Adventures in the South China Sea

摘要

In the summer of1999,I was part of the reservist crew from Naval Air Station Whidbey in Washington state, on our annual cruise in the western Pacific, with detachment sites in Misawa, Japan, and Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. We'd been alternating with our other VP-69 "Fighting Totems" aircrew, standing alerts for days on end. "Standing alert" entails a little time in the airplane-a Lockheed P-3C Orion-to preflight and spool up computers and radars, then a lot of time back at quarters for 24 hours of sleeping, watching movies, doing laundry, ordering pizza, and generally lying about, all in the name of maintaining crew integrity and defending the Republic.