Damn, I Feel Old

[Gary94]

Is it just me or does these base closings make everyone else feel like this. Midway is a museum. The Naval Training Center San Diego is a residential area or is fenced off and abandoned. NAS Alameda you can just drive in at your leisure and go any where you please. All the buildings are still there. NAS Miramar a Marine air station. Only one non-nuke carrier in commision. My other ship the Coral Sea is razor blades and hondas. Naval Station Long Beach a Chinese shipping container port.

[Pistol Pete]

Probably some of the folks from WWII who stayed in felt a bit like you do. Thousands of ships were quickly scrapped or became test targets for nukes. Air Corp people had their planes crushed or dumped overboard on the way home. Millions of tons of new combat equipment and munitions were pushed overboard between Japan and the U.S. right after the Japanese surrender. Many perfectly good ships were abandoned at islands throughout the Pacific or sunk just to get rid of them.

Years ago I knew a P-47 pilot who, while leading a training mission in Burma, radioed that two of our jungle warehouses were on fire and was told to return to base. After he got back, his commander told him the war had just ended. The pilot (I can't remember his name) wanted to get his Hobbs meter since he had flown 105 combat missions in that plane. He, and all the other pilots, went out to get momentos and were stopped by MPs from getting near their planes. He said local kids were inside beating the instruments with hammers and then the planes were towed off the runway where bulldozers crushed each one from the wing tips inward. He was feeling pretty low. When I knew him, he was asked to fly a restored P-47D out of a small private airport here. He really wanted to but thought he was too old to handle it.

I, for one, miss the big ships: battleships and cruisers. Also destroyers, with triple twin 5-inchers. Ships with guns and guts.

[Ojive]

I could see how the war machine could have been hard to swallow and after the war they wanted to forget about it! Sad but true. Funny this new base closure release has shaken a few asses up, including me :!!!: I mean my lifestyle could have changed, doesn't mean it won't in time either. As long as I work around Uncle Samuel I have to think I could be in a jam. I have seen a lot of installations closed or turned into a multi-service location. I remember when Cecil Field Closed and are the fags had to move to Virginia and S. Carolina, and how everyone was all excited the sky had fallen. Anyone live in the Bay area know if those ships are docked out around San Raphael near San Quineton? Now those were some old ships? I haven't been out that way in over 15 years. I work with some retired Marines that were in Alameda the same time I was their. I was attached to MAG 42, working A-4's and A-6E's with the Navy so those were the bomb in the day :!!!: So I reckon I'm getting old. I remember the Grub Pub in Alameda on base, damn I quit drinking then, but some of the old places that are gone. I'm getting older :o