Comments

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  Leonard R Hittle June 24, 2014 at 7:59pm

  Also remembering about the Malta Hilton, do you remember sometime during that weekend in the middle of the night some of the guys wheeled Wally (Rabbit) into the room on that serving cart, he was posing like Cleopatra or something, funny. I know we had those Malta Hilton Special wine bottles stacked up outside the room in the hall...I think that's where the cart came from, the staff was trying to clean up that mess, they hauled them away a couple of times. I think we had half the squadron up there at one time or another, I remember they asked us not to come back very politely when we checked out, lol. I was also remembering about that storm when they cancelled flight ops that time..."All hands stand clear of all weather decks due to high winds and heavy seas!"...then they called us right back up there so they could launch the helos from HS3 to haul those Greeks off that freighter that was sinking. All I remember is they wanted us to put those damn jury struts on the planes. I was one of the smaller guys so they tied a rope on me and I had to go up on the wing and try to put those struts on...I lost the first one overboard and decided that whole idea wasn't too healthy and I came down and we gave up on the struts. That was the only time I ever remember them cancelling flight ops due to the weather. I read later that the name of that ship was the Flamingo and they pulled 20-22 people off her that day.  8) 
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  Leonard R Hittle June 24, 2014 at 7:40pm

  Hiya LR been awhile so I figured I would bug ya. I was sitting here remembering, as I do more and more the older I get it seems. I was thinking about when we were at sea in 71 and collided with the USS Cannisteo. Do you remember that? I was up on deck, back in the sneak spot when it happened. We had been playing some games with some Bear bombers that kept taking off and circling around their base so they had a couple of VF74 phantoms on the forward cats on alert. The story I heard was that those bombers headed out towards us and we launched the phantoms to intercept them...one actually did come out to the ship and do a fly by, with the phantoms tucked alongside.. In order to launch the alert cap we had to do an emergency break away from the tanker that was alongside at the time. All I know is it got real crazy real fast, I heard the emergency break away alarm on the whistle, general quarters sounded, and then a collision alarm. I didn't know what the hell was going on! I was in the cockpit, some guy came running down the starboard catwalk yelling for people to clear the catwalk I think. I looked into the rear view mirror and all I could see was this humongous smoke stack heading towards the ass of my plane. First and only time I ever jumped out of the cockpit without using the boarding ladder, hehe. I ran for the center of the deck. The stack left a perfect indent in the life nets along the number four el and one of the booms took the tails off two vigilantes and a hummer just forward of my plane...I took pictures of it afterwards. Anyway, they got the phantoms in the air. I was reading a report on the Cannisteoo history and they say there was something wrong with one of the gyros on the FID, I heard the aft hose didn't uncouple and swung us into them, which doesn't sound right, that would have to have been one strong hose.
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  Leonard R Hittle January 11, 2014 at 11:51am

  Hey LR, I was just sitting here thinking about your call the other night and I got thinking about the guys in the berthing compartment that used to get an aerosol can and lift back the curtain on our racks and torch that sucker off for a sec...a real eye opener cause you never knew when it was coming...just the screen would fly open and whoosh! Who was that? I'm thinking Wheatley was one of em and maybe BJ Gavek too but can't remember for sure now. Do you remember how the LR AR's Kid thing came about? The guys always called everyone by either their last name, first initials or a nickname and me and you had the same first initials. One day we were talking and you were telling me about your Dad and that's where that came from. "Jingles" got stuck on me later on cause Wally said when I laughed, I sounded like Jingles...Gene Autry's sidekick on that old western show. Wally's nickname was "Rabbit", lol. Nicknames were weird...some good...some not so good.
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  Leonard R Hittle December 9, 2013 at 4:32pm

