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What a gift after flying the P5.Power to spare... I became a flight engineer in VP-45 and loved every minute of it. I was trained by Walter T. Atwell an ADCS and veteran of WW II. I finished my Navy flying days in VP-44 after about 6,000 hours on the P3s
I spent lots of time over the Med, Carribean, and Atlantic oceans looking for subs, Russian trawlers etc. I also spent some time inside the Artic Circle at a place called Thule, Greenland. The only thing green there was PAINT. Everything else was white and frozen. When we began patrolling the Artic area we wore "poopy suit" liners and cold weather survival gear. It could be 40 below outside and we would crank up the air conditioning in the airplane and still sweat. One day we did a calculation. It would take anyone about 2 hours minimum to find us if we ditched and our survival gear would only keep us alive for about 30 minutes in the icy water. Needless to say , we put the survival gear on the shelf and got comfortable. (So much for DoD planning).
I spent some time in Adak, Alaska an island in the Aluetian chain. What a paradise! Other than the grass and Caribou the place was pretty quiet. We had storms called "Willy Walls"
( high speed, short time white outs) and earth tremors daily. One of the tourist attractions was a Japanese minefield left over from World War II. There were girls behind every tree. (You guessed it, no trees!)
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