“Yeah, I Fly The Shiny One”

After months of nervous anticipation, re-tread flight training, and all of the hassles associated with moving overseas, (which are regrettably still ongoing), I’ve finally made it out to the ship to join up with the “Blackbeards” of Det-11 – my new home.

I caught a Japan Airlines flight out of Narita last Saturday for an uneventful 5 hour hop down to Manila, P.I. …Embarrassingly, despite all of the time I’ve spent in the Pacific, I’ve never actually been to the Philippines before. That has largely to do with the current batch of Islamo-militants who’ve been trying to takeover the central and southern end of the Sulu archipelago for the last 50-odd years under the banner of whatever “cause-du-jour” it is this week. OEFP (Operation Enduring Freedom Philippines) – which has been going on since shortly after the September 11 attacks – is probably the biggest on-going counter-insurgency conflict you’ve never heard of. …And the way the US and international media have handled Afghanistan & Iraq, I wouldn’t blame the Pentagon at all for keeping journalists away from this one. …But they really don’t have to: no one in the US media (or anywhere else on the planet for that matter) really seems to give a damn about what’s gone on the in the P.I. as far back as anyone can remember. …Oh well. As long as the media at large maintain their current level of interest in the situation, we shouldn’t have any problems. Gorilla resistance here is pretty pathetic and disorganized at best, so it’s just a matter of “smoking them out” of the jungles down South. …But that’s almost a world away from here…

Manila, itself, is relatively safe, but it’s always nice to keep your guard up, as it’s not unheard of for someone to kidnap an American citizen or soldier on occasion and demand a ransom of some sort. LT Max Oliver, one of the Det Pilots, met me at the Manila terminal as I stepped out into the heat & humidity of the southern Pacific air. The P.I. maintains a strong trade relationship with Mexico, and from the look and feel of it, you’d swear that you had just stepped into Acapulco. After paying a taxi driver more than two times what Max had paid to get to the airport to meet me, we were at the pier. And I set about to getting my gear stowed on board. As evening rolled around a good meal and a couple of cold San Miguel’s (the local brew) really hit the spot. I was exhausted.

Underway on Tuesday, I had my first intro to flying “The Big Shiny One” – Blackbeard 702. They don’t let those things get dirty for the Admiral. After giving it a good once over, I suggested that our maintainers should get overtime for all of the hours they spend polishing that thing. The attached photo doesn’t lie: In 19 years of flying, I’ve never seen such a clean aircraft!

The Blue Ridge (in the photo background) puts out quite a wind burble on short final to the flight deck, so as big and fat as she is, she ain’t exactly easy to land on! I haven’t put a helo down onboard a US ship in over 5 years, so it was nice to spend some quality time in the DLQ pattern. (My last flight in the German Navy was doing deck landings on a Belgian cruiser – “Daddy’s from Bruges”). The Blue Ridge is somewhat of a museum piece herself: She was the last ship to pull out of Saigon in 1975. Many of the film clips you may have seen of helicopters being pushed over the deck edges to make room for Vietnamese refugees were shot onboard the Blue Ridge. She had a much bigger flight deck back then; big enough to take multiple Hueys or larger helos. They've since erected the Helicopter Control Tower on the aft portion of the ship, effectively cutting the flight deck down to one third of it's original size. ...Still plenty of room for big, shiny 702.

Low & behold, our services here at Det-11 cannot go maligned for long: we had MEDVAC flight on Wednesday for an acute appendicitis into Kadena air base on the island of Okinawa. As ‘candy’ a deal as this job is, it’s nice to know that we are, in-fact, needed by someone other than the Admiral on occasion. 702 did super job. We had 35 knot tail wind into the island, so we were kicking along with smoking groundspeed of 168, turning the 200 mile flight into just over an hours’ work. The base commander was down at the ramp to meet us as the ambulance arrived. I figured that he was probably more interested in weird-assed, shiny green helicopter sitting on his tarmac than he was worried about the medical emergency. 702 tends to turn heads. I can’t wait till we get 701 out of the shop and back out here on the boat. …If you think that one of ‘em looks good coming at you, how ‘bout a pair of twins?

Big 'Ole Buddha

Now that we're finally mobile, we decided to take Reese out for a day trip to the world famous Big Buddha at Hase. It's a relatively short train ride (:45) from Atsugi to the scenic costal enclave of Kamakura. The statue itself stands about 45 feet in height and is constructed entirely of bronze. It's the principle shrine among the seven others in this area and it's construction originally began in 1252, taking 10 years to complete. Without going into much more detail in this writing, it's suffices to say this thing has survived a lot of ugly weather and turbulent history. It also plays a prominent role on the aviation side of the house as it's sort of nice gouge point for flying course rules back into Atsugi, (although it's embarassingly difficult to spot from the air). It's one of those things that we fly over with regular occasion and then say to ourselves, "Y'know, I think I'm gonna go down there this weekend and check it out". ...And so we did.

Charlotte and I had made several "pilgrimages" to the shrine when we were here years ago, but this was Reese's first Buddist shrine, so we wanted it to be a big, American-style "cadillac of all the shrines" just for good measure. You gotta start the youngins' out right, I say.

After two weeks of typical Japnese winter chill in the 30's and 40's, the weather turned suddenly hot and muggy reaching up into the 80's yesterday afternoon. A perfect day for a field trip! Reese really enjoyed the train ride and insisted on holding onto the safety handles along with her old man!










Even the normally lethargic surf along the Fujisawa shoreline was alive with 10-15 foot waves. (We've got a running joke about surfing in Japan as we fly over hundreds of surfers lounging on their boards in the Sagami wan, waiting for waves that never come: All you need to surf in Japan is a surfboard and the ability to fog up a mirror). Check out this candid snap of a Japanese surfer with a pretty unique method of getting his ride to the beach!


Inside the grounds of the shrine Reese busied herself with crawling up on things she wasn't supposed to, collecting rocks and visiting with the locals. ...All-in-all, it was a pretty good day in Japan.

Until the next update,
Hick family -- out

Feet Dry In The "Land Of The Not-Quite-Right"

Many apologies to all for the two-week delay in our "Hicks in Japan" blog. One of the crazy, unforseen obstacles to blogging from overseas is that all of the edit functions come up in the local laguage -- Japanese in this case! After only 2 weeks of attempting to get into the edit page, Charlotte managed to find the edit function by clicking on some random kanji, ...and "voila!"- we're up & running again.

We did make it to Japan on the 28th of January and are currently living large in the Navy lodge while we await housing assignment. Since we lived "on the economy" in Germany - 6 hours from the nearest US base - it's safe to say that we have had enough of the foreign experience and are really hoping to live on the base. Prospects, however, are looking pretty slim and it appears that Charlotte, Reese & I may be experiencing frozen shampoo sometime in the near future. (Most Japanese houses are not insulated, but that's another topic I'll discuss at a future date, if need be).

As of right now, we DO have our own "Gomi-mobile" - a very nice Honda CRV - so we are officially mobile and are mostly checked into the base. I've finished all of my initial introductory flights in the squadron and will be leaving for a few weeks of sea-time with the VIP helo detachment next week.

Thanks to all of you for your patience. The next 'hicksinjapan' blog is soon to follow!

Hick Family -- out