VP-26 Flying Down the Coast of Africa

This is a map of Africa in 1960. Some interesting points are the Straits of Gibralter, as in the Rock of Gibralter, it's the very narrow passage between Spain and Morroco and the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Off of the left side of the map are the small Azore Islands where we stopped and refueled the aircraft after the bomb bay fuel tank episode.

Places we landed in Africa are Port Lyautey, Morroco. Port Lyautey is near Rabat, Morroco. Other airfields we landed at are Dakar, Senegal, Monrovia, Liberia, Abijan, Ivory Coast, Brazzaville, Congo, Point Noire, Congo. These cities and countries are clearly readable on the map.

The map is so readers can follow our travels down the coast of Africa as we are looking for "anything unusual in the air or the water."

We spent a few days flying out of Monrovia, the capital of Libera. Liberia is a country founded by slaves who able to return to Africa and found a new country. The founding was funded by the United States and uses U.S. currency. Certainly we had never heard of this before.

While there we were taken as guests to a rubber plantation where we were fed and housed. The plantation manager was so excited that we had an electrian on our flight crew! "When will your time be up?" "We'd pay you well to work here."

On this map the city Abijan is in the country Cote D'Ovoire. Formally the Ivory Coast.

VP-26 Crew Lk-10 Goes to Africa

Flight crew LK-10 was selected to fly to the African Continent for an undetermined period of time. We enlisted crew members are never told why we were going nor where we were going. The three pilots had to know but we had no idea and we only knew that we would be on patrol. "What are we looking for?" "Anything unusual."

The first leg of the journey is from Naval Air Station Rota, Spain to NAS Port Lyautey, Morocco where we refuel the aircraft, spend a few days exploring the base and flying a couple of overwater flights. Morocco has cities you've heard about or read about. Magical city names, Tangier, Casablanca, and Marrakech. We don't get to see any of them!

After our couple of patrols we land at the international airport in Dakar, Senegal on Africa's west coast. This stop is where the realisation sinks we are in for an exotic adventure sinks in. The French colonised this and many other areas of the African Continent for years. You go into Dakar and there's French, English, and native languages spoken everywhere. Driving in from the airport you go through miles of people living in shanties. The shanties make where the poor people live in Spain look like paradise. Once you get into the city, the upscale areas have a heavy concentration of French people shopping, working, enjoying the sidewalk cafes, and in general living the good life. African kids are cruising the streets wanting to sell African masks, trinkets, gum, shine your shoes, etc. Impossible to get away from the persistent kids! Unless you go into a cafe. Not out front on the sidewalk, go deep inside the cafe. The waiters don't allow the street sellers inside. They are however, waiting to ambush you the nanosecond you step outside! And make sure your "African hand-carved masks aren't cheap wood with black shoe polish rubbed on them! A lesson a few of us learn.

We fly several flights out of Dakar and back in for two weeks or so, always over water, and looking for something "unusual." When our flight is over, we are fed at the airport in a group at long tables away from other people. French cooking mixed with African cooking is different. Usually we know what we are eating but the flavors are different. One evening we are eating supper and the meat looks like a big chunk of roast beef, more stringy than beef, and has a distinctly different taste. We start looking at each other, shrugging, some guys are skipping the meat. Then one crew member pulls a little tiny humanoid looking rib cage out of his piece of meat! That's the end of eating what they put in front of us without asking questions!

Somedays the pilots go flying and don't take the entire crew. That's never happened before. Makes you wonder? Those of us left on the ground are free to go into town or stay at the airport. Downtown Dakar is a better choice than the airport so that's what we do, street peddlers and all. We don't fly for several days. None of us, and we rarely see the pilots, someday's one, Some none. We have not refueled for several days but a pilot shows up and we he starts and runs the engines, both piston engines and the jets.  Next a fuel truck shows up and we gas the plane. We are told to preflight the aircraft while we are cleaning it thoroughly. Cleaning and preflighting at the same time? Ok. Late that night the pilots come to our rooms, shake us awake, man the aircraft and we takeoff leaving Dakar, Senegal behind.

