Nearly ten years before the original "Top Gun" hit the screen I was a rescue swimmer in a Navy helicopter squadron aboard USS Constellation. The air wing was deploying with F-14's for the first time and making a big deal of it. We rotary wing guys quickly got pretty tired of the jet jocks swaggering about the flight deck on their way to or from their new toys, sneering at us in our beat up, twenty year old H-3's with oil and hydraulic fluid running down the sides of our aircraft as we stood our alerts on the front of the angle deck before and after each day's flight operations. The jocks all proudly wore their Grumman-supplied "Anytime, Baby...!" patches on their freshly pressed flight suits
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(yes, you can iron Nomex if you work at it long enough), while we hung out with our flight suits at half mast, tied around our waists, oblivious to the fuel, oil, and other substances soaked into the fabric (fire resistant? Yeah, right!).
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Me, on a different ship, with a different type of helicopter, and properly attired and groomed, which was really different for me...
The fact that the helicopters were the first aircraft off the deck in the morning, providing, among other things, plane guard duties, in case any of those fine fixed wing fellows had some sort of unsolvable problem requiring them to leave the comforting confines of their cockpit and take a swim in the deep blue sea, made no impression on the jocks, nor did the fact that we were also the last aircraft back on deck at the end of flight ops each day, for the same reason. There was also the fact that we rescue swimmers were enlisted swine, who had no more business wearing a flight suit, no matter how sloppily, than a goat has wearing a fedora, as far as the jocks were concerned. In fact, the jocks would more likely give precedence to the goat, Academy mascot that he was...
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My squadron patch (Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron SIX, what a mouthful!) and a custom patch that we swimmers had made in the Philippines.
When we arrived at Subic Bay in the Philippines we decided to get a little of our own back. We commissioned a small roadside t-shirt shop in Olongapo to make a dozen or so bright yellow shirts with the image of an H-3 in a hover over the ocean, with a dripping wet two-tailed cat hanging miserably from the rescue hoist cable, and underneath, a legend that said, "Anytime, Baby!" They turned out incredibly well, and we began to wear them while standing next to our aircraft as we did before, now with big s**t-eating grins on our faces as the jocks walked by, scowling fiercely at our presumption. Had we no respect for our betters? Um, nope. The fighter squadron skippers loudly and profanely demanded that our CO forbid the wearing of those t-shirts anywhere aboard ship. He, a Vietnam era combat search and rescue pilot with many rescues under hostile fire to his credit, loudly and profanely refused to do any such thing. The whole kerfluffle was carried to the air wing commander, himself a combat veteran in the attack community (A-7's) and former CO of the Blue Angels, who told the jocks, with a twinkle in his normally steely blue eyes, to individually and collectively lighten up and drop the subject. Peace settled once again on the flight deck of the mighty Connie and flight operations continued apace. The jocks quit complaining, though they never really got the point of the exercise, to wit: We fling-wing types could never do what they could in their new, amazingly capable and formidable fighter craft, but our contribution to the air wing was not to be overlooked nor denigrated, either. We ended the deployment after six months without losing a single aircraft from the air wing, and as eager as we were to get a rescue we were happy to have it so, since doing our job meant that someone else was having a really bad day, and we wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Sadly, though the quality of the art on those yellow t-shirts was top notch, the quality of the shirts themselves was far below any reasonable standard. My shirt fell to pieces in less than a year, and none of the others lasted much longer. There remains not a single example (nor any photos, as far as I can determine) of the shirt that caused such consternation among the pilots of VF-24 and VF-211 and such mirth among the rescue swimmers of HS-6 (and the pilots too, truth be told). The crew of the good ship Constellation were amused for a time, and the deployment went smoothly. The alarms and excursions of later years were largely missing from this cruise and those of us who remain recall it with fondness and nostalgia.
It was a good cruise.