sheer-cliff. He manages to get his PRC-112 rescue radio out of his survival vest, and fortunately the battery is fully charged – what happens next is classic. He manages to select the “Guard” frequency (243 mHz for military international rescue) and effects the following radio transmission:

“MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Santa Catalina is burning!”

So, what is wrong with this? First, he issues hisemergency call on a broadcast frequency normally used by ships in danger at sea, not some dumb-ass Navy Lieutenant on the cusp of being roasted like so much roadkill by a fire he set himself – Darwin Award stuff here. And oh by the way, he doesn’t even know what the fuck island he is on – so the Coast Guard LA/Long Beach Sector and Navy rescue folks out of Pt. Mugu are now going to go looking for something like a burning ship sinking 60 miles away from where the real on-scene action was – the very real prospect that SIR was going to soon to become a crispy critter, but thereby enhancing the human gene pool.

Fortunately, our E-2 bubbas who were going to be part of the now very real rescue scenario were already airborne on a triple cycle, and were able to cut through the bullshit and figured out how to retrieve SIR off San Clemente before he was toast, calm down the Coast Guard, and get everyone’s shit in one sock. However, as my colleague L.T. is/was want to say, “…we had some ‘splaining’ to do.”

SIR had the ignominious distinction of earning a new call sign – “Pyro.” His career was short, but pretty colorful, even fiery while it lasted.

I guess callsigns are now going the way of the dodo – a symptom of a toxic culture. My advice to people who don’t care for their callsigns is to get over it and get to the business of naval aviating – that’s your job – to be the best. If you are all worried about what people call you then you don’t have your mind right.

Naval Aviation is unforgiving – there is no mercy for the clumsy. No one will care what your callsign is or was when you are dead and maybe killed a few more trusting innocents by making a fatal mistake, and no one will want to fly with you if they think that you are incompetent. Hiding behind not liking your callsign should be a warning to everyone around you– steer clear.

I’m worried that the current PC climate is more inclined to try to make everyone happy, which means we carry and advance some people through the training process who should have been sent home to do something else a long time before they have the chance to kill innocent people mis-flying real expensive airplanes because they can’t cut it, just because they got their feelings hurt.

Well, it’s hard and meant to be so and not everyone can do it but somehow now those found wanting are somehow entitled for the kid gloves treatment – the kind of shit the Ready Room would have rooted out immediately 40 years ago. Well, guess what? I don’t care; I don’t have to fly with you, and the bad guys don’t care, either; they will cheerfully flame your ass given half a chance.

Anyway, the fearless heroes of Big Navy dodged the bullet and made Chief of Naval Training (CNATRA) the fall guys for taking flak from the troops, good and bad. Here’s the latest PC policy:

https://www.cnatra.navy.mil/local/docs/policies/call-signs.pdf

People used to be afraid of us. Now, I’m scared of us since aviating excellence and strength of character now seem to have been relegated to a backseat behind hurt feelings. And of course, the next thing that is coming is that you will soon be able to choose your own callsign, no more Ready Room culture – it is or soon will be dead.

I guess now is high time for the robots to take over, since the leadership wants all of us humans to be colorless, asexual drones. I’ll bet you can have a better Ready Room conversation with a robotic pilot in the future; they will have more personality and you can’t hurt their feelings, or so we can hope.

I remain your faithful servant.

Copyright 2020 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com