wolfdad
Key Veteran
Location: Southern Maryland
| Those of you have been around Uncle Sam's canoe club (US Navy) for any length of time know the difference between a "Sea Story" and a "Fairy Tale." For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, a "Fairy Tale" begins with "once upon a time," and a "Sea Story" begins with "hey, this is no sh*t!" A very minute distinction, I will admit, however what follows is most definitely a "Sea Story."
During my first deployment as a P-3 Flight Engineer with VP-48 in 1981, my crew (Crew ONE) caught a one month deployment to Diego Garcia, BIOT (British Indian Ocean Territory) and, believe me, it was a frontier at that time and Diego Garcia was more affectionately known was "Dodge."
We were often sent up on Gonzo Station for patrols with the carrier battle groups and often were away from "Dodge" for several days running, RON'ing in a bevy of wonderful ports, such as Dji Bouti, Seeb, Oman, etc. While returning from one of these "all expense paid" wonder tours, we were still at altitude and the PPC called for the crew to vacuum the aircraft. This was squadron policy both at the end and the beginning of a flight for two reasons, one to turn the aircraft over to the next crew clean and secondly to get rid of as much of the pervasive coral dust tracked into the aircraft as possible.
In those days, we didn't have the luxury of an electric vacuum cleaner so we had to vacuum the aircraft using differential pressure (pressure between the outside ambient...low and, the pressurized interior of the aircraft...high). The vacuum itself was nothing more than a 30 foot length of vacuum cleaner hose with a collector cannister in the middle with another section of hose that plugged into the pyro pistol port in the overhead of the main cabin of the aircraft.
Obviously, the higher in altitude you are, the greater pressure differential and when we started the aircraft vacuuming process, we were well on the high end of the limits, but barely still within limits.
I was in the flight station for the landing while the crew commenced vacuuming when, I heard this God awful screaming coming from the back of the aircraft. Seems that one of the other members of the flight crew was being a smart a$$ and had unzipped his flight suit and had introduced his private part to the business end of the vacuum hose. Thinking this would be just one good laugh, he was totally flabbergasted when the hose ate his entire member and what went with it and even more flabbergasted when he discovered he couldn't get it off, so his screams had gone from screams of fear to screams of pure pain (remember, we were still at altitude and the pressure difference was probably in the range of 15 inches of mercury and that difference in pressure was trying to equalize via the item then stuck in the hose....his hose). One of our other quick-thinking crew members managed to get to his survival knife and, thinking the wrong thoughts, our trapped and now screaming banshee on the end of the hose screamed even louder at the prospect of what he thought was about to get cut. However, the knife wielding hero cut the hose instead, allow us to get our injured crewman out of his misery.
Of course, with an injury onboard, we had to declare an emergency and, let me tell you that this was a BIG DEAL in Dodge, so when we landed, our teammate had a cast of hundreds to watch him being off-loaded into an ambulance and to hear about the "battle of the hoses."
Our shipmate was hospitalized and, when I visited him later the next day was one big bruise from his knees to his lower chest (amazing what that kind of pressure can do) and very chagrinned about what had happened. Of course we had to clear customs and the Brits are probably still hooting over this one.
So my friends there's an honest to goodness "no sh*t Sea Story for you"
wolfdad sends....
"There are those who have...and, those who will" IRCHA #2117, AMA #70068, Turbine Waiver #105 |
