I found my Dads old Navy Slides (CVA-66 USS America world Cruise 1968)

[Gazzas]

Some great photos in there!

[JeepsGunsTanks]

2 hours ago, easixpedro said:

As a HUGE fan of 60s era NavAir, thanks for posting those! America showed up on Yankee Station right after the Kitty Hawk in 68. Her loss rates in the air-to-Air realm shocked a lot of Navy leadership and is one of the catalysts for Topgun.

 

Also, Clyde Lassen from HC-7 was awarded the MOH for rescuing VF-33 aircrew that those seats saved! Amazing stories all the way around...thanks again for sharing.

 

Peter

 

Peter, 

 Very interesting info. I remember my Dad calling the Kitty Hawk the "shitty kitty" as a kid, I wonder what nickname they had for the America. 

 

I have some new shots to put up. 

It's a little funny to think a pair of Officers, who are now in their 70s, look young. 

More young men who are now in their 70s!

I found this great site that has all kinds of info on US Navy ships and has the Cruise book for the America World Cruise, a long with others for ships dating back to pre-WWII in some cases. 

https://www.navysite.de/cruisebooks/cv66-68/000.htm

Sadly, my dad must have somehow missed making it into the VF-33 personnel roster in the book. It's OK Lt Wiest above didn't make the cruise book either.  I've spent hours reading through various cruise books, in particular the WWII carrier and battleship ones. 

 

I find this image really fascinating, I've always wondered how they kept track of the birds, and now I know. I bet its all in a computer now. 

Back to aircraft. A nice VA-85 Intruder.  I'm curious what the weird looking spike looking things on the Island are. Some kind of sensor or ECM device maybe?

I think this one is from the world cruise, but you can't see any markings that tell us what ship for sure.  It's also weird, some slides are dated, others not. Maybe they were in batches at one point but nearly 50 years bouncing around in boxes has mixed them all up. 

This one is from the world cruise. 

A pair of shots of a VA-64 A-4 about to be started, I think that's what the red hose is for.  One thing I noticed, the planes are much cleaner in all the slides than I thought they would be. 

These are from east coast workups in 69. 

And old Vigilante about to get a cat shot. I read somewhere these planes were all G limited and really old by this point. Wish I could remember the book. 

A nice shot of a Phantom cat shot. 

These images all seem like they got taken on the same day, maybe within minutes of each other.  Maybe from up on the Island?

Skywarrior going for a flight. 

The Samuel N. Moore, DD-747 a Sumner class destroyer commissioned June of 44, and only had about a year of service with the US Navy left. I'm pretty sure this is from an UNREP on the world cruise, because DD-747 was struck on 24 October of 69 and given to the Taiwan Navy on 10 December 69. She served with them until 1995.  

 

Again, thank you for all the comments and feedback. I have learned a lot from posting these here!

 

(Darn it, I got a few repeats in there, I'll fix it tomorrow I'm hitting the sack!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by JeepsGunsTanks

[blackbetty]

 

many thanx for posting these 

[MikeMaben]

More coolness , luv the A-4 shots.

 

 

[ziggyfoos]

Great stuff again!

 

4 hours ago, JeepsGunsTanks said:

I think this one is from the world cruise, but you can't see any markings that tell us what ship for sure.  

With the VA-86 A-7 in the pic that would place it as the USS America cruise.

 

[32scalelover]

Very cool photos!!!!  Thanks for posting.

[BiggTim]

These are great pics, really enjoyed them!!

[Kagemusha]

Thanks for sharing, gave me an awful lot of pleasure seeing them. Nice photo of your dad too. 

[easixpedro]

Holy smokes, those are great!

 

Love the status board. All the up/down arrows track the status of the airplanes. There’s 1 in the ready room, maintained by the Duty Officer and another in Maintenance (where I think this one is from). The 3 arrows are for the airframe, radar and ecm gear. Basically if a plane is full mission capable or not. You can see the ones needing test flights post maintenance too. And those boards only recently went away, but are still used frequently (especially on dets etc.). I can’t seem to find it, but I had a picture of an SDO on the first Lexington with a chalkboard version of the same thing!

