According to my flight records, (DA 759) I flew a lot of
night time in May through July, 1968. I
most likely was flying a mission called “Nighthawk,” which was a recon or
observation flight that normally launched at dusk and ended at sunrise the next
morning. Many other aviation units had
this same type of mission with the same name or whatever they came up
with. So this closely approximated a
third shift schedule and caused the crew to sleep during the day.
The mission was not too popular among most of the aviators
for some reason and the enlisted crew didn’t really have any choice. A hooch mate and I liked the advantages of
flying during the cool of night and the variety things you might encounter
during eight to ten hours of flying then.
The Warrant officer hooch’s normally had three aviators
assigned and we slept mid-morning until evening chow time. Everyone knew our sleep schedule and tried to
limit excess noise. They also knew if we
got awakened too much, they might have to fill in for us so it was a pretty
good system.
During this time the orderly room got a PA system that had
speakers in the enlisted area that was adjacent to our area. The system was loud enough and when used
enough it would awaken us and quickly became very unpopular with the Nighthawk
crew members while we tried to get rest during the day. We discovered that the wires from the orderly
room to the speakers were run under the eaves of the building our hooch was
in. In fact, right by our hooch
windows. After a nearly sleepless day we
snipped the wires and that solved the noise problem for a week or so while the
breaks were tracked down and spliced.
Then the booming, “Attention in the Company Area” resumed and we hatched
a plot to end the problem more permanently.
This time, we snipped the wires and brought the end that
went to the orderly room into our hooch and plugged them into an 110V
outlet. (We were told later that the amp
in the orderly room literally went up in smoke!) So that ended the announcements and allowed
the Nighthawk crews to sleep.
The speakers were still installed in the enlisted area so we
ran the wires from them into our hooch and attached them to one of our stereo
amps. We made our own announcements
like, This Place Sucks! with tremolo or reverb effects and high volume. We played, “We gotta get out of this place”
by the Animals which was well received!
Someone finally took down the speakers so that was the end of the PA
system and a lot of enjoyment.
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