Apparently the frequency of my normal talking voice is within the register of the torque of the motors driving the four P-3 props on the US Navy's anti-submarine warfare airplanes. So if I was flying out of Naval Air Station (NAS) Midway to the Broad Ocean Area (BOA) of the Pacific, or back and forth between the islands of the Midway Atoll and airfields on Oahu Isand in Hawaii (Hickam Air Base that uses the same runways and taxiways as Honolulu International Airport; or NAS Barbers Point on the leeward side of Oahu), if I wanted to make myself understood to aircrew members while I was flying on P-3s, I had to make my voice sound very low. It was an interesting sensation to know I was talking, but not being heard.
The second time I was on Midway for the Pony Express missions when we were flying in areas where Soviet radar ships were floating around exercising for and then gathering data on the re-entries of Soviet ground-launched and submarine-launched missile tests was in the summer of 1982. (The first time was between December 4th,
1981, and January 17th, 1982.) For many years the Soviets had tested their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) by both launching them from their internal home territory (in the case of missiles underground in silos or above ground test launch pads) or around the edges of the coasts (in the case of submarine launched missiles) which were launched from subs in territorial waters or from test launch pads). They did these tests for many years, and sometimes the terminus of the test was on the long far eastern peninsula called Kamchatka; and sometimes the re-entry capsules sans warheads came down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean as far away from any islands large enough to have airfields on them, but exactly where the three, four or five Soviet radar ships were waiting.
I've written about this previously, so I hope that if you have read a version of it before that you will either indulge me or ignore this.
So anyway, a few days before Christmas in 1981, I was standing to the right and slightly behind the commander of a P-3 as we took off to head south southeast of NAS Midway at about 0330. As we ascended, we left the darkness behind us and looked down at the curve of the earth below us outlined by a hazy grey glow and the gradual fade of it revealing the dark blue darkness of the whole supra-atmosphere doted with only a few of the brightest stars. And as we headed out on our course, at the very edge of the curving horizon of our Terra were the stars of the Sotheen Cross, giving the impression of a cross laying on its side, it's longest line terminating at the visible penumbra far to the very left of the command aviator's cockpit window and both ends of the short arm beam suspended in low earth orbit space, or so it seemed.
When Frank, our skipper pointed the constellation out to me, I was extremely surprised. The reason we could see the Southern Cross had to do with our altitude and the date and time we launched in order to fly for almost four hours to the area where the Soviet ships were set up. By that time the had been joined by two United States ships. One was a platform with a lot of radars and other sensors, the USNS Obsevation Island (AKA "The OI"). The other was a United States Navy destroyer with a mission to protect the OI from any kind of Soviet interfeeence.
But wait . . . I started to tell you about what happened during the second time I was on an island in the Midway Atoll flying on US Navy P-3s and US Air Force C-130s for the Pony Express mission, intercepting Soviet missile teats, What was strange was that almost from the minute we left the C-140 Starlifters that had brought us from California straight to Midway without stopping off on Oahu, a whole bunch of P-3 aircrew members I had never seen before kept coming up to me saying something like, "Oh, YOU are Kathy Brown!" (That was my married name. . . I took my maiden name back when we got divorced in August of 1984.)
I finally saw a P-3 aviator I had met seven months previously, and I asked him why all the guys I didn't know seemed to know about me. Now at that time all the P-3 cockpit areas had a red phone attached to the ceiling for certain kinds of special calls. And certain platforms--meaning that the planes had particular types of equipment and sensors for various kinds of missions that needed unique types of personnel to perform those tasks--might have been in other areas for purposes not remotely connected to the foci of the missions flown out of Midway or other Pacific islands. So if the sailors connected to a particular P-3 crew were back at their home station and found out that they might be tasked to take part in a Pony Express mission, someone would call the aircrew members on open channels and say, "We got a letter from Kathy Brown," or "Kathy Brown called us," or something like that, and that meant they might have to leave wherever they were and fly to Midway.
I was dumbfounded. Would have never guessed in a million years that my name would be used as a code word for something.
Very strange!
And then I found out that there was a joke going around the very select nuclear treaty monitoring community. On a Saturday afternoon when our boss, who was a major was out of town and so was a higher ranking officer I our intelligence shop, I was on call to make decisions if anything operational came up. It was a lazy afternoon until our tech sergeant called me and said there was some message traffic he has just read in our security vault of an office that I needed to come in and read.
After I read the message, I thought it best to pass the information up the chain of command to a Navy officer who happens at that time to be mowing his lawn. In the days long before cell phones, there was a communication device that command personnel on call kept with them at all times. It was called a "brick" and looked like an elongated one with an antenna on it.
After a short deliberation with our tech sergeant I decided to make the call. After reporting what I believed was the significance of the message, I told the naval officer that I though someone should task the proper Navy assets to respond.
He did that and when I got into work on Monday morning, everyone above me in our chain of command from our commander to our colonel boss to our major was angry with me for disturbing the naval officer and everyone his action has caused to be contacted. They wanted to tan my hide and have me driven out of town on a rail. But by 1pm the next day, all the US Navy and US Air Force personnel, aircraft, and ships needed for a Pony Express mission were hightailing it out either to Midway and/or to the Soviet ships that were steaming ahead full speed to the area where a missile test would be re-entering.
As we used to say in Alaska, "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you."
I lucked out. So the joke I was referring to at the beginning of this part of the story was this:
A: What is the latest intelligence indicator for Pony Express? (An intelligence indicator is some kind of information or conclusion from several pieces of data that might lead an analyst to believe that a certain operation or troop movement or test or exercise was imminent.)
B: I don't know. What?
A: Kathy Brown.