 

Love seeing the seat shop guys with their stenciled shirts. They’re still called AMEs too-one of the few rates that hasn’t changed.

 

I flew off the Kitty Hawk back in the day. She was long in the tooth and ready for retirement after nearly 50 years of service...and we all called her that. Wish they’d turn her into a museum, but that’s a different conversation for a different thread.

 

thanks again for sharing!

Peter

[JeepsGunsTanks]

2 hours ago, easixpedro said:

Holy smokes, those are great!

 

Love the status board. All the up/down arrows track the status of the airplanes. There’s 1 in the ready room, maintained by the Duty Officer and another in Maintenance (where I think this one is from). The 3 arrows are for the airframe, radar and ecm gear. Basically if a plane is full mission capable or not. You can see the ones needing test flights post maintenance too. And those boards only recently went away, but are still used frequently (especially on dets etc.). I can’t seem to find it, but I had a picture of an SDO on the first Lexington with a chalkboard version of the same thing!

 

Love seeing the seat shop guys with their stenciled shirts. They’re still called AMEs too-one of the few rates that hasn’t changed.

 

I flew off the Kitty Hawk back in the day. She was long in the tooth and ready for retirement after nearly 50 years of service...and we all called her that. Wish they’d turn her into a museum, but that’s a different conversation for a different thread.

 

thanks again for sharing!

Peter

 

The Maintenance board is one of my favorite finds too,  a reminder the aircraft were not just pretty faces, they were complicated machines that took a ton of people to keep them flying.  It seems like a fool proof way to keep track of things, even with a computer system in place. 

 

Did each squadron have their own seat shop on the ship or did all the squadrons share one space? 

 

I recall my dad talking about being on the flight deck to troubleshoot seat and A/C problems on airplanes, does that mean he would had a colored shirt? Also pulling the seat arming pins and showing them to the pilot?

 

I'm really glad you guys are enjoying the pics. I have more, just don't have as much time during the week, the day job.   

 

Do you all want to see the line crossing pics? You can see some aircraft in the background here are there! The pics look a lot like the ones from the 40 and 50s, the footage shot on the Nimitz back in the early 2000s for the Carrier PBS doc looked very tame in comparison.  

 

Thanks for all the feedback!

 

An example from the line crossing , I have not re-scanned yet... 

Edited January 28, 2020 by JeepsGunsTanks

[Kagemusha]

I'd be delighted to see any photos you choose to share, and that last one, well, it just shows what happens when colonials have access to top level technology!

[Tony T]

Great pics. 

 

Regarding the hardware, it's interesting to note how much zinc chromate type anti-corrosion treatment was applied to wing folds — they weren't white as paint guides would have you paint them. 

 

Interesting to see what looks like an A-6B on America in the first batch from 1968. 

 

Loving this,

 

Tony 

[easixpedro]

11 hours ago, Tony T said:

Great pics. 

 

Regarding the hardware, it's interesting to note how much zinc chromate type anti-corrosion treatment was applied to wing folds — they weren't white as paint guides would have you paint them. 

 

Interesting to see what looks like an A-6B on America in the first batch from 1968. 

 

Loving this,

 

Tony 

Wrt corrosion,  the older carriers had exhaust stacks...stack gas is extremely corrosive.  Vn era a/c are no exception,  especially with the long line periods they had. I was doing some research and over 50% of the depot level repairs for NavAir in Cubi Point were for corrosion issues! I never knew...!

And agree, loving the pics

[Out2gtcha]

Wow these are SO great!

Its like looking through a time capsule window.

Thanks so much for sharing.

[JeepsGunsTanks]

Th

Another shot of 632 about to get a cat shot. 

I wonder what the airplane profiles under the cockpit mean? Did it crash into an F4, A4 and A7 or something?

 

More to come, the day job has been running late this week so I haven't had much time to scan new stuff yet 

 

Thanks again for all the great comments!