By lex, on June 4, 2008
When I was a lieutenant junior grade I found myself at a Navy party in San Diego. I’d been invited by a former training command CO who was then serving as the Operations Officer aboard USS Constellation. Most of the ship’s senior department heads were there, among them the Air Boss, who asked me what my story was. I told him with some pride that I was heading to the FA-18A replacement squadron.
“How does it feel to be flying an airplane that’s not going to be around in 5 years?” he asked, sarcastically.
Your correspondent, though not as perspicacious then as you have come to know him now, nevertheless intuited that the Air Boss was not an especial fan of the McDonnell Douglass Strike Fighter. “Well see, won’t we?” I almost said to the senior officer. Cuttingly.
Twenty-odd years later, EA-18G has arrived at Whidbey Island:
Tuesday was a historic day at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. After years of anticipation and an unfathomable amount of behind-the-scenes work, the first EA-18G Growler was delivered airmail June 3, finally settling down to a real home.
Fighter, striker, tanker and now, we be jammin’.
There will be no living with the electronic attack mafia from now on.
