Another good sea story-repeated from another post I made at another blog-a long time ago and in better times:
A long time ago and in a galaxy far away……………
The term did not have the same perjorative meaning that it has now. This post is not about a neocon. Its not about politics. Its not taking a position about a war-any war.
Its about a group of guys, getting together with time on their hands-to play a good hearted joke on a shipmate. One who within two days of arriving in the squadron had earned his callsign. 
Now, truth be told this fellow is a good soul and in the day, I counted him as a friend. However like the unflappable Henery Hawk from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons-Chicken Hawk never met an argument he would not enter, even when it was probably not a good idea to do so. In the day he was young, thin, and was what one would say “intense” when it came to the business of AEW and learning the trade of an E-2 NFO. It was the job of your humble scribe to teach him the trade-and how not to to totally alienate your air wing buddies-during the 1987-1988 cruise of USS Coral Sea. (CV-43).
Because the guy was so passionate about things it meant that he was easily excited, and that is like blood in the water to a bunch of sharks fellow JO’s.
Of which we had more than a few. VAW-127 was a product of the Reagan era expansion of the fleet. When first it was put together, they put a CO and and XO in, 4 Department Heads-all of whom did not get along so well. As for the rest of the wardroom? It was all nuggets who grew up without what I would call, some good seasoning. (Ask SJS..). As a result, by the time I got there-it was a nut-house.
Now the powers that be, had recognized that this was the case, and in an effort to make a correction, they moved to bring some more “seasoning to the squadron”. That was of benefit to me, since there were more than a few folks pushing me to go do something non-fun and potentially disastrous like being a flag aide. In the words of Clint Eastwood, ” a man has to know his limitations”. So because of the need for experience and my fervent desire to avoid service in ships company or a flag staff, I got the nod to go to the squadron for a CAT-1A tour ( Second sea tour in a squadron). Better to be lucky than good!
For the most part, these guys had the flying bit down. However, what they failed to understand was that what they did was part of a bigger picture. And that, at the end of the day, no matter how well they did-there was still an inbred bias against them and their chosen ( or Navy chosen) choice of airframe . Us older folks were brought in to try to bridge that gap. As a senior LT and a RAG instructor with about 700 more hours than the most experienced NFO of the bunch it gave me a forum to work from. In fact in my check in interview with the CO he made it very clear to me that: a) I had sold my soul to the “company” and I had damn well better understand company policy, which meant his policy and b) my role was to be an ombudsman of that policy to the JO’s.
Anyway-Chicken Hawk shows up and earns his nom de guerre. Soon after we departed on cruise. The “hawkster” earned his stripes rather quickly-in both flying and his ground job. We all liked him-because he was a likeable guy. We also learned quickly-that he could be had.
So one night in Turkey-after having consumed over half a bottle Chivas’ version of liquid courage and telling the CO everything that was wrong with the squadron-the hawk had rendered forth that he was looking forward with great anticipation to receiving his Centurion patch. Something that looked like this.
Now mind you that during the day-flight jackets that said one had –been there, done that-were the rage. One could still have tons of patches on the leather jacket- a policy that has since changed. The green nomex jaket is now the “I’ve been there” jacket. ( In fact, I got a new leather jacket rather than have to remove all of my patches-its my sincere hope to give mine to my son someday when I move on…..). So while it was understandable, like lusting after someone’s sister-it was probably an emotion best left unsaid.
You see, for an NFO-particularly an E-2 NFO-the wearing of a centurion patch was something of a quandry. You did not fly the pass, yet you suffered equally the risk. Even more so, because you were totally putting your life in the hands of someone who may or may not have skillfully mastered the art of flinging 44,500 lbs of Grumman steel onto a carrier deck. Unlike the A-6 NFO’s- who took pride in “talking a pilot aboard”-it was our place to keep still and hope that the pair in the cockpit had not picked today to have a ramp strike.
So while I can accurately say that while every E-2 NFO took great pride in his centurion patches (I have 8 of them on 4 different carriers) it was a solitary pleasure we (for the most part) kept to ourselves. Chicken Hawk, having made it clear this was important to him , had provided a golden opportunity for our intrepid group of JO’s to decide that this would be a great opportunity to mess with a fellow squadron mate. And so a plan was hatched.
