As a young Aviation Electronics Technician (Radar)
Third Class Petty Officer (ATR3), I was part of a flight crew which flew
the highly modified Lockheed Super Constellation designated the WV-2 and
nicknamed the Willy Victor. My job on Crew Seventeen (the Thunderbirds)
was to assist in getting as much of the onboard electronics operational
as quickly as possible. You have to remember that this was a time of
vacuum tubes; transistors and solid state devices were just a figment in
the mind of some MIT engineers.
In addition to performing maintenance tasks, as a junior member of the
crew, my duties also included operating the Electronic Counter Measures
(ECM) equipment. This consisted primarily of pushing a toggle switch up
and down, while an electronic tuner scanned a band of frequencies. The
objective was to find the broadcast from a transmitter of a non-friendly
source and then sending the direction information to the Combat
Information Officer so he could plot the location of the transmission.
Now, one of the important things to know about our mission was that we
performed surveillance of any object on the surface of the North
Atlantic Ocean from Argentia to Lajes, Azores, an atoll in the middle of
the Atlantic. Ninety-nine percent of what we found were friendly surface
ships; freighters, cruise liners, and an occasional friendly military
vessel. By the very nature of the times, the vast majority of our
missions were very quiet and frankly quite boring. Our flights typically
lasted twelve hours, flying a huge rectangle over the ocean. The ECM
watch was for three hours at a time and shared with the other junior
technicians on the crew.
I was sitting the second watch on the ECM about two or three in the
morning. As usual, things were very quiet, except for the roar of the
four huge radial engines of the aircraft. I sat there operating the
toggle switch and watching the dials as my eyes began to get heavier and
heavier. The next thing I knew, the Crew Chief was tapping my shoulder
and telling me that the Plane Commander wanted to see me in the rear of
the aircraft. Oh my, Commander Long wanted to talk to me. I was
petrified. I walked to the aft of the aircraft between all of the Radar
consoles and operators. They kept their eyes glued to the huge round
scopes.
Commander Long was a stately looking man with graying temples and eyes
that could melt an iceberg. Although I am over six feet tall, I had to
look up to him. At the time, he seemed ten feet tall. He said, “Rotruck,
were you asleep on the ECM watch?” I felt the tremendous heat build up
inside of my olive drab flight suit. “Yes sir, I may have dozed off for
just a second!” Wrong answer! He said, “I stood next to you for a couple
of minutes and you didn’t know I was there.” I knew within seconds that
I was about to die. He said, “If you ever fall asleep on watch on my
crew again, I will personally throw you off of my airplane, regardless
of the altitude!” In twenty years of Naval Service, I never fell asleep
on watch again!