Think Big -Work Hard -and Follow Your Dreams
Decommissioning - Promotion - Reassignment
Off to the squadron -and real life!
We were all granted 2 weeks Leave plus travel time en route to our first squadron duty assignment. I stopped off to visit my sister in Lakeworth and some friends stationed in Virgina Beach as I headed north and then drove home to the family farm in Massachusetts for a little "R & R" with family and friends before checking in at NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
I was just a little upset that my repeated requests for duty in Viet Nam had been ignored. It was really an interesting study in the strange ways of the "needs of the service". Out of the 12 of us going through the helicopter program at the time, it just happened to work out that 6 of us were single and six were married. All of the married guys had put in for East Coast ASW flying and the single guys had volunteered for combat flying in SE Asia. As it worked out the single guys got the ASW assignments and the married guys got to go to SE Asia.
At the time, I found it just a little irritating that I had joined the Navy to see the world, as it were, and they sent me right back to Narragansett Bay, across from where I had gone to college and was trying to get away from. As it worked out, you really DO get to see the world in the Navy, it is just that you need to be at a Navy Base to start your trip.
Since I was familiar with the area, still had friends in Rhoad Island -and was excited to be on the journey into the next phase of Navy life, I did not spend much Leave time on the farm.
I had driven by the front gate of the base on several occasions on the way to visit friends at the University of Rhode Island prior to joining the Navy, but had never given it much consideration. Also, during college, I had sailed Narragansett Bay on a friend's boat and seen the base off in the distance. The only thing that had caught my eye was the fact that we had occasionally seen a large carrier docked there. It turned out that I was about to spend a good part of the next year aboard U.S.S. Essex (CVS-9), which was home ported at NAS Quonset Point.
It did not take long to realize that this military complex was HUGE! The Naval Air Station was spread out over a very large area, but that was just part of it. Contiguous to, and very large in its own right, was the Davisville Seabee (Navy Construction Battalion) base.
I then recalled all the stories my Uncle Dinny (Josiah) Bartlett had told us of his World War II adventures as a SeaBee in the South Pacific. He was the namesake of the original Josiah Bartlett, our distant relative who signed the Declaration of Independence and held high office in New Hampshire, when our nation was in its infancy. He had told us all these "stories", but it didn't really sink in until I had become part of the military too.
Uncle Dinny was a teenager (17-18) when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and had joined the Navy on December 8th, 1941, spending the war (until he was stricken with Maleria) with the SeaBees. They always came ashore one step behind the U.S. Marines, who fought their way onto the beaches, one Pacific island after the next, on the march to the home islands of Japan. The SeaBees were a tough crew too. They strapped their M-1's over their shoulder, often taking withering enemy fire, as they built the runways, barracks and headquarters buildings for the troops who were to follow after the enemy was subdued.
It was a little bit embarrassing to come to understand that this very large complex had been in my own back yard all along, and had actually been built during WWII, in 1940-41, about 2 years before I was born.
It took some navigating around, but I soon found the hangar in which my squadron was located and checked in with the Duty Officer. It was a typical WWII type hanger, which is so common at most of the Naval Air Stations around the world I have subsequently visited. We were right at the bay's edge, with HS-9 being closest to the water -and our sister squadron, HS-5 across the hanger, on the land side.
The Duty Officer gave me news that I had not given much thought to heretofore. I guess I just assumed that once we got to our final duty station, we would rent a "snake ranch" on the beach, just like any other bunch of red blooded American Navy Pilots. You know, the kind of place where there is an endless supply of cold beer in the fridge and hot babes cycling in and out in copious abundance. At least, that is how we were told it would be.
But, the DO told me that there was sufficient room in the Batchelor Officer's Quarters so that the base was not signing off on junior officer's orders, that housing allowance would be given for renting housing out "on the economy". For the last two years of our lives, except for the pleasant brief interlude at Key West, we had been living in WWII barracks -and I was ready to have a place of my own.
Actually, as it turns out, it was not to be a problem, since there was further news which had not filtered down to the lowly Lt.j.g., nugget aviator population. The U.S.S. Essex, Carrier Air Group (CAG-12) and all the squadrons associated were in the middle of "work ups" for a major NATO Cruise -and we had arrived just in time to get a little training for the ship and then deploy. We were not going to be here long enough to settle in, so we unpacked our cars, moved our stuff temporarily into the BOQ and tried to catch up with our squadron mates who were already well ahead of us in readying for deployment.
