Reflections of New Orleans, The Early Days.

I am not sure when this guy debriefed however as a fellow pilot over New Orleans for those first few days, he hits the nail on the head with his description.

My additions to his commentary are:

1. We were promised Iridium phones as well from the Truman, still waiting on them!
2. We brought weapons however chose not to carry them. Posse Comitatus et al.
3. Due to a tremendous VIP turn out for the “show”, we wasted a lot of time giving tours and transporting brass as opposed to searching and moving relief supplies.
4. We left New Orleans in advance of Rita and the same occurred on a much smaller scale. Admirals and Generals.
5. There was an AWACS airborne control aircraft dispatched to the destroyed area however with all the traffic there needed to be three in operation.
6. I was afraid to lower my crewmen down to do rescues of people who maybe did not want to come out. Found three however they did not want to go. I am happy they were not violent and yes it was in the hood. Once again not far from a body.
7. The Mexicans and the Dutch actually sent a ship up to help along the Biloxi coast.
8. It is the end of September and I am still not home yet!

A quick debrief from a Helo Pilot with the DC National Guard - pretty revealing!

============================================================

I'm back home for a few days while we work on our helicopters and wait for the crowd at the naval air station in NO to thin out. I flew Wednesday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday with the D.C. Guard before we left. My crew had 81 saves in the days we flew. Tuesday, I couldn't find anyone alive who needed to come out, but we marked the location of 5 bodies for retrieval. My unit got into NO as soon as the wind abated, and as soon as we could get fuel to sustain operations. I've heard that the National Guard did nothing, but the "Red Cross" helicopters did a great job. Guess what's painted on the side of our aircraft?

Some observations:

1) The mayor of NO, Nagins, dropped the ball in a huge way. The whole fiasco at the Superdome and the people left there is in his lap. The Governor also is culpable.

2) We trained our enlisted men, specifically the Medics and Crew Chiefs, very hard on the rescue hoist. During our deployment in Operation Enduring Freedom, we only had 2 hoist missions. The same number is typical for an experienced Medic in a Guard Medevac unit over his whole career. We now have Medics and Crew Chiefs with 50 hoists under their belts - many of them difficult precision hoists onto car hoods, 18 wheeler cab roofs, and onto covered porches. We kept our Crew Chiefs and Medics together as battle roster crews and they developed advanced techniques early and amazed me with their skill and bravery.

3) Some people just don't get it. Yesterday, I flew over people with grills and coolers on their roofs, and they raised signs saying, "We OK." Two houses down, bodies were floating.

4) The violence you heard about was only the tip of the iceberg. One of our Guard members was with the Fish & Wildlife and deployed early to NO as security. They encountered four dead men in a neighborhood who had been shot, execution style. Their wives had been raped.

5) Our hangar in Baton Rouge housed 300 Border Patrol agents with all kinds of exotic weaponry. They were inserted into the bad neighborhoods and reportedly nailed about 25 of the goons from roving armed bands. They then just withdrew and let them lay.

6) Some have claimed that racism caused black people to be left while white people were brought out. Of the 81 people I brought out, 2 were white. Both thanked me. Only 3 other people thanked us, as I recollect. When we cruised over flooded neighborhoods, we'd say to each other, "Hey, this is a high dollar neighborhood. Let's go back to the projects." We never pulled anyone out of a good neighborhood. They left before the storm. We were trying to maximize the number of saves

we had, so we'd go to the "hood."

7) There were more helicopters in NO than I've ever seen before. We lost one of our Hueys doing a rooftop pickup. He rocked back on his skids and broke through the roof, and was unable to free himself. They hoisted the crew out and recovered the aircraft with a CH-47 a few days later.

8) We all have personal firearms. I briefed my crews to expect a "Blackhawk Down" scenario if we went down. Unbelievable over a US city.

9) I flew within 100 yards of Air Force One at Louis Armstrong Int'l airport. Bush flew in and out without shutting down the airspace. I was cautioned by ATC to "not over fly THE AIRPLANE." I complied by flying back behind THE AIRPLANE and the following SUVs full of instant death.

