ANDY ADKINS

After flunking out of college, Adkins takes you from induction, through boot camp and "A" School, and through his three tours: NAS Agana Guam, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), and the Bremerton Shipyards, all the time with detailed daily life in the Navy, both on duty as well as off duty.

Whether you are currently serving in the Navy or any branch of service, you'll relive a lot of your own experiences, good or bad, through the eyes of a Navy man. If you are contemplating joining the Navy, this will be an eye opener to the wondrous adventures that lie ahead.

May God Bless all our military: those who have served; those who are serving; those who will serve.

Once done with our new crew cuts, we gathered outside in a straight line, again standing at attention. Funny thing though; I did not recognize anyone since we had all had our locks trimmed. "Is that you, Smith?" I asked someone that looked a little familiar. I'm sure I looked as funny to everyone else as they did to me.

Besides being woken up at 0400 with some asshole kicking a garbage can down the middle of the barracks and screaming at the top of his lungs some vulgar obscenities, we got into a somewhat regular routine those first few days: early morning calisthenics, three meals a day, and cleaning our barracks. I thought to myself, this isn't so bad. Was I in for a surprise.

Having worked on the flight deck, I can certainly attest to how dangerous an environment it is. But in the same sense, flight deck operations can be one of the most challenging, rewarding, and orchestrated performances you will ever witness. It takes teamwork from a group of men (and now women) who do not know each other, but they know and respect the important roles each must play during this command performance.

Flight deck operations involve many different people with many different jobs. The Navy figured out a long time ago that different colored jerseys with stenciled IDs would help to identify who does what on the flight deck. Because of these different colored jerseys, flight deck personnel are now sometimes referred to as "Skittles." Skittles is the name of a candy with many different colors; they hadn't been invented when I was in the Navy.

My pal Buddy Laney was riding on the back of the crash tractor and saw it all. He told me later that it was one of the most harrowing experiences in his life, being so close to a killer helo and not being able to do anything about it. He said his training kicked in and they were preparing for the worst--a crash on the flight deck. But, like the rest of us, there was little to do with the helo still tied down still trying to take off.

Several of us dunked down with a rescue stretcher and got close to the helo. About that time, the killer helo dropped the ground crew member and we grabbed his legs and pulled him out of range of those dangerous rotors. The flight deck medic was trying to put a compress on his head, but I knew this guy was long gone. His head was squished sideways about half its normal size--blood was everywhere as well as some brain matter. I had been through enough training to do what I did, as did everyone else. We put him into the stretcher and carried him over to the #2 elevator where he was lowered down and the guys rushed him to Sickbay. My pants and shirt were covered with blood and brains.

Meanwhile the helo was still hovering just a few inches off the ground. Our Crash LPO Jeff Atteberry was on his stomach crawling toward the helo. The only way this thing could end safely was to undo the last tie-down and Jeff was going to do just that. He reached the tie-down and when the plane captain saw what he was doing, helped the pilot keep steady while Jeff undid the tie-down. The pilot flew the helo off and everyone on the flight deck breathed a sigh of relief. That was a harrowing experience.

We weren't done yet--the second part of our name was "Salvage," so we had to figure out how to get the helo and its crew safely back on board. Fortunately, we had trained for such things and had a plan. Part of our crash arsenal included a crash dolly which is a heavy metal dolly about three feet wide and four feet long with four heavy rubber wheels. We had several mattresses brought up from below decks and tied these to the crash dolly. We then anchored the crash dolly to the flight deck in the recovery area using a half dozen tie down chains.

In order to get the helo back onto the flight deck, a helo plane captain served as the director which was standard operating procedure. We parked a tow tractor in front of him so that if something bad happened, he could at least dive and duck down behind the tractor, hopefully avoiding any flying helo parts. We moved all nearby aircraft to the aft part of the flight deck—no need destroying or damaging aircraft if it could be helped.

We also had the crash truck parked on the point on the starboard side with a full crew all suited up. The rescue guy fully suited up and standing on the back of the crash truck was Steve Deaver, a big strong Texan. He had joined us in the Philippines. The flight deck was cleared of all unnecessary personnel. All of the V-1 Division was up there though. We were in the catwalks standing by with fire hoses. I got out of the catwalk and went up to the crash truck and talked with Deaver. I told him to remember his training, do not do anything stupid, and watch his ass. I don't know what drove me to give him that pep talk, but maybe I was trying to tell myself that everything would be fine.

As the helo approached, the plane captain directed him slowly over the flight deck. The first thing the pilot did was hover over the flight deck and let the helo crew out. They had about a five foot jump down to the deck. The pilot knew what needed to be done, but it took three times for him to ease down before he was able to place the helo's crippled starboard wheel safely onto the crash dolly. We had placed enough mattress pads on it so that when he landed, the helo was almost level. Once he put the full weight of the helo down, he still kept the rotors going until the blue shirts and helo crew could tie him down to the flight deck. When that was done, he cut power to the engines. He was safe, we were safe, and there is a God.

The next step was to get the helo out of the recover area. We had an answer for that too, a little friend we called "Tilly," our crash crane. Gary Borne cranked her up and drove her over to the helo, but since I had not been checked out on how to hook up the crash slings for the SH-3 helo and he had, I climbed up into the cab to relieve him. He was pissed, because driving Tilly was easy compared to hooking up the helo. But, that's the way things go. After Gary hooked up the crash sling, I was able to lift the helo up enough for the crew to strap on a temporary wheel and then a tractor, so it was towed out of the recovery area. Once the helo was down on the flight deck safely, it took us about an hour to get it out of the way to resume flight ops.

Let me pause here at this particular moment in time and relay to you what was going on. For one, the A-7 Corsair was in the air about ten feet above the deck with an arresting cable in his tail hook, soon to splatter on the flight deck. I was less than fifty feet away. To my left, about twenty feet away was an F-14 Tomcat in full afterburner ready to launch. To my right, about five feet away was a sixty foot drop down to Davy Jones' locker. It was not looking like a good day. I basically had two choices to make: one, become instant toast or two, find out if Davy Jones really does have a locker.

At that moment, I think every flight deck crash training film I had ever seen flashed through my mind and none of them were good thoughts. I had heard of an A-7 Corsair earlier on the Constellation that had done the exact same thing, but when he slammed down onto the flight deck, the nose gear slammed up and pierced the cockpit, right between the pilot's legs. The pilot was OK, but the A-7 was not. No fire, thank God, but it took a while to clear the recovery area. That was the thought I had in my mind.

I jumped up very quickly. The Shooter on cat #2 had seen what was happening and immediately went into an abort mode, shutting down the F-14. The A-7 slammed into the deck, but the nose gear held and did not go through the cockpit. The pilot was a little shaken, as was I, but we both managed to get the A-7 out of the recovery area without having to change skivvies. I was fine after that, but it did shake me up a little bit. Smitty came over and asked if I needed a break; I took him up on his offer. As my dad would say later on when I relayed this particular story, "Builds character, doesn't it?"