Quick Turnaround

Submitted by Nick Nickerson as related to him by Whizzer White, an old A4 pilot who had the duty one afternoon at VA-125, NAS Lemoore, Ca.


    NLC (Lemoore for all who live in Altoona) one Sunday just before the 'one stripe' fog season, I had SDO duty in 125.  Part of my duty was to go and count all the airplanes on the line, compare it to the number assigned to Squadron (like so many aluminum trays assigned to the chow hall), minus the ones on cross countries, down at Crows Landing or Dets at Fallon or elsewhere.

     I was standing in the open hangar doorway when an A-3 landed on one of the 13.5K runways.  He kept rolling and rolling and rolling.  I told the Line guys to get ready; we may have to do something with the Whale, probably coming to our line.  

He rolled to the end of the runway...a guy dropped out of the aircraft, walked in front of the airplane, took down his flight suit and CRAPPED on OUR runway.   The line crew expressed the question in everyone's mind as only a group of young, dirty, hot kids can do:  "Mr. White, did that SOB shit on our runway..?" 


"Yep"...  

The plane swallowed up the obviously 'ill-brought up' crewmember, turned around, taxied the 2+ miles to the other end of the runway, took off, waggled his wings and headed off,  I'm sure,  to another NAS to get some toilet paper to finish the job.

The Line Crew for the most part continued leaning on their swabs or making little circles with the deck brooms.  "Did you see that...:?".

"Yep! "

"What do we do, Mr. White?"  

"Log it," said I.

That started the scramble for most original log entry for the occasion.  It was agreed we probably shouldn't say "shit" in the logbook.  As I recall the winning watered down version was, "1632, a/c landed, dumped aircrewman, aircrewman dumped, aircrewman reembarked a/c, a/c departed pattern, resumed holiday routine"