10) Two things would have made things better for us. The first is Iridium phones. 10 at each flight facility would have made all the difference. Our radio communications sucked. The second is getting our own refuel tankers in place early. By the time they got ready to refuel us, the Naval Air Station and Louis Armstrong Int'l were pumping fuel.

11) The airspace over NO turned into the Wild West. All the other aircraft over the city were using our VHF and UHF internal frequencies for the first few days. As time went on, the airport towers came back on line and we started using the normal freqs again. I saw every conceivable helicopter over NO, including Soviet designs.

12) I'm glad to be home for a few days. The Search and Rescue phase is over. Now, it's all body retrieval and cleanup.

13) We're still waiting for the French contingent to show up.

A good one from Teddy R. Yes he was a Republican!

You have to read this and open the old parachute up to understand!  I like it!

Nutz

 

The Man in the Arena - April 23, 1910

More from the Ship & Rita

Once again I have been a bit delinquent in my writings to you all.

Things have been in a constant state of flux and TBD here aboard ship. This has really been the case ever sense we left Norfolk almost a month ago. I write the flight schedule around 10pm and the very next morning things are different and we have to adjust.

Incase you have not been watching the news, we are off the Mississippi delta, leaning a little more west at times toward Texas and some times a little closer towards Florida and our route home.

Two days ago, the day after RITA came ashore, (24 Sept) I was on of the lucky ones who flew inland to see what was going on and to offer our assistance if needed. We flew to New Orleans because we knew that they did have gas and were open for business. Our two ship formation flight boogied into NOLA at a lightning fast pace assisted b a strong 40knot tail wind giving us a speed over the ground of 170knots This was good for getting to the beach however not so good for getting home later in the day.

On the trip in I did see a house in the delta in a raging inferno however there was no one around to quench the flames and no one in peril so we continued onward to Nawlins

When we landed and as discussed before we took off from the ship, weather was a large concern. In New Orleans we were able to get some weather radar and to no surprise there was a large feeder band of stormy weather between us and where we wanted to go in Western Louisiana. So we fueled up and waited for a while for weather to break. While at Naval Station New Orleans we ran across another helicopter squadron the H-60B model and they were also there to help out and as an added bonus they would be coming out to the ship to stay a few nights with us.

Being that sitting around on our keesters is no fun, and the bubba in charge of us is a bit of a dweeb, I took it upon myself to go over to the hand dandy coast guard command center a few hundred yards away. A good plan. The coast guard had sort of been expecting us to come in. At the moment I was there, a whole lot was not going on. The coasties were able to get a few helicopters to the west of the feeder band earlier in the morning however they were now stuck out there to the west. Like the rest of us, they were waiting for the weather to break.

As we were clearing the coast guard complex back over to the navy side of the airfield, a coasty came running out with a mission for us. Supposedly there were 30 people stuck in the attic of a home depot over in the 9^th ward of New Orleans. So with a new mission, we mounted up and 4 helicopters 2 sierras and 2 bravos went screaming north to the 9^th ward to see if we could pick up some stranded residents.

The weather was a little skosh and the helicopter I was piloting did not have a hoist to lower a swimmer into the water so I just sort of hung out in the distance and observed while the 3 other helicopters jockied for position to lower a swimmer to the roof of the home depot to see if anybody was home. After a few minutes it became apparent that this had just become a very expensive goose chase.

We returned back to the New Orleans air station got some gas and by this time the weather had cleared enough for us to start heading west. We were originally going to the airfield at Houma for gas however there were some tasking that never materialized and also lead us a little further to the north and west then south and west were Houma was located.

As we flew west, the countryside for the most part was in good shape. There was some localized flooding, levees that had over flowed their banks. Most of this area was substantially inland from the gulf and there was little if any storm surge or wind damage.

We had to stop and get some fuel before we were to return back out a 100 or so miles back to the ship. A tremendous headwind made the going slow and ate viscously at our fuel. I always get a little uneasy flying over water, especially long ranges over water. Not for fear of my own navigational skills however for fear that our maintainers might not have done their best and if we have a mechanical issue, the only place to land is the water below. Additionally the headwind and the not so precise ship location information also increases the pucker factor. Thankfully there were numerous oil platforms that in a pinch could provide an emergency landing zone. Additionally there was an airborne radar airplane AWACS overhead that had us painted. Always a warm feeling.

