Neptunus Lex

(Previously)

The JG looked forward in the ready room to see his squadron CO and XO break from a closely whispered conference – his CO looked him in they eye even as the JG tried to answer the questions of his brother JO’s. The old man pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, raised his chin pugnaciously – and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Nodded at him. Well done.

Turning his smiling face back to his brothers, it was all the young man could do not to weep.

The JG sat at the huge round table forward in the “dirty shirt” wardroom – the pilot’s wardroom traditionally, a place, especially at this hour: With all the “old heads” gone to bed, they were free to be fully themselves, free to dine in flight suits, free to speak loudly and laugh boisterously, for these were their customs. Free also from the foreign and sometimes stultifying traditions of the “clean shirt” wardroom down below on the second deck, where the ship’s company officers dined more fussily in pressed khakis, and looked down their noses at the brash aviators in their smelly flight suits.

Midrats – “midnight rations,” and for most of the assembled aviators, their second or third meal of the day – very few would arise to eat breakfast before it closed at 0700. Not when they’d been hurling themselves at the back of the ship at 140 knots in the darkness only an hour or so before. You didn’t go right to sleep after something like that, you couldn’t. It takes a man a while to tick down.

The JG looked down with some regret at the remains of his “Barney Clark” – a double cheeseburger with bacon and a fried egg atop, accompanied by greasy fries and a coke. There would come a day, he thought, when a man might have to pay his dues on a meal like this, just before going to bed. But he was not quite 24 years old, in the arrogant bloom of youth, and obesity, never mind heart disease, was the furthest thing from his mind.

(more…)

Nuclear humor.

Eh.

So anyways, when SNO came back from Everett yesterday, one of the questions I asked him was what his running mate was like -  a “running mate” is the enlisted Sailor who’s primarily responsible for making sure that his mid doesn’t hurl himself to his death going down the scuttle, knows where to muster, sleep and eat, etc. I still remember my running mate from youngster cruise in 1979 - STG2 Caz Rampey was his name. He still owes me money.

“Oh, he was a good guy,” replied SNO, adding, “kind of a joker, though.”

“Really, how so?”

“Oh, you know, the standard stuff. Always sending me of on bogus errands. ‘Bring me twenty feet of waterline’ for example.”

“And relative bearing grease?”

“Yeah, that too. Plus ‘the keys to the engine room.’”

“How’d you handle that?”

“Well,” he said, smiling slyly, “one time he sent me down to Damage Control Central to ask for an ‘HT punch.’ It was even plausible because he was working on a piece of gear that looked like he need an awl or a punch of some sort.”

“Ah, the old HT punch. Did it hurt?”

“No, actually - I went down there, but there weren’t any hull techs (ed. - “HT’s”) around. So when I got back to the shop, I told him that I couldn’t find any HT punches, but that the master chief had stopped me and asked me what I was looking for. And that the master chief wanted to see him. Right away. And that he looked pretty hot.”

“What’d he do, your running mate?”

“He sputtered for a bit - ‘You didn’t really tell the master chief, did you?’ - Yeah, IC2, I’m afraid that I did. Was that wrong?”

Oh, that face of exaggerated innocence. Trust me gentle reader, when you see that expression on the young man’s face, it’s time to put your hand on your wallet, count the silverware and lock up your daughters. But the IC2 didn’t know the scamp as well as I do. So he scurried down to beg forgiveness of the master chief.

Who was very surprised to hear about the whole thing.

Ah, the joys of the service.

 

Home from the sea, and the hunter is home from the hills:

The Phuket thing fell through, alas. His government sponsored passport didn’t come through in time. A disappointment, to be sure, but not the first. It isn’t all beer and skittles, is it? I cannot tell you how many “round the world cruises” I sailed out on that ended up stalled in the North Arabian Sea.

So, a frigate out of San Diego, heading back up to Everett, WA. The sixty-man berthing, and all that goes with it. Some of the mids shirked, but not my boy-o: In port, he spent the day with his division until they were done. If there was paint to be chipped, he chipped it, a head to be swabbed, he swabbed it down. Getting underway he tended to his lines, and at sea he stood his watches.