VP-26 Deployment to Rota, Spain

In winter of 1959 & 1960, Dec-May, six VP-26 aircraft and their crews make a long-term deployment to Naval Air Station Rota, Spain. It's 3400 miles from Naval Air Station Brunswick, ME to NAS Rota, Spain. The plane won't carry enough fuel for us to fly direct.

Our options are: 1.Fly from NAS Brunswick, ME to NAS Argentia, Newfoundland and re-fuel there, 800 miles away. 2. Install an auxiliary 500 gallon fuel tank in the aircraft bomb bay and fly 2300 miles to Naval Station Larges Field on Terceira Island in the Azores island chain. The pilot, Lt Frederick, decides to cover both options by installing a full bomb bay fuel tank and monitoring our fuel useage in flight and decide if we have to divert to Newfoundland or go onto the Azores when we reach the point of no return. The Point of no Return is where you don't have enough gas to divert to Newfoundland and must continue to the Azores to refuel. With the bomb bay tank it's not an issue. After refueling in the Azores it will be another 1100 miles to Rota, Spain. We'll either overnight in Argentia, Newfoundland or in the Azores.

The day before we leave, the crew installs the bomb bay tank, puts some fuel in it, and make sure it works, then fill it full. After all, we don't want to run out of fuel and have to ditch the aircraft at sea. Ditching at sea usually results in half of the flight crew dieing in the crash when the aircraft hits the water. We don't want to take any chances!

The next morning we load our gear and our clothes into LK-10, our aircraft, and takeoff. Loafing across the skies to conserve fuel and practice overwater navigation. When we are about an hour away from the Point of no Return and have to decide whether to turn off to Newfoundland or continue on to the Azores, Lt Frederick ensures the bomb bay tank works. It does and he calls me over the ICS and says, "Well Lambert, your bomb bay tank works." "Shall we continue on or divert to Newfoundland?" My answer, "Since when is it my bomb bay tank? And since when does a pukey little Airman get a vote?' He laughs and says, "Well I guess we go to the Azores."

Two hours past the point of no return and the bomb bay tank won't pump fuel. He calls me on the ICS and tells me it doesn't work. "You have to fix it or we have to ditch. We have no other options." Shit.
The fuel tank is in the bomb bay. You can only reach it by twisting through the electronic equipment bay. Very tight space. There is an ICS plug-in in the bay so I can talk to the pilot while I'm working on the tank pump. Of course I have to go into the bomb bay and lay on the closed doors to even barely touch the pump on the bottom of the tank. If the pump is bad it can't be changed with the 500 gallons of fuel in the tank and there isn't enough room to remove the pump even if the tank was empty. My toolbox won't fit through the electronic equipment bay so I just take a voltmeter and some wiring repair tools with me. There's power to the pump but it doesn't run. Bad pump? Sometimes all electric motors stick and work when you tap on it with a tool. Tap Tap. Tap. It doesn't work. Crawl back out of the equipment bay and get a tiny wrench out of the toolbox to remove the wiring off the pump and closely examine the wire terminal connectors, for a  loose wire crimp, cracked insulation, dirty terminals, whatever I can think of. Everything is good. Hook the wiring back up and the pump won't run. I lay there thinking what now? Then I remember I have a small piece of sandpaper I left in my tool box some time ago. Climb and wiggle my way out of the equipment bay, get the sandpaper, back into the equipment bay, take the wiring back off the pump, sand the wire terminal ends lightly, then sand the wire mounts on the pump, connect the wiring back on the pump, call the pilot on the ICS and have him try the pump and it works!

