[GreenKeys] 50 plus years ago where were you? ---the Cuban missile crisis

[Don Robert House K9TTY]

I was very busy flying out of NAS GITMO day and night finding and discouraging Soviet submarines.
Most of the time was spent photographing Soviet ships leaving Cuba with Soviet missiles.

Our squadron won the FAIRWING 11 Battle Efficiency "E"  I still remember most of the time there.
By Christmas 1963 it was 100 degrees F in the day and Castro had cut off the water to the base.
We aircrews were issued salt water soap, but it did not work.  The USO troop came to entertain us
but at night in an open air theater all the insects on the island were attracted to the spotlights and so the
poor entertainers looked like they were performing in a snow storm of bugs.  God bless 'em.

One of the base technicians had fungus infections on his toes so badly the Navy doctor removed
his toenails twice! Still had problems but the good old USN would not transfer him stateside.

When working on the gear evenings we only had about half an hour to visit the base bar.  Each 
rum and coke was 25 cents.  We would order 4 or 5 at a time.  Very few sailors drank the beer as
it tasted awful with whatever preservative they put in it. One of the guys got so drunk he could not
stand so we carried him to the concrete barracks and rolled him onto his top rack.  Sadly we pushed
a little to hard and he went over the other side and hit the cement deck.  He did not feel well the
next day.

One evening I was driving a small service vehicle with a flat bed. Pressed the gas pedal just a
little too much and knocked the APS 20 magnetron tube off the back end.  Cost $$$$ I never did
pass the yellow equipment drivers license test...

Memories...

Don
K9TTY



On 18 Dec 2014, at 3:20 PM, Ron Kolarik wrote:

> Hiding under a desk for practice, duck and cover, an exercise in futility with a local SAC base and
> 60 miles from SAC hq. 5 years later looking at the Hawk batteries on Key West still pointed south.
> There was a standing joke that if the Hawks ever fired the barracks would be the only casualty, no
> very comforting if you happened to be in one at the time.
> 
> Ron
> K0IDT
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
> GreenKeys mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
> 
> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool: http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html