50 years ago today

Paul, did they ever make a movie about this incident? I'd think it would be
a really great flick if they did it right.

A lot of people don't realize how close [in all 1983] we got to war with the USSR.

In 1983 I was assigned to a squadron on board the USS Midway. Having just been transferred from the USS Ranger. I worked the deck as a jet mechanic 'troubleshooter' and final inspector on jets going to the catapults.

It was common for us to get Bears and Badger [USSR recon planes] coming out of Cam Rhan Bay in Vietnam to take pictures of the carriers, any where in the Pacific or Indian Oceans. They were always escorted by our fighters off of the carriers anywhere within 200 miles. It was usually pretty fun on the deck to see a hundred odd guys mooning and shakin their "willies" [pre- women on combat ships] at these planes as they took pictures while they passed by escorted. (Also to be followed by 'fishing boats' with 5 million dollars worth of antenna on them, lol)

Anyway, one day all the closed circuit that showed any kind of longitude and latitude were turned off, which was strange but not unheard of, to be on the fritz once in awhile.

After working my usual 12 hour day on deck I was racked out, sometime in the middle of the night we had an 'NOW.. launch the alert 5' alarm go off, (alert 5 means the cats have to be loaded with jets ready to go in literally 5 minutes)
Went to the deck, as I said wasn't to unusual to get them.
Launched those off and went to get some rest before recovery. Roughly twenty minutes later, got another alert 5. After the third time I just stayed on deck all night. When we recovered the first jets I noticed a couple of pilots literally shaking saying they were "full", meaning that their tracking was full. Now F-14s could track 24 targets at a time A-6s somewhere around 18.
This was my first clue that something strange was happening, but when I looked up and saw a formation of Migs fly over the carrier and light up the afterburners (to this day I'm convinced it was for effect) I knew we were at war or we were going to be. Jets everywhere.

The one picture I still have burned in my head is the Soviet PBY flying lengthwise down the carrier at flight deck level (roughly 90 feet) and about 50 to 100 ft off,( from ME) unescorted, just after dawn.The big red star on the side, very prominent.
Remember we had no idea on the deck, what the hell was going on.
I didn't find out till later that we were sitting off the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Which, as heard it described later, would be the equivalent of the Sovet Pacific Fleet sitting off Hawaii.
The Soviets launched every freakin thing they had at us.
'We' were playing one of the most dangerous games of 'chicken' I have ever seen. One wing clip, one mistaken shot, one crash, we would have been at war with the USSR within seconds.

Now this is the only backup I have ever seen to this story, which I never saw in any papers, not The Stars and Stripes (military paper, which doesn't really surprise me) none, no reporting of this.

I could have sworn this was after the shoot down of the Korean Airliner off Sakhalin. This puts it before.
Who knows. All I know it was pretty hairy for a couple of day's.

From the CIA Website

I'll say one thing for RR.... he had some clankers.

"One cannot deal from a position of weakness" was something we could both agree on.


Jim