After getting out of the equipment bay and back to the flight deck, I tell Lt Frederick that my big fear was someone would accidently open the bomb bay doors and I'd fall thousands of feet into the ocean. He smiled and showed me he'd pulled the bomb bay doors circuit breaker and posted a guard on it, the co-pilot, all the time I was down there. Everyone is applauding as I crawl through the aircraft back to the after station where I normally sit. Once I'm back there and back on the ICS, I call Lt Frederick, and say, "Mr Frederick, we are NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN!" "We will always divert to Argentia, Newfoundland." He agrees, "Yes we will!"

I've been in the Navy about 18 months, I'm nineteen years old, certified for nuclear weapons release, and I've just saved maybe 10 lives and a Navy aircraft. When we get to Rota and I don't show up for work for a few days, no one says a word.

All that has happened since arriving at VP-26 is overwhelming and intimidating. All these E4 and E5 Petty Officers who are helping me learn to be an aircraft electrician and it doesn't happen to them. Those guys are who get my respect and admiration. But the "stuff" comes my way. It's a little scary.

P2V bomb bay

Bomb bay fuel tank

Ditching at sea

VP-26 More Fun Flying Stories

JATO. JET ASSISTED TAKE OFF. Strap some of these little bottles to each side of your aircraft, light them off and see what happens! Each bottle provides 250 foot pounds of extra power for 12 seconds. Boom! Off you go! 

Notice that these P2Vs do not have jets hanging under the wings. This was the experiment to see if P2Vs could be launched off an aircraft carrier. They could be but the plan was not put into effect. And there's always a car nut or two that has to get involved! 

JATO was often used on seaplanes to break the drag of the water on the seaplane hull. Note that on previous blog entries that both of these aircraft are familiar with my sometimes lack of professional skills. 

P2V on the aircraft carrier

P2v launch!

P2V on land

VP-26 Fun Flying Stories

TRAILING WIRE ANTENNA. The trailing wire antenna is the antenna the aircraft radio operator used to send and receive messages. The antenna position is on the bottom of the aircraft. The antenna wire is attached to a drum and can be trailed out behind the aircraft as much as 120 feet to increase the reception and sending of radio signals. There's a heavy weight at the end of the trailing wire that helps keep it steady instead of flapping around in the air.

When landing on one of the
runways at NAS Brunswick,
there at the beginning of the
landing strip, was a Texaco sign, Ya know, one of those with THE BIG RED STAR! The radio operators would occasionally "forget" to reel in the trailing wire antenna with its heavy weight on the end and attempt to dent that BIG RED STAR! It was a contest among the radio operators.

ROCKET RUNS. Underneath the wing just inside the number 104 you can see four rails. There's four under both wings. Those are wing rocket rails. Rocket runs are fun because you throw a smoke light out the after station window. The smoke lights float and smoke comes out the top of it so the pilots can see it. On the rocket run, the pilot puts the aircraft in a steep dive and fires a rocket off at the smoke light, pulls the aircraft out of the dive, climbs back to altitude, and makes another rocket run. Exciting stuff! Since we have three pilots, you make a lot of rocket runs to keep them proficient. It's one of my favorite things we do.

FLYING WITH THE HATCH OPEN. Just behind the ESM antennas is a 3 foot wide by 4 foot long crew entrance hatch. That's where the two men in the after station get in and out of the aircraft to install or remove the landing gear pins and the wheel chocks. On hot days we would open the hatch to let in the cool air. Then we'd have a big open hole in the bottom of the plane and we'd swing across the open hatch to get to our duties in the front of the after station instead of closing the hatch door. Nope, not us! The really funny part was when we would be carrying a couple of military passengers and the hatch was open. No place for them to sit except the floor. They'd sit there wall-eyed at the open hatch and watch us swing across it, It was a good way to keep them from bugging us. One time these two non aviation junior officers were flying with us and after a few hours they were looking for a bathroom. You could see their eyeballs floating. Finally one asks "Where do you take a leak?" Gatch gets up, opens the hatch, and points. "Right here." You could see the doubt in their eyes. We tried not to laugh but couldn't do it! Then we showed them where the piss tubes were and they didn't want to whip it out and pee in front of us. We were hysterical!

