In article ,
nt (Krztalizer) wrote:

Didn't we all know what the outcome would be and just thanked God it
didn't seem likely to happen?

The CW from the mid-80s was that we would *eventually* win the sea battles,
after the Soviets melted a few of our HVUs down to slag.


Did you guys ever have to fly with a funky "magic box" hooked into AC in
the cargo area and which was supposed to attract enemy missiles toward
it (and the helo) and way from Mother? They told us it would deflect the
missile path at the last moment...but none of us trusted it and vowed to
shove it out the door if the balloon went up.



From the SSN standpoint alone, a squadron
of six ASW helos (of which 1-2 were always being worked on in the hangar
deck) was not going to be enough to counter a Soviet SSN tour de force
against Mother. I think we both know how useless the VS assets always
seemed to be at real inner-zone ASW, but even if you throw in a bone for
them, we all pretty much agreed we wouldn't have a place to land if the
real **** happened.

My VS duty was with VS-31 on Ike - we re-made our squadron patch in 1981 to
reflect the fact that we had gone one entire year without submarine contact.
It was one of the real reasons that I went into helicopters;


I could never understand why the VS squadrons we did ASW exercises with
at the SOAR range never seemed to get sub contact or maintain contact on
a target we localized and passed off to them. Was it an avionics thing?
I know we were spoiled having active sonar and all that, but I would
think their active buoys and what I understood to be a more refined
acoustical analysis avionic package what have scored them some hits.


the other main
reason was that the VS AWs were just plain snobs - something I have never
heard
anyone say about us "knuckledragging SAR swimmer" AWHs. Its hard to be full
of
yourself when you are ****ing in your wetsuit to keep from freezing.

Yeah, I noticed that a bit with our CVW's VS squadron (VS-33), but
nothing too bad. We never really cared, as we proved time and time again
that we were far more effective at inner-zone ASW than they were.


Cheers,

--Mike