[nyuk, nyuk, nyuk]
Yeah . . . Well that was how my 15 minutes of very covert fame came about.
And I have always taken the lyrics for the song, "The Southeen Cross" very seriously and personally. Maybe I will tell you the non-operational narration some day. (Although if I do, names WILL need to be changed to protect the . . . (you know)!
Cheers!
😎 🌊 🐬 🌴 😎
The second time I was on Midway for the Pony Express missions when we were flying in areas where Soviet radar ships were floating around exercising for and then gathering data on the re-entries of Soviet ground-launched and submarine-launched missile tests was in the summer of 1982. (The first time was between December 4th,
1981, and January 17th, 1982.) For many years the Soviets had tested their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) by both launching them from their internal home territory (in the case of missiles underground in silos or above ground test launch pads) or around the edges of the coasts (in the case of submarine launched missiles) which were launched from subs in territorial waters or from test launch pads). They did these tests for many years, and sometimes the terminus of the test was on the long far eastern peninsula called Kamchatka; and sometimes the re-entry capsules sans warheads came down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean as far away from any islands large enough to have airfields on them, but exactly where the three, four or five Soviet radar ships were waiting.
I've written about this previously, so I hope that if you have read a version of it before that you will either indulge me or ignore this.
So anyway, a few days before Christmas in 1981, I was standing to the right and slightly behind the commander of a P-3 as we took off to head south southeast of NAS Midway at about 0330. As we ascended, we left the darkness behind us and looked down at the curve of the earth below us outlined by a hazy grey glow and the gradual fade of it revealing the dark blue darkness of the whole supra-atmosphere doted with only a few of the brightest stars. And as we headed out on our course, at the very edge of the curving horizon of our Terra were the stars of the Sotheen Cross, giving the impression of a cross laying on its side, it's longest line terminating at the visible penumbra far to the very left of the command aviator's cockpit window and both ends of the short arm beam suspended in low earth orbit space, or so it seemed.
When Frank, our skipper pointed the constellation out to me, I was extremely surprised. The reason we could see the Southern Cross had to do with our altitude and the date and time we launched in order to fly for almost four hours to the area where the Soviet ships were set up. By that time the had been joined by two United States ships. One was a platform with a lot of radars and other sensors, the USNS Obsevation Island (AKA "The OI"). The other was a United States Navy destroyer with a mission to protect the OI from any kind of Soviet interfeeence.
But wait . . . I started to tell you about what happened during the second time I was on an island in the Midway Atoll flying on US Navy P-3s and US Air Force C-130s for the Pony Express mission, intercepting Soviet missile teats, What was strange was that almost from the minute we left the C-140 Starlifters that had brought us from California straight to Midway without stopping off on Oahu, a whole bunch of P-3 aircrew members I had never seen before kept coming up to me saying something like, "Oh, YOU are Kathy Brown!" (That was my married name. . . I took my maiden name back when we got divorced in August of 1984.)
I finally saw a P-3 aviator I had met seven months previously, and I asked him why all the guys I didn't know seemed to know about me. Now at that time all the P-3 cockpit areas had a red phone attached to the ceiling for certain kinds of special calls. And certain platforms--meaning that the planes had particular types of equipment and sensors for various kinds of missions that needed unique types of personnel to perform those tasks--might have been in other areas for purposes not remotely connected to the foci of the missions flown out of Midway or other Pacific islands. So if the sailors connected to a particular P-3 crew were back at their home station and found out that they might be tasked to take part in a Pony Express mission, someone would call the aircrew members on open channels and say, "We got a letter from Kathy Brown," or "Kathy Brown called us," or something like that, and that meant they might have to leave wherever they were and fly to Midway.
I was dumbfounded. Would have never guessed in a million years that my name would be used as a code word for something.
Very strange!
And then I found out that there was a joke going around the very select nuclear treaty monitoring community. On a Saturday afternoon when our boss, who was a major was out of town and so was a higher ranking officer I our intelligence shop, I was on call to make decisions if anything operational came up. It was a lazy afternoon until our tech sergeant called me and said there was some message traffic he has just read in our security vault of an office that I needed to come in and read.
After I read the message, I thought it best to pass the information up the chain of command to a Navy officer who happens at that time to be mowing his lawn. In the days long before cell phones, there was a communication device that command personnel on call kept with them at all times. It was called a "brick" and looked like an elongated one with an antenna on it.
After a short deliberation with our tech sergeant I decided to make the call. After reporting what I believed was the significance of the message, I told the naval officer that I though someone should task the proper Navy assets to respond.
He did that and when I got into work on Monday morning, everyone above me in our chain of command from our commander to our colonel boss to our major was angry with me for disturbing the naval officer and everyone his action has caused to be contacted. They wanted to tan my hide and have me driven out of town on a rail. But by 1pm the next day, all the US Navy and US Air Force personnel, aircraft, and ships needed for a Pony Express mission were hightailing it out either to Midway and/or to the Soviet ships that were steaming ahead full speed to the area where a missile test would be re-entering.
As we used to say in Alaska, "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you."
I lucked out. So the joke I was referring to at the beginning of this part of the story was this:
A: What is the latest intelligence indicator for Pony Express? (An intelligence indicator is some kind of information or conclusion from several pieces of data that might lead an analyst to believe that a certain operation or troop movement or test or exercise was imminent.)
B: I don't know. What?
A: Kathy Brown.
[nyuk, nyuk, nyuk]
Yeah . . . Well that was how my 15 minutes of very covert fame came about.
And I have always taken the lyrics for the song, "The Southeen Cross" very seriously and personally. Maybe I will tell you the non-operational narration some day. (Although if I do, names WILL need to be changed to protect the . . . (you know)!
Cheers!
😎 🌊 🐬 🌴 😎