It’s little enough to ask: There’s a give and take in the enlisted mess, and from what I can tell he gave as well as he took, while being respectful all the time - this was his time to experience “life before the mast,” and from now on he’ll see it not through the eyes of a Sailor, but through the eyes of an officer. It’s very important for those who would lead to know who it is that he is leading. I told him once that it was very likely that any Sailor he’d every meet was as good a man as he was, and that some would be a good sight better. Not all of them have grown up with the same opportunities, and not all of them had the same expectation set. But they’d kill themselves for you, or to get the mission done, even if not always graciously. It’s important for a prospective officer to understand how they live, what they think, what they dream of. That their dreams are just as real as his.

His division officer wasn’t around much, and he noticed it. Couldn’t help but notice it. I’d also told him about that - I told him that the people who would work for him were the salt of the earth, who would work twice as hard as he would for half the pay. And I also mentioned to him that it can be a hard service at times, so the only way that a young seaman or airman can be guaranteed one hot meal a day, four hours uninterrupted sleep or a wisp of curtain on his rack to stand for privacy is if he’s got an officer he works for that gives a shit about him.

When his department head came around and asked for his division officer, he saw how the Sailors responded, “We have a division officer?” And he knew what they meant.

This is how we teach them. This is how they learn.

Yes. That’s a broomstick in his left hand. It’s Sweepers.

(Previously)

“Roger ball, Hornet, you’re just a little underpowered now. A little power, back to the right,” the voice of the LSO, smooth, caressing, careless. Another day at sea, for all his voice might give it away, but how did I get low? The power coming up and catch it, catch it on line-up – don’t chase it. Almost there, don’t lead it – Now, a little power back off, half of it back on again to catch it, rate of descent is looking good. Looking good, but wait, drifting a little “a little right for lineup,” said the LSO, the JG responded, silently cursing, I saw it, I was just about to “a little power” the LSO again, throttles up but not too far, for God’s sake don’t bolter. “Easy with it,” the LSO said and a part of him wanted to cry that there was nothing easy about it, but he stuffed it aside and he was almost there, crossing the ramp, one more correction, a little power off – no: ON and a little left wing down and WHAM!On deck! On deck, by God! And the joy in his heart, the engines screaming at military power as the wire ran out, went taut, held hard, the jet bucking like a trapped beast in a snare and there was the Air Boss on the radio, saying something, something to him, repeating it again, again with emphasis and finally the words making sense, “Lights on deck 311, lights on deck. We’ve got you, throttle back. We’ve got you.”

Everything afterwards seemed a blur to the lieutenant junior grade – lights out, hook up and out of the wires. Come forward. Right turn. Left. Come forward. Stop. The usual crazy jumble of fighters packed on the bow after the last recovery of the night, no need to keep a bow cat clear for the next recovery. The strange, almost feline waaooow sound of the E-2 trapping right behind him, its props biting at the night air. The dizzying feel of the ship turning out of the wind in perfect darkness – the gradually increasing heel, his inner ear insisting on lateral motion, but his eyes unable to confirm it. Hold brakes. On chocks and chains.

He raced through his post-landing checklist, securing all electronic equipment, IFF, radar, ICLS, ALS, beacon, prime radio and aux. There was the yellow shirt standing beside the jet, signaling a dual engine shut down, throttle lifts up, throttles off, the sound of the dying engines somehow mournful, full of soft, diminishing regret.

He sat for a moment in the suddenly silent darkness, the parking brake set but his legs still shaking on the rudder pedals. Holding the wheel brakes until the adrenaline surge faded, not yet trusting his legs to lever him out of the jet. The plane captain looking up at him with a young, tired, questioning face – thumbs up?

Thumbs up.

He raised the canopy even as the PC lowered the boarding ladder. Unstrapped from the seat, first the shoulder harness, then the lap belts, then the leg restraints, thigh and ankle. Tried to stand up, got pulled back down – ah, the O₂ mask was still hooked up. Sat back down, released the catch, noticed with a grimace that the ejection seat was still armed. Stifled a curse – pretty dumb way to die at the end of a long day, at the end of a long hop: Tangle yourself up in the ejection handle of an armed seat getting out of the jet and it’d be a short but violent ride, with no parachute to break your fall. Stupid.

The outside air was still warm, but no longer the shockingly hot blast of the early afternoon. With the last aircraft shut down, the deck had an almost funereal feel, tired sailors moving around the deck waiting for instructions on the re-spot for the alerts, for tomorrow’s launch. They talked in hushed tones, accompanied by the strange wind-chime sound of the cooled rotor blades of a dozen fighters spinning in the breeze, and the sound of the dark, greasy sea washing against the great warship’s hull, sibilantly whispering promises it would not keep: promises of peace, promises of sleep.

