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Memories Page 3

What a trip!!!  I got on the Jose in Durban South Africa in Oct 66 and rode her until Sept. 69 when we deactivated her in Little Creek.  For the duration I was a CTM1....My first task was to learn all about that satellite dish we had up on the foc'lse(never could get the spelling of that work correct).  Only other guys that did more "time" than me were Ron Wiedermyer(CT1) at about 4 years, John Harney (DK2) who did somewhere just short of eternity on the boat, and old "Boats" Ogletree, who I think had also served under Noah on the Ark.......   Ulric "Monty" Montcalm lll

I can't believe that the real story tellers from our crew haven't told you about our flight to Cape Town.  Well Here Goes.
We were transported to Floyd Bennet Field from Brooklyn Receiving Station on what I seem to remember as an early September(1964) morning.  We waited for a couple of hours and no airplane.  Finally around 1100 Hrs this hellacious racket in the form of an Air force DC4 or DC6 pulled up in front of the terminal.  Bottom line on this airplane is it lookks like it's right out of the bone yare...dented, rivets missing and oil streaming from the engines.  If I remember right, senior member of the crew was an Air Force 1st Lt.  i think ther might have been a couple more 1st or 2nd Lt's and an enlisted airman for flight crew.  Nothing that would instill a whole lot of confidence in the passengers.  Anyway, this crate did manage to get us to Cape Town.  It threw 25 gallons of oil from one engine in between stops all the way there(or so we were told).  You got to know the crew wasn't any more enthusiastic about flying in this pig than we were.  They had to fly in another engine to get the Valdez crew we replaced out of Cape Town.  Word has it that the USAF crew got it back as far as the Azores and refused to fly it back across the Atlantic.
The flight to Cape Town was memorable...of course...what flight could you imagine with 29 sailors that wouldn't be memorable?  We departed Floyd Bennett and almost immediately put down in Mcquire AFB in New Jersey.  We spent several hours there in the enlisted club, which was probably a good idea since we couldn't imagine what was ahead of us, and that it would be better to sleep through it.  They never told us why we spent so long on the ground at Mcquire but I suspect it took that long to intimidate the crew into flying "th pig" to the Azores.  Seems to me that we took off from McQuire at, or just after sunset.  I, as most of the rest of the group, went immediately to sleep.  That was good!  What seemed like 12 hours later we landed in the Azores.  Acutally that was about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.  The USAF took us to the chow hall and we chowed down and then headed back to the plane.  I remember counting down the markers as we were taking off from the Azores...seemed like quite some time after we'd passed "#1" that "the pig" finally heaved a sigh and lifted off.  I swear we flew right up the side of a mountain because we were looking up at lights on the ground for some time after we got off the runway.  i think that's about the time the pool was started as to when the loose rivet in the engine cover would finally come out.  It did, but I don't remember when and who won.  Our next stop that afternoon was Wheelus AFB in Libya(remember, this is pre-Kadafi).  Not much happening here and they wouldn't let us off the base, so of course, we went to the club.  Like I said, not much happening here.  They had a band.  No single women, just dependents..so of course we started dancing with the dependents.  Well, the manager and their husbands didn't care for that too much so we started dancing with each other.  Nope, you can't do that in here either.  Then they tried to ignore us, bad move.  They wouldn't serve us and they wouldn't empty the ashtrays so we dumped the ashtrays on the floor and bought our drinks directly from the bar.  I believe that was right before they asked us to leave.  Anyway, these people weren't any fun at all.  We headed back to the transit barracks and spent the remainder of the evening chasing the Libyan house boys around with the fire hoses.  We were supposed to fly out the following evening because it would have been cooler crossing the Sahara at night.  Wrong!  When the Base Commander arrived in the morning and heard about our exploits he packed us up and had us off his by noon.  Have you ever flown across the Sahara Desert in the middle of the afternoon at 14,000 ft in an airplane whose AC isn't working properly?  Interesting flight to say the least.  Dehydration becomes a reality and you start wondering if the survival kit is in as bad a shape as the aircraft.  Next stop Lagos, Nigeria.  Yup, it was memorable.  We were the first U.S. military aircraft to ever land at this gawd forsaken place.  They parked us a good 200 yards from the terminal and threw a ladder up to the door.  It must have been 150 degrees on that cement, so we headed for the terminal.  The airport was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.  About half way to the terminal my buddy and I observed what looked like the entire population of the city of Lagos on the observation deck of the terminal, and, you could still hear a pin drop.  We discussed the fact that it was closer to the terminal than it was back to the plane and that they probably had AC in the terminal(and maybe some beer) so perhaps we should take our chances.  Turns out it was okay...all these people wanted was to see what Americans looked like.  From Lagos we headed for Leopoldville in the Congo.  Of course, no one told us there was a war going on there.  We landed in the middle of the night.  Word had it that friendly forces had secured the airstrip about 1/2 hour before we landed.  They wouldn't let us go into the terminal because they were afraid it would be targeted and we might get hit, so, we hung around outside "the pig" while she took on fuel.  About that time one of the jungle fighters came swaggering by wearing his jungle camies and carrying an Uzi.  No kidding, this guy must have been about seven foot, six inches and spoke the king's english.  He advised us that if anything happened it would be "you yanks" best interest to hit the ground.  Yeah, right!! Have you seen some of the stuff that was crawling around on that ground..I'll take my chances with the bullets.  From there it was a box lunch and on the Cape Tpwn.  Seems like we got to the ship about noon.  As we were shuffling up the gangway, I remember being rudely jarred back to reality by someone in khaki's(remember, this is the old Navy) grabbing me by the arm and telling me that I had the midwatch that evening. and oh yes, there will be a personnel inspection at 0900 in the morning.  The remainder of the tour was all downhill from there.  (Well, not really but it makes a good ending to the story).

Robert "Buck" Baker 64-65

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