Formation Flying. We also practice flying in formation. The main job of the bow observer and the two guys in the after station was to help our pilots keep an eye on THE OTHER AIRCRAFT!

FLYING ON JUST THE JETS. We also practiced emergency procedures. Such as feathering the propellers and flying on just the jets. The jet engines are normally only used to assist the prop engines on takeoff and landing. However, it one of the prop engines goes bad, your can feather that propeller and shutdown that bad engine and use the jet instead. Usually you would just have the jet in idle while the aircraft was cruise flying because the jet makes much more power than the prop engine. You can see in the photo below that the propellers aren't turning and the aircraft is flying on just the jets! Normally the flatter part of the propeller faces into the wind. When you feather the propeller, you rotate the thinnest part of it into the wind. With the leading edge (the thin part of the prop) facing the wind, it won't spin when you shutdown the propeller engine. If you left it spinning it would likely destroy the engine.

VP-26 Anti-Submarine Warfare Practice

A P2V flight crew consisted of 10 people. Note the leather flight jackets. You had to be on a flight crew to be issued one of those jackets. They were sort a status symbol because not everyone who wants to be a crew member gets to be one. Patrolling for submarines was one of the aircraft crews primary jobs. When we found a suspected sub contact with the MAD electronic equipment, we would attempt to bring the sub to the surface using sonobuoys, and PDCs. The Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) gear is in the pointed tail section. It detects the submarine's presence under the sea by sensing the subs disturbance of the earth's magnetic lines of flux. Then the hunt is on! We drop sonobuoys to try and pinpoint the subs location. The sonobuoys send out an electronic signal that pings off the sub. Drop several sonobuoys and the sub's location can be exactly determined. Then we drop PDCs to warn the sub we found them. PDCs are Practice Depth Charges. They won't harm the sub but they will certainly hear the noise they make when they explode! The submarine Captain will surface the submarine if he can't evade the PDCs. We found some subs!

They sonobuoy is the photo with the parachute. The PDC is small bomb on the left.

Sonobuoy

PDC

VP-26 Flying where?

Flight crews get to go to many places in addition to flying in your local area. Local flights occur day and night three or four times a week. Most flights are classified as training flights because the crew is training/practicing using the aircraft equipment and techniques. Frequently we travel to other locations to train in those areas and along the way we are training at navigating in areas we aren't familiar with. These are TAD flights. Temporary Additional Duty flights.

Crew LK-10 traveled in the United States to Naval Air Station Norfolk, VA which we referred to as NoFuck, VA, Naval Air Station Boca Chica, Key West, Florida, Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida, and we spent a month at Naval Air Station Roosevelt Roads in The U.S.Territory of Puerto Rico. The tropical weather and atmosphere of Puerto Rico was a fantastic island experience. Especially the difference in culture compared to being raised in New England. Thus began my fascination with islands. Key West is an island with a different laidback atmosphere. Mellow seems a good word to describe the Key West residents. NAS Norfolk was a Navy seaplane base. It was fun to work on one of their aircraft and to watch one land at sea, deploy the landing gear and assist in bringing it up the seaplane ramp to its tie down location.

We also traveled across the United States on long distance training flights. All these flights were interesting because the P2V isn't a pressurized aircraft. Non-pressurized aircraft generally fly at altitudes under 10,000 feet. Over 10,000 feet the crew has to wear oxygen masks. We practice that too. And you take the mask off to learn what oxygen deprivation does to you. Always with a crew member who keeps his mask on. Flying at low altitudes is fun because you can really see what the territory you're flying over looks like. The farms, cities, highways, lakes, rivers, mountains, the millions of miles of dirt roads. More dirt roads than paved roads. Those dirt roads seemed like a wondrous thing! We get paid extra to do this! This photo is the after station area of the aircraft. The only place you can stand fully erect in. It's also where the two burner stove and coffee pot outlet is located. All Crew members wear headsets so we can hear each other talk  using a small handheld microphone. That window you see on the left opens inward. There's one on each side of the after station. Those are the only two windows that can be opened while in flight.