“How’s the jet, sir?” asked the plane captain once he’d stepped down from the boarding ladder.

“Good jet, bad drop tank on the right,” he replied, suddenly exhausted. What a day. What a night.

“Roger that, sir. Powerplants is on the way up for a de-fuel, remove and re-install.”

“Great.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“No,” he said tersely, lost in his own thoughts. But something in the PC’s question pulled back into the moment, back into his duty, and he added, “No. A good jet. How are you guys doing up here? Hot day, yah?”

“Oh, you get used to it, sir,” the PC replied, easing the spigot of his CamelBack hydration device into his mouth for an ostentatious sip of water. The JG smiled inwardly – you were nobody on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Gulf unless you wore a CamelBack.

“I guess,” the pilot concluded, adding, “but I’m not sure how. You guys are heroes in my book.”

The plane captain looked away suddenly, looked towards the jet – Too much? the JG asked himself. Trying too hard? Looked around, saw one of his squadron’s jets on the port side, cat 2 - an avionics tech in the cockpit apparently absorbed in his work, headset to his ears. Williams. That was his name. AT2 Williams. Saved him going down on the cat last week for that radio gripe. A good tech. Caught his eye, gave a friendly wave – got a thumbs up in response, a white-toothed grin flashing in the darkness.

No more putting it off, he thought. Better go below, debrief, get it over with. Take my lumps if I have to. God alone knows why I should have to, but then again he never seems to.

Stop it. Just. Stop.

Dark on the roof after the last recovery, he thought, the lights going down, going dim. He felt as much as saw his path aft to the island, giving the jets as wide a berth as he could, what with their grasping tie-down chains, and greedy refueling hoses and clutching electrical cables. Down the starboard catwalk, down into the darkness, opening the blast hatch and in to the ship herself, each hatch opening him up to more light, cooler air, the drying sweat tickling his neck.

The ship’s intel center first, CVIC – a young intel officer there, a squadron “spy”: Where did you go, and what did you do, and did you take on any fuel at all? Did you dump? How was your IFF? Secure comms? Any contacts of interest? No? Good night to you, then.

“Good night.”

Making his way aft – the passageways darkened. It’s after taps, he thought. Half the ship’s already asleep, and half the rest are getting ready for it. I wonder if I’ll sleep tonight? It’d be so nice to sleep a full night’s sleep. It’d be so nice not to have the demons pop out of their boxes at 0300, asking their insistent questions: “Are you good enough? Can you do it? Are you sure?”

“I did it tonight!” he said aloud, alone in the passageway leading aft, surprising himself. Talking to yourself now, is it?

Yes, talking to myself. But I did. I did it tonight. Landed on my first go, once the deck was clear.

And now here were the LSO’s, swaggering down the starboard side passageway in their white float coats. The CAG LSO caught his eye, grabbed “the book” from one of the squadron LSO’s, turned the page, found the JG’s name: “First pass, a little too much power in the middle, a little high in close, wave-off, foul deck. Second pass, a little not enough power on a drift left start, a little low, lined up left in the middle, nice correction. A little drift left in close, a little high/flat at the ramp, come-down on line-up at the ramp. OK three wire.”

“Thanks, paddles,” the JG replied, relieved – so many deviations, but all of them labeled “littles.”

“Nice job, pardner,” said the CAG LSO, eyeing him appraisingly.

The JG left the gaggle, moved aft along the O-3 passageway, embarrassed. This is what you’re supposed to do, he thought. Land it on the first go-round. Before he arrived at the athwartship passageway leading to his ready room, he met his sister squadron’s XO coming out of CATCC.

“Nice work there, young man!” the XO beamed. “Sometimes you’ve just got to put her down in the spaghetti, and tonight was your night. Well done.”

“Thanks, XO.”

Wonder if anyone’s left in the ready room, the JG thought. Wonder if the movie’s over. He debriefed the chief petty officer at maintenance control, explained what he’d tried to do with the right drop tank, signed the maintenance action form, entered his flight time in the laptop computer. “Good job bringing her back, sir,” the CPO offered at the end of their exchange.

“Thanks, Chief,” the JG replied, wondering inwardly – it wasn’t like this particular chief to hand out praise to junior officers. Not like him at all.