  Hey Larry, hope you had a good T day and Merry Christmas. I sure do remember the Malta Hilton. I think that room became a focal point for half the squadron that weekend. I remember we had the staff working overtime bringing up Malta Hilton Wine and removing the empties stacked out in the hall. Do you remember somebody wheeling Don "Rabbit" Wallace into the room on a gurney one of those nights? He was fine, just making a spectacular entrance, hehe. I remember someone washing glasses in the bidet too, God that's scary. We ran into a bunch of Swedish merchant seamen at some disco that weekend too. If you remember that was one of the last times we had to wear our blues on liberty. I believe you had to be E5 or above to wear civvies, maybe E4 or above. Like you said it was a long time ago now. But Zumwalt changed that so we could all wear civvies on liberty soon after that. I think the Brits were getting ready to turn Malta back to the Maltese then too or something was going on because there were British MPs patrolling all over the place. Anyway when we checked out they asked us not to come back, lol. Hell of a weekend! Look through my pictures, I have some pics in there of liberty in Malta.
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  Leonard R Hittle May 29, 2013 at 12:48pm

  Hey LR, Happy Mem day. I don't remember getting in on that thing with Tribke. Don't know how I misssed it...think I saw the results though. He showed up in the line shack clean shaven one day...didn't say much about why he shaved, lol. That must have been when it happened, sounds like something we would have done, lol. Too funny. Did you see those pics on my page of Crone? We took him down and painted him all up with iodine or something for his birthday. That shit don't come off easy!! Hey I wanted to ask you something about Slats but I'll do it in an email. Anybody know whatever happened to Gunner Rowe? I saw below that you and Kim were talking about Shakey Jake, I was starting to think he had something against my bird, lol. We had just got the tankers and he took 523 up on her first flight and guillotined the drogue hose. They lost all the hydraulics in that system when they tried to reel it back in because somebody in Norfolk left a "B" nut loose way up in the fuselage somewhere. They flew it back on the back up. Whole ass end of the plane was covered in hydraulic fluid and everything aft of the chute receptacle underneath was gone. A day or so later they hung a buddy store on it and Jake took it up and the damned buddy store blew up...blew the whole ass end out of the  buddy store and took all the antennae off again. When I told him he looked at the B/N and said "that must have been that bump we heard when we lost that fuel." Ha ha.
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  Leonard R Hittle May 15, 2013 at 11:29pm

  Thanks LR, for some reason I thought Slats had a bomber. LOL I'm gettin old bro. Just got off the phone with Larry Cooper a little bit ago. Had a nice long chat...got caught up a little bit. God, the memories.
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  Leonard R Hittle May 15, 2013 at 6:42pm

  Hey, I was trying to remember last night...who was the fourth tanker pc in 71. There was you, Danny, and me, but I can't remember for the life of me who the fourth guy was.
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  Leonard R Hittle May 15, 2013 at 6:39pm

  Larry, thanks for accepting my request. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I have a bunch more...but I'm not sure how many they will let me post on here. I wanted to get the ones I had of the guys up here first...they are most important, the others are shots of flight ops, sightseeing overseas, and misc stuff.

                                       Jingles
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  Leonard R Hittle May 15, 2013 at 12:25am

  Hey Larry, do you have a computer? If so how can we exchange email addresses? I just put a bunch of pictures up on my page...I think, lol. I sent you a friends request too. You may have to approve that or something before you can get into the pictures. I think I set it up that way. Still learning this site. I hooked up with Larry Cooper, he sent me a phone number, I'm gonna try out maybe tomorrow. Lookin forward to hearing from you. 8)
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  Leonard R Hittle May 13, 2013 at 10:39am

  Hey LR, I remember calling you LR...AR's Kid, lol. Many years ago, bud. Do you remember what that skivvie thing was all about? We could never get Dale Krienke out of his rack in the morning and somebody said one day that if we stretched a pr of dirty skivvies over his pillow, bet he would get up then. Don't know who came up with the idea now, but Slats and me got a pr of unclaimed skivvies out of the returned laundry and got a chocolate bar from the gedunk and the rest was history, lol. We put em over his pillow when he left and when he came back he was all pi--ed off. Nobody would tell him who did it though, they just laughed  at him and that made him even madder. Never a dull moment!