Please support our troops...They are fighting for your safety and
freedoms. War is never good. People get killed, but, an outcome for the greater good is all we can hope for.
Support the American Red Cross.
The peaceful use of a war machine.
Known
as Patrol
Squadron Twenty-Three, VP-23, since 1948, it was re-established as Weather Reconnaissance Squadron 3,
VPW-3 on 17 MAY 1946 as a part of the Navy's hurricane hunters,
(history).
The insignia showed it's dual purpose, there were two weather signal (hurricane)
flags, umbrella and a police helmet superimposed on a thundercloud. With a
short break in service from Jan-May 1946, VP-23 history can be traced back as
far as May 1922 and was at Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec 1941. VP-23 was very
instrumental in weather reconnaissance until about 1950 when her primary mission shifted to anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In 1952 the
squadron was
split, 7 officers and 109 enlisted remained as VJ-2 a utility weather squadron and VP-23,
the ASW arm, and her homeport were moved from NAS Miami to NAS Brunswick, Maine
out of hurricane alley to become know as the "Seahawks". The P2-V's
showed up shortly after replacing the PB-4's. The P-2's were updated
to P-3B's and VP-23 retired the Navy's last P-2 in January 1970 . I was assigned to the
"Seahawks" of VP-23 years later from 1 Dec 1980 to 28 Sep 1984
and by that time weather recon was done by NOAA with the WP-3Ds. The
squadron was disestablished ten years later on 28 Feb
1995 during the Clinton administration cuts.
We deployed aircrews with maintenance in Support of
Operation Urgent Fury in
1983. I was with them as we operated from
NAS Brunswick, Maine and deployed to
NAS Keflavik,
Iceland; NS Rota, Spain; NAS Lajes, Azores; NAS Bermuda, and I stayed behind
when they went to NAS Sigonella, Italy in 1984 and transferred to the Personnel
Support Activity Detachment at Navy Ships Parts Control Center, Mechanicsburg,
Pa. Since I never went with the aircrews, I never got the Armed Forces
Expeditionary Medal the aircrews got, but I had to prepare their orders and do
all the paperwork back at the hangar. During the 1983 Bermuda deployment
admin boasted of preparing 23,000 original documents and orders, processing
5,000 paychecks amounting to more than $700,000 and sorting
thru 250 sacks of
mail (way underestimated, I did much of it) and some 4,000 phone calls.
Don't forget admin was in charge of daily swabbing and buffing the over 100,000
sq ft of squadron deck space during the 140 days in Bermuda.
As
a Navy Personnelman for with VP-23 and my job was admin and personnel. I
was the guy who had to do the paperwork to notify the families of a casualty.
Thank god we had only one non-combat death during those 4 years. I kept
track of where everyone was assigned, who to notify if you got injured, and put
in medical treatment and transferred to a hospital. We document your training,
whether or not your training was proper for the task assigned. I can only
guess at the size of the mountain of paperwork just to train a battalion for
warfare. If I slacked off you did not get your pay so your family could eat and
your family and dependents at home could not get into see the doctors, you did
not get your mail from home. The Disbursing Clerks processed the payrolls
but they never did anything without the paperwork we had to sent them and we
handed them out.
The Navy's The P-3 "Orion"
The
P-3C
"Orion" is a land-based, long-range, anti-submarine warfare
(ASW) patrol aircraft. This P-3C is loaded with
Harpoons and
Sidewinders, the bomb bay doors are open indicating it
probably
deployed a weapon in this training exercise. The Harpoon is an
all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile system adapted for in-flight
use with P-3 aircraft in 1979.
The first operational firing was on VP-23's LJ1, on the edge of a hurricane
during a training mission.
The
oil painting of
the photo that hung in the CO's Office was representative and shows the
menacing hurricane's clouds in the background. I still have a coffee cup with
the Harpoon logo on it around here someplace and a
8x10 photo of the the painting was
presented when I reenlisted. I
remember all the training
on the hangar deck the Ordanancemen did to
load and drop these with a P-3C.
By 1950 the
then PB4-Y squadrons
eventually became primarily
Patrol and Recon units and we specialized in surface, anti-submarine, and
air-shore warfare. VP-23's patch still had the remnants of the weather
recon mission hidden in the lightning bolt. Our job was looking for enemy ships and subs in and on the vast oceans.
We were well suited to assist Search and Rescue missions due to slower
airspeeds, to find downed airmen and
sailors lost
at sea.
NOAA uses the Navy's P-3 "Orion" Airframe
In 1973 NOAA ordered two new P-3's from Lockheed and
outfitted them as
Hurricane
Hunters for NOAA's
Aircraft Operations Center.
When delivered in 1976, NOAA's new
WP-3D's
were well suited for the job, and replaced the units which used the
C-130 "Hercules" airframe which was on loan from the
Air Force's Hurricane
Hunters.
The
Navy's P-3 airframe was used due to it's ease of converting reconnaissance radar, avionics, and sono-bouy launch tubes
for
dropwindsonde,
AXBT
deployment capabilities and weather radar refits, without redesigning the airframe. The bomb bay
now has
a C-Band research radar radome instead of weapons, the bomb bay could also
be refitted to carry cargo. I
had a few chances to use the operational radar in our aircraft for a few
hours under the watchful eye of the radar officer during a training excercise in
1981 while en route from NAS Keflavik, Iceland to the Valkenburg Airbase in the
Netherlands where we spend 3 days on R&R in Amsterdam. I got to look at
the storm clouds ahead, and surface and air contacts and played with the
knobs. It would be a great walk in
the clouds if I could take a flight on a NOAA Hurricane Hunter Aircraft or
even see what they had on the ship. (I bet there's a flight galley onboard
and a few bunks in her tail too, just like its Navy counterpart). I took a
nice snooze under a port side electronics console...my assigned seat was
sandwiched between the avionics lockers.
Now? Some things have changed in 15 years, but much has not.