Back to the pararigger’s shop to take off his flight gear, leave the sweaty harness, g-suit and helmet on the peg. Headed forward again to the ready room, the site of so many recent silent, disappointed degradations. He waited in the passageway a moment with his hand on the doorknob, gathering his moral strength before walking in. Surprised to find his entire junior officer cohort in the room, smiling at him broadly, the duty officer slapping him on the back, and then they were all around him with questions, and congratulations, shaking his hand and telling him not to let it get to his head, it was no big deal, and that wasn’t so hard, now, was it? About time he’d figured it out.

The JG looked forward in the ready room to see his squadron CO and XO break from a closely whispered conference – his CO looked him in they eye even as the JG tried to answer the questions of his brother JO’s. The old man pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, raised his chin pugnaciously – and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Nodded at him. Well done.

Turning his smiling face back to his brothers, it was all the young man could do not to weep.

(To be continued…)

Because one or two of you might have missed it. And it’s the weekend. And I’m busy doing archive maintenance. And, and…

(OBTW, this story was a pretty good one too. I thought.)

–

An overstress is when a pilot pull’s more “g” than the aircraft is rated for. While it’s true that there is an engineering pad attached to the g-limit, the pad is inelastic - in other words, each overstress event will to a greater or lesser degree reduce long-term airframe integrity and service life.

Overstressing a jet is considered bad form, but it’s also something that will happen from time to time. I wouldn’t trust a fighter pilot who’d never overstressed his aircraft. It either meant he didn’t trust himself, or that he wasn’t trying hard enough to fly up against the performance limits, the “edge of the envelope.” But it’s also true that you just wouldn’t want to try to make a career out of overstressing aircraft.

For one thing, it really makes the maintenance guys unhappy. An overstressed jet is down until inspected, and nothing makes a maintainer angrier than giving a pilot a perfectly good airplane, and having him go out and break it, horsing around. And routinely overstressing aircraft takes you out of the category of “aggressive” (a good thing) and places you in the category of “ham-handed,” (get working on your resume).

The FA-18 is a relatively difficult jet to overstress - it is possible (I have done it!), but for the most part, over-g in the FA-18 is attached to a phenomenon known as transonic pitch-up. The dynamics of this phenomenon are beyond the scope of this text (read: I can’t remember - just kidding, Lamont), but suffice it to say that the engineers at McDonnell-Douglass did a pretty good job of making the jet pilot-proof.

The F-16, on the other hand, is less so.

Which brings me to (wait for it): The Worst Overstress I Ever Had

Part of the reason is that the Viper is just faster than the Hornet. G-available correlates to indicated airspeed (I will spare both of my readers the fine distinctions between indicated, true and calibrated airspeed for now - but don’t make me mad, or so help me…). The faster you’re going, the more g you get.

And so it came to pass one day that I, in an F-16N, and my wingman, in an F-5E, were fragged for a 2v2 sweep mission against a pair of Homestead Air Force Base F-16s. Long story short, we gained an offensive advantage at medium range, and our adversaries were forced to run away, which the F-16 does wonderfully well.

And I attempted to catch them, which the F-16 does equally well. Leaving my F-5 wingman panting in the dust, I gained radar locked on a guy several miles away, hauling the mail and going for the deck. He was out of range for a missile attack, but I could hear him and his wingman chattering on the radio. They had lost visual mutual support, and were attempting to regain situational awareness and formation.

I was going 800 knots, which was as fast as you were allowed to go. If my man turned so much as 30 degrees or so to rejoin with his wingie, I would be all over him like a cheap suit. Like white on rice. Like a bad rash. Like… you get the picture.

So yeah, I was bringing the heat.

It’s a lot of fun to go that fast, down low, with your adversary right there in front of you, totally defensive and your finger on the trigger. There is a buzzing sound in the inlet, and your canopy howls with the dynamic stress of the airflow. The wave tops below flash by like the trestles on a high-speed train.

At that speed, you are unconcerned with virtually anything but that which is right in front of you. Things behind you will not be a factor (unless you turn, oh please turn) and things beside you will soon be behind you.

The fighter’s wingie called on the radio and said he was right three o’clock, one mile. The lead called “blind,” meaning he didn’t him.

“HAH!” thought I, “not only is he defensive, but he is blind as a bat!”

“RIGHT THREE O’CLOCK, WINGFLASH!” the wingie emphasized his position call by rocking up on his wing, at ninety degrees to the horizon - showing himself in planform for his lead - a wingflash.