VP-26 Nukes!

It's 1959 and about a year in the Navy. Lt Frederick's aircrew is selected to be trained to load and drop nuclear bombs. Physiological testing of all crew members is the first requirement before dummy load and drop training can begin. All crew members must have a security clearance. The crew electrician is a crucial member of the team and is supposed to be a petty officer. Lt Frederick refuses to let them replace non-rated me. The arming and release circuits have to work and their reliability is the job of the electrician. It's my first clue that people consider me an electrician that can do the job. An entry is made in your service record of your security clearance, physiological testing, and  nuclear weapons training. Seems kind of crazy to be 19 and one of two certified nuclear release technicians in the squadron! This is likely the start of my somewhat unusual career.

We practice loading fake nuclear bombs into the bomb bay. The fake bombs are the exact same size and weight as the real ones. Simulated reality is very important. You have to load them a lot to get fast and confident at it. They are mounted on a lift similar to the one on the bomb below. The lift is jacked up manually until the bomb latch points are close to the bomb release shackle inside the bomb bay. The we all get under the bomb, the bomb lift is pulled away, and we all grunt and lift in unison until it latches in place. Heavy!

They also make a BIG SPLASH when you drop one!

VP-26 Aircrew duties.

Patrol Squadron 26. Their mission is to fly patrols over the oceans of the world looking for boats, ships, other aircraft, and search and rescue missions. The primary mission is Anti-submarine Warfare.  ASW means to find that submarine prowling undersea. Identify which sub it is and track its path. A game the sub commander and the aircraft commander both want to win! The submarine Captain does NOT want to be found and/or identified. That makes him the winner. If he's found, the Aircraft Commander is the winner. Fun stuff to be a part off!

In the bottom photo you can see a window in the fuselage behind the star. Those windows, one on each side of the aircraft, can be opened and being able to open them is useful in accomplishing our missions. Photographs are taken of surface ships for photo intelligence personnel to use the photos to identify characteristics of each ships. Frequently these ships are Russian trawlers. Spy ships to us. We also used the windows to toss out smoke markers and Practice Depth Charges. All used in ASW warfare practice. This is the only place in the aircraft a person can stand fully erect in. There's a two burner stove in it, an outlet to plug in an electric percolator coffee pot, and it's where the lowest rated men on the crew perform their duties. E3's Lambert and Gatch. Obviously we are the cooks and coffee makers for the entire crew plus performing our other duties. But we can stand up! Cooking for us means the crew favorite of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, canned chili and beef stew, and cookies and crackers on long flights and passing up box lunches from the chow hall on local flights.

On the front of the plane there's a plastic dome. That is the bow observer's position. You are sitting in it feeling like you're surrounded by air while watching for other aircraft flying in the area. Every crewmember occasionally takes this position. No fun running into another aircraft!

On the right wingtip there's another plastic dome. This is the one million candlepower searchlight used to locate targets of all types at night. Looking directly at it when it's fired will damage your eyes.

The top photo is of the P2V in a banked turn. That's a sissy turn in that photo. When tracking a sub 50 feet off the water the pilot will stand that 100 foot wingspan on end making you wonder if your dipshit pilot going to dip the wingtip and cartwheel us into the sea!

Occasionally we flew one of those mysterious flights. Crew LK 10 was launched for an unknown mission. Sealed orders only the aircraft commander could open after arriving at a designated point. What are we doing?! Upon arriving on station Lieutenant John L. Frederick opens our orders and tells us the mission. A passenger ocean liner has been hijacked and our job is to locate it and direct rescue efforts. Hours and hours later we are recalled. False alarm but pretty exciting for awhile. All part of the fun and we did feel good about maybe being useful to other people.