M14 Forum

Whatsinaname181

must be like bunking next to the morter pit

RAMMAC

Except flight ops go on continuously for hours at a time. And I worked at night and slept during the day...which was mostly when flight ops were held.


That's exactly what you hear for hours on end while trying to sleep.

Whatsinaname181

has kind of a soothing property to it, HAHA

RAMMAC

After a couple of months you do seem to get used to the bleeding from your ears.

nSquid

LHA? I was on an LKA waiting for my nuke school seat. Luckily we were stuck between San Diego and Seal Beach, but if we had been carrying the normal Marine contingent it would have been sardine time, just like a sub!

Being a geezer, I saw Mike8 boats, and the JEFFs were just in R&D.

The video is a forward launch, maybe 30% the noise of a pure vertical takeoff. Those are incredible.

RAMMAC

Yup vertical movement is pretty noisy, lots of energy needed to suspend all that weight. The vertical take off and landing capability is just a tactical capability that isn't used all that much. It takes so much fuel that they don't like to use it unless it's advantageous to the situation. In the Gulf War the normal procedure was to launch from the deck in a normal fashion with a full load of fuel and only enough ammo to defend themselves. Then they would land at a forward refueling point and top off their tanks and take on a full load of ammo. Then they would fly to their combat area.

I played tag between the Peleliu (LHA-5) and the Tarawa (LHA-1) for a little more than three years sea time. Heck they were like a stadium compared to subs! Hot racking is standard sleeping conditions for you guys.

The most cramped I ever experienced was during the first Gulf War. We were packed pretty tight, racks in the troop's berthing were 4 high and the sailors were hot racking in their compartments. We carried about 125% of the normal crew and deployed Marines; something like 3500 on board instead of the normal 2800. We had chow lines that extended from amidships (where the chow hall was) all the way to the aft end of the hanger deck and back.

jordanvraptor

Ricers in Afghanistan...
Kinda funny.

TimmyK2112

I was in Iraq and being an armorer, I was voluntold to be my company CO's gunner. We rolled out and came to an intersection. I traversed to cover the road behind us as the next vehicle came through the intersection. As I was traversing back to my normal sector, I hear a WHOOSH. I look back and see the vehichle behind us enveloped in smoke and a green flare under the truck. My CO askes over the intercom what happened. I told him tha I had no idea. Come to find out some of our gunners had pre-readied some flares in the turret and as the truck rounded the corner the box fell into the cab and one went off with the flare shooting past the inside of his leg and falling to the gtound.

Boom Stick

dead water buffalo on the side of the road in Iraq. Had seen this thing over and over. coming back from patrol one day and I see a dog walk out of its behind. Then the other one comes out. Dogs had eaten their way into this dead animal through the softest part (the a@@hole). This dead water buffalo was like a hollow shell. This thing was hollowed out enough to hold two full grown wild dogs.

RandyB45

Jlynn

In Saudia Arabia if you went into one of them little towns you could always tell when the Butcher Shop had fresh meat. They hung a Camel head on a spike on a pole in front of there shop.

berndog

5 ton hitting a camel at 45 mph! Hadji wasn't happy!

RAMMAC I did floats on both of those LHA's! Avi shop just below the flight deck where they parked the ass end of the harriars at. More than once I about blown over while leaving the shop going to the flight deck and having one of those start to taxi right the $&@" over my head!

Saw a crew chief go past the yellow line when the Harriers were launching, pretty funny to see him lose his feet and slide down the flight deck across the non skid while everyone was watching.

Capt Nuggent one of our pilots from the gulf was doing his FAC tour and was deployed w the country of Batswanna when we were in Somolia. Pretty trip to be walking along and all of a sudden see a guy in country you never thought you're lay eyes on again. He introduced us to the Batswanna guys. Crazy! They showed us there RPG's and decided it would be a good impromptu live fire exercise to launch one right into the city of Mogadishu! Who knows who or what the hell they hit!
We had a problem w the kids jumping the fence and trying to steal all our stuff, one of our Cpl's shot a Pakastani who wondered into our area in the middle of the night w an AK thrown over his shoulder! Oops!
Capt Nuggent told us the problem would be handled by his Batswanna troops. Funny how within a few days there wasn't anymore kids jumping the fence. Had to ask so we went to see Capt Nuggent to ask how they accomplished this. He told us his Batswanna troops had cought the biggest kid they could inside the wire, brought him back to their area, gang raped him and then try him back over the wall to his buddies! Ha! Problem solved! Wouldn't have been my personal tech but it was effective!

RAMMAC

Ah the civility of third world countries, we should all learn to be more loving and benevolent like our less fortunate world neighbors.

RAMMAC

I was worked "I" level avionics, I worked out of the ship's AIMD division, our shop was just off the hangar deck.

My favorite pilot to hate was Cpt. Bruce. He and I had a run in at one of the pubs and we harassed each other for a while after that.

nf1e@snet.net

Found a bunch of old slides. 1967

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