The “Way Back Machine” takes us back to November 1982.  We launched out from home base to NAS Oceana for some overwater work and gunnery.  This building was used as our base camp, on the ordinance ramp, at NAS Oceana.  We thought the Sign above was appropriate for us Killer Egg pilots and crew.  BTW, Navy Ordnance HERO means HAZARDS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION TO ORDNANCE. 

In the beginning, by Navy regs, we had to do the Landing Deck Platform (LDPs), mockups of Navy deck replicas on land before we could experience the actual landing on a ship.  So, after those, we were off to conquer the Chesapeake Light platform… then on to the USS Hermitage, LSD-34: "The Strike Gator!

Note: FYSA… Brazil informs us that the former USS Hermitage (which was sold to the Brazilian Navy and served for three decades as the NDD Ceará (G-f30) will be sunk and converted into an artificial reef.  The Hermitage, commissioned in 1956, and kept the peace for five decades, will now be used to preserve and improve the ocean's environment.

The guns of B Company also got in some great overwater work on the DDG 95 USS Scott, a Guided Missile Frigate.  FYI, the Scott had been ordered by the Shah of Iran and had huge turbine engine.  The ship was really fast.  We did our day quals and then we returned to the ship for refuel and dinner before starting our night quals.  We had dinner in the Mess with the ships leadership.  Great stories were told! 

We completed our night landing operations and proceeded back to Oceana after signing off radio traffic with the Scott.  Low and behold if the whole of Virginia Beach was fogged in and we couldn’t get back there, so we turned around to look for the Scott.  Fuel was getting low, and I was amazed at the number of ships in the area, … which one was the Scott?  They all looked alike under googles!  We radioed the Scott, and thankfully they had not shut down comms for the night and got a vector and landed with 10% lights on.  Whew!  Sure did not want to practice ditching with power option that evening.  My Co-Pilot, Cpt Mike Timpani ask me, “what if we can’t find the Scott?”  I remember him gulping when I told him we would just have to ditch!  Lots of sharks out from the beach. 

So, we spent the night on the Scott in these tiny little bunks stacked three high.  I don’t think I would have been cut out for life on a Guided Missile Frigate. And that’s the way in was back in the day, 1982.

And that's the way it was 42 years ago! I flew as a Standardization Instructor Pilot (SIP) for both A and B Companies back in the day and had the pleasure of working with the guys in both units as we forged ahead where NO Army aviators had ever been.  These pics are A Co/160... first overwater and deck quals on the Chesapeake Bay light house and USS Hermitage. 

With arrival of the new T Tail aircraft for A/160, as replacement for the OH-6A’s we got from the Mississippi National Guard, a whole new chapter began for the TF (which wasn’t the SOAR we know today).  A whole new generation of pilots were experiencing what it was like to operate over water, landing on ships, landing on platforms, miles from shore.  Experiencing the phenomenon of the curvature of the earth, looking for a ship 60 miles at sea, from 15’ above the water, in formation, and using the old cutaway ANV-5 goggles.  Thank God for the radar altimeters.