We did eventually make it back to the ship after of course a last minute goose chase to another ship to pick up a chart. Come to find out the ship that we were directed to go to and were told was only 12 miles away was infact 120miles away and we were getting close to our fuel limit.

The Bravos that we ran into in New Orleans were about 50 miles behind us, they infact landed at the same airport we did to get gas. I was able act a relay platform to give them ships position info and let the ship know that the bravos were in fact on the way.

On this night the Mighty IWO was full of helicopters, a total of 17 aboard. It was a full house at or 730pm after action review. Standing room only. The craziness never ends.

Side Bar Comment

I am not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier message however while we were in New Orleans on the ship, tied to the pier, there was a sister helicopter squadron flying all the way from Pensacola each day to JRB, shutting down and waiting by a phone to be alerted for a mission. I thought our squadron was the only one in the area doing stand by search and rescue? Oh that is right, we were standby VIP transport!

From the USS IWO JIMA Executive Officer

Got this from my Dad, he got from a Navy Veterans Group he is a member of.
Nutz, Is it on target? Any comments?
Later,
Jimmy

Jimmy, the XO is on target! We have been busy here aboard the IWO. The logistical might behind the US Military is something that all of us “loggies”, past and present can be proud of. Like the XO I have a soft spot in my heart for the ground pounders for obviously different reasons.
Nutz

Subj: USS Iwo Jima XO comments Date: 9/20/2005 2:37:17 AM Eastern Standard Time From: Charles.L.Tompkins.CIV@msc.navy.mil Sent from the Internet (Details)
The President seems to have forgotten these guys during his speech.
A review of IWO JIMAS work in New Orleans from the departing XO...
Walley, Michael A. XO [mailto:walleyma@lhd7.navy.mil]

Stewball, IWO JIMA has been on station for more than one week pierside New Orleans River Walk. I finally have time to sit down at the keyboard to throw down a few observations wrt the crew of IWO JIMA and her efforts in JTF KATRINA. Feel free to pass on to your JODITE addresses if you deem appropriate.

IWO JIMA was into the second day of Initial Assessment/Underway Demonstration (IA/UD) (an engineering training inspection), and outbound in the channel when we were ordered to return to port. We returned pierside in the early evening to commence loading stores for Hurricane Katrine Disaster Relief Efforts.. The supply folks worked through the night loading stores with five fork lifts, including one offered and operated by our sister ship SAIPAN. IWO JIMA shifted colors, underway just after noon the next day; pulling the brow while still literally craning stores onto the aft elevator. IWO JIMA pushed at flank bell after loading more store and equipment via LCAC in Chesapeake Bay.

Three days later we were on station 15 miles south of Biloxi/Gulfport, MS. We spent one day offloading the SeaBees, engineers, and nearly all our humanitarian stores. Our three CH-53's flew round the clock moving MOGAS, bottled water, MRE's, and helo Pack-Up Kits (PUKs - to sustain helo operations). Our five SH-60's and two H-3's flew SAR and moved pax. And on that same day, we moved more than 200 Sailors ashore who spent hours cleaning the debris from a local church.

That evening, we were ordered to pull anchor, and once again proceed at flank bell to the mouth of the Mississippi. We reached the delta by sunrise, flew on CPG-2, rcvd our river pilot, and proceeded up the Mississippi River at best speed.. The pilot became emotional on the bridge, shedding a few tears as he thanked the watch teams for our assistance. He gave a personal narrative as we steamed up the river, witnessing first hand the destruction of Katrina in Louisiana. There were absolutely no leaves on any tree, giving the image of a mid-winter day in New England (except the temperature was in the low 90's), the helmsman noticed there were no birds, whole communities were erased, hundreds of barges littered the banks, and smaller vessels came to rest on roadways, backyards, and even one lodged in a tree.
The entire 8 hour transit up the river, our flight deck was manned and operational. One H-60 was tasked on a SAR and removed stranded evacuees. Another was flown up the river to New Orleans to recon the River Walk, where we were to berth. The CH-53's continued on their all-day mission to move supplies from Pensacola to New Orleans and bring an 84 member medical augmentation staff to IWO JIMA. Still another H-60 flew to the Harry S Truman to bring staff and reporters.

