In 1968, Attack Squadron Sixty-five detached aboard the USS KITTY HAWK on the waters off of the coast of Vietnam. Most days (and nights), when you are “on the line,” the pace is nerve racking, so you do most anything to break the monotony and thoughts of war. Our job was to maintain the communications, navigation, and electronic countermeasures equipment installed in the A-6A all weather attack aircraft. We had an inventory of twelve aircraft aboard.
The standard routine for beginning work on an aircraft just returning from a sortie (military term for group flight over the enemy) was to catch the pilot and bombardier/navigator (B/N) just as they were climbing out of the plane. The aircraft were brought down the aircraft elevator to the hangar deck with the engines still running. As soon as the Plane Director instructed the pilot to taxi into the hangar deck area and clear of the elevator, he would have the pilot cut the engine and a tug would be hooked up to the aircraft for spot parking. This is not an easy task considering that the KITTY HAWK had approximately 110 aircraft aboard. Of course, many aircraft remained on the flight deck some eighty feet above the hangar deck.
The various technicians, mechanics, and metalsmiths would stand close enough to the returning crew to begin to ask them the condition of the aircraft and its systems. One of my people received from the B/N that the intercom system (ICS) had a loud “wolf whistle” when the microphone switch was pushed. My sailors began to immediately troubleshoot the problem while I waited for the paperwork to arrive in my shop from Maintenance Control. Sure enough, the discrepancy was reported on paper as a loud “wolf whistle” in the ICS. When my men returned from the hangar deck, they reported that they had turned every switch and adjusted every knob, but could not duplicate the “gripe!”
I told them to just go ahead and sign the Maintenance Action Form off. This is what they put in the Corrective Action section: “Troubleshot ICS for loud wolf whistle. Found defective wolf and removed and replaced with non-whistling Ready-for-Issue wolf. Ground checked 4.0 (four oh). Feed wolf before next flight.”
I signed the form off while laughing my head off. Needless to say, the Maintenance Control Officer did not appreciate our attempt at bringing some smiles to a tired, war weary crew! But, that is another story.