“Blind!”

And that sort of put me to thinking. Even Elmer Fudd should have been able to see an F-16 in planform from 1 mile away.

So if the wingie was flying along beside an F-16, and that F-16 was not his lead, then who could he be flying next to?

A quick glance to my right three o’clock told me who.

Apparently the same notion worked its way through the wingie’s wetware, since as I began my rapid windup break turn into him, he began to turn into me.

At least I’m pretty sure he did. Because that’s when the lights went low.

The F-16N was rated for 9 g’s. You could easily get more, at 800 knots. I did.

At very high g, and especially at high g-onset rates, the blood drains from your head to your lower extremities. Your optic nerves are especially sensitive to blood loss, so your vision progressively narrows until it looks like you’re peering at the world through soda straws - all peripheral vision is lost. And if you keep it up, pretty soon the lights go out, and sometimes when that happens you lose consciousness. When that happens, your limp hands fall from the controls until you regain consciousness. Sometimes you wake up dead.

Your g-suit is specifically designed to combat that tendency, by forcing air into it’s bladders from a weighted (and g-sensitive) valve, the blood is forced back into your upper torso, where by galvanic contortions (not unlike dealing with the worst case of constipation in medical history), you attempt to move it a little higher. And all the while, your average 175-pound pilot feels the apparent weight of 1960 pounds pushing him down in his seat. His ten-pound head will feel like it weighs 110 pounds (and gets kind of hard to move around).
That’s at 11.2 g’s.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that this hurts. A lot. In a really, really good way, normally. You live for pulling g’s, as a fighter pilot.But 11.2 g’s isn’t normal. Somehow my new adversary and I manage to blunder into a merge without clacking into one another. I ease g for a moment at the merge to check his intentions, and see him going vertical.Which is a good thing, because that means you’ll lose airspeed, even in an F-16. And I don’t want any more airspeed. I want to make the bad thing stop.So I join him in the vertical, still pulling hard for a while, because you don’t lose 800 knots right away. We get into a particularly violent and thankfully, short fight, in which I emerged victorious (hey, it’s my story). Shortly after that, his lead shot me like a coward, in the back, from my six o’clock, and unobserved.But that’s his story. And that’s all I have to say, about that.

Good clean fun, and I’m off to the field with my wingman in tow. On the way back, I’ve got to call maintenance and confess my fault (”forgive me, base, for I have sinned.”)”620 five minutes out, down jet.”"What are you down for?”"Overstress.” Here’s where I might get lucky. Maybe they don’t ask me how bad the overstress was - I’d only ever heard of one overstress worse than that. Maybe all the ready-room cowboys lining the wall around the SDO desk won’t get to hear what a plumber Lex is.

“How much?” the maintainer’s voice asks, tiredly.

Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.

Occasional reader Bill sends this link along - a page dedicated to my first fleet squadron, maybe a couple of years before I joined them.

Because, time I got there? We were already done flying Spads. And dropping toilets on the enemy.

True.

Your correspondent at the Navy Fighter Weapons School (aka TOPGUN) circa 1996

Yeah. You’d be smiling too.

I can’t remember if I’ve told this story or not. Which probably means that you can’t either.

Military aviators typically have radio “callsigns,” or handles. Much like a CB radio enthusiast might, with the difference being that they are generally chosen for the nugget pilot rather than by him. We have very few pilots nicknamed “Ace,” for example, and if you find one named “Maverick,” you can be fairly confident that there is what passes for an elevated degree of sarcasm in there somewhere. Believe it or not, joining the fleet and getting your callsign can involve a fair amount of stress - once a moniker gets hung on you, it’s yours for life. Unless you commit some act of egregious buffoonery, landing with the gear up for example, which will be simply too juicy an event not to remind you of for the rest of your professional life, “Wheels.” And it’s worse than useless to object to the handle you’re given, since any evident chink in a fighter pilot’s psychological armor must of necessity be poked and prodded until the blood ceases to run. Never let ‘em see you sweat.

No slack in fighter attack.

Many callsigns are chosen to go along with people’s names, and some can get quite imaginative. I was reading an article in the Taihook magazine a few months back, and chanced across an article written about one of my old squadrons. Some kid had won Top Hook honors for carrier landing performance. As is customary, there was a happy snap with his name and callsign on it: Greek kid I imagine, maybe from one of the old neighborhoods. Last name of Derespinas. Call sign, “Enya.”