In the Navy, back in the days before e-mail, Blackberries, video teleconferences, and scanned PDF documents, there existed one way to get policy out the masses: The Naval Record Message. The Navy used, and still uses this vehicle to put out items of interest, policy, and changes thereto. It is also used to transmit official orders. Today they seem insignificant-given the greater accessibility of e-mail, but back then-they were a big deal. All Navy messages sent to the squadron, were assembled by the communications officer each morning and placed on a trifold, metal board-usually manufactured by the folks in Airframes, and delivered to the SDO’s desk while at sea. Ashore, this folder of steel had better be sitting on the Skippers desk before he came into work-else-wise it sucked to be the COMM O.
So with demonic determination, our group of young and able criminals determined to write a message that looked just like a Naval Administrative Message and which said something like this: “Henceforth, Centurion patches may only be worn only by designated Naval Aviators or personnel actually operating the controls”-or something to that effect. Bottom line, no NFO’s could wear a centurion patch according to the fake messge they had drafted up.
Now mind you-back in 1988, one could not simply type up such a thing in Word and print it. Oh no…… You had to type it with an OCR ball or printer (Optical Character Reader) and have it scanned by the comm center on the ship-in order to give it the appearance of a “real” naval message. It would then normally be transmitted. There was a way to scan the message, without transmitting it-which gave it the look and feel of a real naval message.
It was in this detail, that our old friend Murphy intervened. Had the youngin’s asked any of us “old hands” we would have reminded them that a copy of any message transmitted by a squadron was sent to the CAG staff. ( I used to use this as a way to cross check we were getting all of our messages…). The JO’s behind this particular plot did not know this and assumed that having bribed someone to scan the document they were done.
The rest you can probably figure out by now. 1) The “fake” message was put on our message board. 2) Chicken Hawk comes into the ready room, grabs coffee, sits down to read the messages the way a good naval officer should. Above said message is at the top of the message board, with a note in Red Ink ( only to be used by the CO-but some wag had stolen a red pen) that said, ” About G*damn time!” ( Our CO was a pilot). Chicken Hawk lights off and proceeds to render a long tirade about “those f**king bastards in the Navy, what the hell do they know about those of us sweating our b**ls off at sea”-yada yada yada. Meanwhile above said message is delivered by copy to the CAG staff. (The poor RM who accepted the bribe forgot about that detail).
As I mentioned, those of us in the know and working in operations, made it a point to pass through CAG Operations office at least once a day-and scan their message board. Well it seems the Assistant Operations officer from one of our A-6 squadrons ( CVW-13 was one of the few in the mid 80?s that had two assigned) . He was an NFO. He Xeroxed above said message and before long it had made the rounds of every ready room on the ship. Suffice it to say VA-55, VA-65, VAQ-133, and un-inidicted co-conspirators in VAW-127 were less than amused. The whining began and reached a crescendo at the CO’s meeting which, as fate would have it occurred that evening. The CO, who it seems had glossed over the message without really reading it, now demanded to see if he could have a copy of NAVADMIN XX-XX. He left the ready room shaking his head.
Now I was not in the plot, but I found it astounding that such a message could come out. Soon there after the ready room phone rang. It was the leader of the plot. Would I come see him in his stateroom? He was very concerned when I arrived. Seems a buddy of his was in 65, and was not happy about this annoucement of Navy policy. How did they get the message?
Why wouldn’t they I asked. It’s a NAVADMIN. And soon thereafter the details were revealed. “You idiot!” I remember saying, “don’t you know that a copy of every message into the comm center gets given to CAG. You do know there are no private messages on a carrier don’t you?”
Long story short, I told him that he was going to go see the skipper. I’d go with him-but HE was going to give the old man the bad news. Because by this time the whole thing had become a big deal within the senior leadership within the wing. Who assumed it was just lousy decision making by the higher ups. When they found out it was bogus-just the result of the machinations of some devilshly inspired JO’s-well that was probably not a good thing to be telling a CAG with a known mean streak.
End of story, our erstwhile JO told the Skipper who adminstered what I considered to be a mild ass chewing-having cut my teeth earlier with some real flamers-and then he went to see CAG. In a tribute to what I consider to be a mark of his leadership, none of the rest of us heard a thing about it again. Except for him to stand at an AOM and tell us the message had been transimitted in error and that there was no change in Navy policy.
As for Chicken Hawk? Well the folks just looked for new place to stick the needle. However, within 1 day of receiving his CV-43 Centurion patch-it was on his flight jacket.
Been there-done that.