As we pulled pierside, New Orleans was nearly deserted. We suspended helo operations long enough to throw the lines over and lower the brow. Before we reopened the deck for business, we had three helos stacked in a holding pattern; two codes and a medivac. The River Walk terminal was occupied by the 119th MP battalion who had arrived the day after the hurricane passed through. The OIC met us on the pier, and informed us that his folks had been sleeping on concrete, eating MRE's, and had no showers since they arrived. IWO JIMA took on our first mission bringing 140 RI NG for showers, a hot meal, and assigned them troop racks. Word spread like a California wildfire that Hotel IWO JIMA had arrived. The 125th MP Battalion marched eight miles through the city to reach our pier that evening for a shower and some food. These folks on the ground are HEROES - they brief at 0600 and move out on rescue missions throughout the city, most days not returning until near midnight. They gear up in 90 degree heat as they work their way through debris and sludge that has settled in the communities as the flood waters recede.

We are honored to berth as many as possible at night for a few hours of rest. Unfortunately, the inn filled quickly, and we are only able to house a fraction of the Guard and Active Troops. This has not stopped the National Guard, 82nd Airborne, first responders, and government workers from lining up at our quarterdeck like Walmart at Christmas. We accommodate all, we turn away none.

Immediately upon arrival, the crew organized to clean up the pier. There was trash, debris, and broken glass everywhere. If this was to be our new home, we wanted to show the City of New Orleans we take pride in being here. We then moved into the terminal and beyond, our engineers fixing a city park water fountain and cleaning the park grounds.
The next day the flight deck began 24/7 operations (a deck manned for nominally 10 hours of operating per day) receiving a dozen medivacs and numerous VIP its. During the first three days alone, our flight deck crews executed more than 700 evolutions! - and has not slowed much since then. The SWIFT transits the Mississippi every three days restocking IWO JIMA, TORTUGA, and SHREVEPORT by M-boat and Vertical Replenishment by helo. The PFO, FEMA, CDC, JTF staff, CPG-2, CPR-4, have all made IWO JIMA their home and command and control center.

The Air Traffic Controllers work 24/7 (again, only manned for 10 hour operations) maintaining aircraft separation in a most challenging helicopter environment while the Tacron folks have established a regional Search and Rescue Medivac Command and Control Center onboard. The Ops and C5 folks are engaged with a 24-hour watch in our Combat Information Center and Comms spaces. Maintaining our connectivity with the rest of the world is absolutely critical. The culinary specialists are manned to feed and care for 1200 crew, but have been feeding close to 3000 per meal in addition to working lunches for military and civilian VIPs. They have accomplished the impossible in laundry services, and prepping rooms for VIPs and their staffs.
Guests have included the Commander in Chief, the Vice President, Governor of Louisiana, Mayor of New Orleans, Parish Presidents, the CNO, Homeland Defense Secretary, FEMA, PFO, JTF Commander, and more than 25 Flag and General Officers. These Sailors have executed their duties flawlessly, with smiles, and without so much as a whisper of a complaint.

The engineers hit the streets on the third day and commenced their 'Fix-it' routine. Items repaired include dewatering a hospital basement, air-conditioning units in the River Walk Terminal and Convention Center. Today they move to the City Hall. Those that aren't involved in repairs have set up and help man a food line outside the Convention Center for First Responders. All this while maintaining water, electrical power, air conditioning and services for more than 2500 guests on IWO JIMA. As the President told our Chief Engineer, bThe water is hot, and the air is cold your foolks must be doing a tremendous job!

Our security team has also worked endless hours securing the perimeter and monitoring thousands of 'guests' who walk on board. They received the highlight of their professional career working with US Secret Service for the President and Vice President's visit. Deck Department is working extremely hard keeping the ship maintained in 4.0 condition, despite the heavy traffic of personnel across the quarterdeck.