There were four of us, as I recall, going to HS-9 -and others of our friends to HS-5, across the hanger. There was Cothran, Wilsback, Smith and myself, all having come through AOCS and flight training on a parallel track. Cothran and I had been in the Command Choir the whole time, so we were the more senior, since Choir duties had protracted our training by many months, not that we ever complained.
We were thrown right into the deep end of the pool. All the other squadron members had been gearing up for the upcoming cruises for the last several weeks, while we hit the ground running. We were all assigned collateral duties in the squadron and also placed in an aircrew. I was assigned to be co pilot to a seasoned HAC (Helicopter Aircraft Commander) LT Joe Reid, who, as a senior LT was nearing the end of his Active Duty commitment. He was a good old country boy from the Mid-West and had been on several cruises, so he knew the ropes and had an easy going way of passing on his experience.
My collateral duties were something else. Being the senior LT j.g., I was put in the Operations Department under an Ops Officer who was nothing short of a nut case. LCDR Charlie "Tuna" was a couple bricks short of a full load and a real pain to work under. I had really wanted to get assigned to the Maintenance Division, but they were assigning collateral duties strictly according to seniority. This was the first case where spending all that extra time in the Training Command because of being in the Choir was working against the program.
I was made Assistant Schedules officer, which as it turns out, was only a temporary billet. It was less than a month later, after barely getting my feet wet, that the Schedules Officer got orders and left suddenly for a tour in Viet Nam. Somehow, I apparently had charmed Charlie "Tuna" to the extent that he thought I could handle a senior LT's billet and he gave me the entire Department to run. Here I was a junior Ltj.g., just barely in the Fleet a month, and I had a Division and 7 men working under me and a very complicated daily flight schedule to put out -and NO Chief to show me the ropes! Fortunately, I had some rated Petty Officers who were pretty sharp and they helped me look good.
It turns out that politics had a big role to play in how my job performance was perceived. Apparently, I had a knack for it, as I quickly figured out who the senior people were who hated night and early morning flying and I scheduled my and other crews to the less desirable flying. My Department Head was one of those who eschewed the more challenging (including Friday afternoon Happy Hours) flying and I soon became his favorite officer in the Department.
The schedule was extremely time definite and had to be out by 1000 hours every morning. I learned that my predicessor had "fought the program" and had come into a lot of criticism by trying to be too conventional. I figured out that it would take being on the job late nights and knowing who the constituency was to get the job done to the satisfaction of most.
This also worked well for me, as I had discovered something VERY exciting almost the first day aboard the Air Station. While driving around, looking for my hangar, I saw several BEAUTIFUL A-1 Skyraiders parked on a flight line that turned out to be only two hangars down from where I would be calling home.
After getting settled in, I asked around and further discovered that this was the home of something I had vaguely heard of when I was in Pensacola. NAS Quonset Point had a very large NARF Rework Facility, which overhauled the SH-3, S-2, the E-1 -AND- the A-1! Ferry pilots would fly in the various models from their assigned squadrons when the particular airframe had reached the preordained time when it was due for a major overhaul.
The NARF facility would strip the airframe down to the bare metal, removing engines and everything else, checking for metal fatigue along the way, overhauling or replacing parts so that the finished product would be as close to new as possible. The process adds years to the life of the airframe and engines and ultimately saves the taxpayers lots of money.
NARF had 4-5 active duty Navy Pilots on staff who would take each aircraft out on test flights after all the work was completed on it and before ferry pilots were sent to pick it up for the return trip to the Fleet squadron which owned it. It turned out that a couple of the "short timer" LT's in my squadron, who were looking for an avenue out of helicopters, had been flying with these test pilots, to build time in different types of aircraft.
After further inquiry, I found that our CO did not have any problem with this extra-curicula flying, as long as it did not interfere with the individual's squadron duties or flying. It took me a New York minute to figure out that this was the way that I was eventually going to break out of the helicopter pipeline into which I had inadvertantly stumbled.
This is the precise reason that being assigned to write the squadron schedule was a blessing in disguise. I did not know it at the time, but due to the fact that my collateral duties were essentially completed for the day by 1000 hours every morning -and the only other concern I had was flying my assigned squadron missions (which I built the schedule for) I quickly made myself known to the cadre of test pilots at NARF. They were very happy to have an extra set of eyes and hands on their test flights and I started building time in the S-2, the E-1 and the A-1.
We had heard when we were in Key West that the squadron we were being assigned to was in the middle of getting ready for a major NATO cruise and that we would be going aboard USS Essex shortly after arriving at our new duty station.
called into the CO's office and advised that my promotion to Lieutenant had come in
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