It took me a moment (color me slow, if it suits you). I first thought of the Irish new age musician, Enya. And then I put the two together. Enya Derespinas. Say it out loud.

So yeah, I laughed aloud at that, and one of my daughters asked me what I found so funny. And as you can imagine, I had to think pretty fast to come up with a plausible answer.

I mean, of course it’s (mildly) funny in and of itself, but what I really like about what that particular gem illustrates is the tenderly malicious effort that goes into a callsign like that. Here’s a kid, joins the Navy, goes through flight school, gets fighters and is happy as a clam - he’s in the fleet! And when he gets there, the 12 or so JO’s, men he will come to love as brothers, will take the name he was born with and twist it into an abomination. Don’t care what you say, that’s true love.

And speaking of true love, another guy I knew checked into his new squadron, and had a late flight on the evening of his welcome aboard. His wife got to the party before him therefore, and stood looking out the bay window for her soul-mate’s eventual arrival. When he finally walked up the path, she stood there with a few of the junior officers, and with a Nancy Reagan-like look of admiration on her beaming face, said to the room in general, “There he is! Isn’t he precious?”

Yes, the gathering concurred. Yes he is, “Precious.”

Imagine now, two or three years later, calling up a USAF squadron to arrange a dissimilar fight. “Hi this is ‘Precious,’ from VFA-22 to pass you the special instructions.”

“Wait… what? Please say that again, I’m putting you on speakerphone!”

My own story is a little more mundane. I had gone through a couple of training command callsigns, inlcuding “Frenchy” (it’s a last name thing) and “Latch” (I had a door blow off in an A-4 during a formation hop). When I got to the fleet replacement squadron, where you first train in your fleet aircraft before joining a line squadron, I was called “Cajun.” That migrated for a time to “Cujo,” for an event in a bar in Fallon, Nevada that I will not share with you as it does not reflect particularly credibly on your humble scribe, and in any case happened a long time ago when I was a very different person.

So.

I joined VFA-25, “the Fist of the Fleet,” in the summer of 1987, when that squadron was already embarked and half-way through a six month deployment. The squadron already had a “Cajun,” and “Cujo” was considered too macho for a nugget aviator, especially when he is unwilling to relate exactly how and under what circumstances he came to carry it. So my callsign pended some revelation into my character and abilities yet to be demonstrated.

Two days aboard and I’m still fairly jet lagged from the trip from California to the North Arabian Sea. We had a no-fly day, and an early morning meeting scheduled, at which we were expected to “khaki up,” in other words, shed the green flight suits that in time will become as familiar and comfortable to us as our own skins. I’m rigging my khakis, and since I’m new in the squadron I don’t yet have a squadron nametag with the appropriate logo on it. Which should have been only slightly problematical, but my personal mnemonic for putting my uniform together was to “put on my right name,” in other words, the name tag goes on the right breast, with wings and ribbons on the left.

Being tired, I put my uniform together looking in the mirror, where it looked just right. I headed on down to the squadron ready room with five minutes to spare (and a smile on my face!) only to be accosted immediately by the squadron commander: “What, are you dyslexic or something?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your wings are on the wrong side of your uniform!”

D’oh!

So that got abbreviated to “Lex” ultimately, and thankfully has never changed since. I felt relieved actually, the callsign running second in the competition was “Fifi.”

Begging your indulgence perhaps over the next several, but your correspondent - having already served this week on a Board of Inquiry for one poor, benighted soul - has now been summoned for to serve on a court martial. It appears that he has won the Navy Legal Service lottery, and of such are the joys of shore duty made.

It has been plausibly forecast that this court martial - about which no further details are known, nor, if they were known could they be publicly shared - will last the rest of this week and all of the next. This is the military equivalent of the OJ Simpson trial, for duration. I’m knackered just thinking about it, and the day job’s not going anywhere, is it?

No. It is not.

So, unless I can get my superannuated rump excused by one or the other JAGs during voir dire - and I’m hoping that rattling the Captain Queeg-style steel balls around in my sweaty palms will do the trick, because I’m not sure, but I’m thinking, that the crocheting needles and knit hangman’s noose might just be over the top - the blogging may well be even lighter, and if possible, more trivial, than even before.

So, until next we meet, I remain your most humble, ob’t servant, etc.