Back to Iwakuni

When we arrived back to Iwakuni I got word that my brother was in town. His squadron of was in town. I only managed to see him once or twice while we shared a 3 month overlap together there. We worked different shifts and he stayed on the other side of the base. But it was still cool to see a family member after all that time isolated overseas. My parents did give us each a calling card to call home with. That's all I ever used it for was to call them. My mom recently held that against me when we were fighting. They gave it to me and I only used it to call them. Does this mean I should feel guilty for using it? I guess I should let it go... but it just bugs me.

I did manage to get stuck on mess duty while there. Every lower ranking Marine had to spend time on it. It wasn't that bad though. {I hope I'm not repeating myself here :P } We had to wake up early and we had more freedom than the time at bootcamp. So it gave us a break from fixing jets for about a month.

I considered myself one of the best electricians we had by this point. I could debrief a pilot and fix just about anything that came my way. There were occasions where the problem took several days to find and fix. That often meant that night crew would work extra long hours to meet up with day crew the next morning. After a few of these we went to a mid-crew. That meant coming in at around 10pm and working until 7am. There was often little work to do during that time period. I was put on mid crew a few times over my years there. I got my Collateral Duty Inspector (CDI) after about my first year in the shop. This was only given to competant Marines and usually only to CPLs and above. But since the guarenteed CPLs screwed up the promotion process and I knew about everything I could know I was given one. This CDI meant that you would sign off work as complete and all tools accounted for. Only QA could sign off safety items, like flight controls.

So anyway on mid crew there were two CDIs usually so if we weren't busy one could go home early. The awesome thing about mids during our Japan trip was chow. They had a Japanese cook that took pride in his omelette making skills. For example if he was spreading out the egg and a hole occured he would make a little patch just so it was perfect. This was by far the best meal of the day.

Being in Avionics meant that there were about 75% chance you would have a slow day. But when we were busy it would stay like that for a while. I loved the challenge of finding a problem and fixing it. Often this meant that the tech pubs would leave you hanging on what the problem was and you still had to figure it out. Tech pubs were supposed to cover every scenario and tell you how to fix a problem. When we weren't fixing jets we had 14 day inspections {Plane wash} and other regular inspection to keep us busy. If we had nothing to do we would often reduce down to a skeleton crew and prevent boredom to the best of our abilities. Sometimes we would get hacky sack games going, play cards what ever kept our minds off the clock.

The return trip to the states meant that we left our aircraft in Japan and we all flew a chartered 747 back with a layover in Alaska. Alot of people took leave when we returned but only 25% were allowed to take leave at any given time. When we returned that meant we had a new barracks to live in... the squadron that left gave up their barracks to the one returning. The same also applied to their hanger and aircraft. So this usually meant our nicely maintained aircraft would be swapped for at least a couple of "hanger queens". This meant they had serious problems and would be seeing a flight for a while. We often would use them for parts until the parts that kept them from flying came in.

I guess I forgot to mention one thing. As many probably know that the Operation Desert Storm occured just prior to us leaving for that West Pac. Only two squadrons were chose to go to the gulf from each coast. So we had the pleasure of launching all the aircraft that stopped over from the west coast as well as the ones station at our base. This was due to the fact that the personel supporting them had already been flown out to meet the aircraft over there. This also meant that our west pac got delayed by three months and one squadron stayed 9 months and another stayed just 3 months. Then it was our turn. If the war had lasted long enough we would probably have rotated over there.

When we returned we had a few replacement Marines waiting for us. They're squadron was dismantled under Clintons force reductions. We also had alot of senior Marines get early outs. Everyone that was staying knew this was going to hurt us in the long run. The most obvious consequences was the fact that from this moment on, with 2 less squadrons in Beaufort we would be deploying alot more. Often 9 months out of the year we would be on the road.

Enough for now....