The Navy Chaplains have provided services and counseling for the hundreds of National Guard and DoD members while organizing community relations projects with the local parishes. Our Public Affairs folks and photographers start at reveille meeting the press on the pier. They also had the personal privilege and professional honor of working with White House Staff and National Press during our VIP visits.

Our hospital and medical staff have been busy with evacuee medivacs and military personnel injuries, saving patients from knife wound, gunshot wound, and vehicle mishap, among countless others, while maintaining a 24-hour sick call (outpatient care). In addition to running Hospital Suribachi, they have delivered medical supplies to numerous hospitals in the city who were running low. Today, webre hosting the Department of Health and Human Resources planning meeting to work the Hospital plan for the next six months.

Our Supply folks have been challenged to the limits keeping IWO JIMA, all her guests, the first responders, and the citizens who have lost everything fed and hydrated. Ordering, receiving, and distributing food, water, and medical supplies on a scale unprecedented for this ship.
Finally, our SeaBees and LCAC crews continue to stay busy in Pascagoula, Gulfport and Biloxi, cleaning up, laying causeways, and dozing debris. Through all this the crew remains upbeat. We held all-hands quarters in the hangar bay to begin the day on 9-11, and I was privileged to address the crew. We followed by sounding the ships bell over the 1MC at 0846 (north tower), 0903 (south tower), 0945 (Pentagon), and 1010 (Shanksville) followed by the word "REMEMBER". The CO charged the crew on this sober anniversary with helping our fellow citizens in need once again.

With less than one month remaining prior to attending PCO school, I could not have imagined a more rewarding experience than watching this crew with an average age of 20 put their shoulder to the wheel on such short notice. Many gave up Labor Day vacations, family weddings, reunions, and even being present for their spouses giving birth, for an opportunity to help in the Relief Effort. Dozens of IWO Officers and Sailors came into my office to rip up their leave chits when we received the orders to get underway. Others, who recently transferred, or who were billeted to staffs, requested to deploy with us on a moment's notice. And one can never forget the families who give their loyal support, despite the immediate hardship of separation from loved ones and no knowledge of when we will return. To a Sailor, to a family, they believe in this mission.

Despite the accomplishments of the crew, I am saddened to report that it is only a drop in the proverbial bucket. The devastation as I flew over the city and surrounding counties can not be captured by video alone. The expanse of acreage that has been laid to waste in Katrina's wake will bring the most stubborn of individuals to tears as viewed from 500'. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the citizens of the Gulf Coast who have lost so much. In final analysis, IWO JIMA has become a hotel, a Command and Control Center, a heliport, a hospital, a chow hall, a town hall, the local stores warehouse, a media center, and a Laundromat. Her crew attempts to assist in any way they can unfortunately, we on IWO JIMA wish we could do more.
Stew, as always, appreciate greatly your extraordinary efforts in keeping the JODITES connected.

v/r, Sheriff M.A. Walley
Captain, U.S. Navy ] Executive Officer
USS IWO JIMA (LHD-7)
Phone 757-444-6139 (DSN 564)
Cell 571-228-9435

Find the Future Naval Aviator

From the Tower..

Well I just came down from the tower and it is pretty bleak out side.  Winds are blowing 330 at a steady 50knots  Seas are a bit confused and I am guessing about 15-18ft with some breaking waves on top.  Kind of interesting.   We are also in and out of occasional rain squalls.  The captain has elected to point the ship into the wind and ride out the storm this way.  The ship is riding well a little rocky and rolly mostly due to the confused sea state and hull design.. A few souls are getting queasy.. Kind of fun.. I am enjoying myself!! Always wanted to be out at sea during a big blow.. I guess they don’t get much bigger then this..

 

More later

Nutz  

More fun in Ocean View..

No this is not Crackerz when she is pissed off!
NORFOLK — A woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to participating in the April 2004 shooting death of a woman in Ocean View.
Allison Kroboth, 20, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, malicious wounding and firearms charges in the death of Anita Overton Stevenson.
Stevenson, 28, was struck by a stray bullet as she sat in her first-floor apartment in the 100 block of D View Ave. on April 29, 2004, the unwitting victim of a dispute going on outside. She died at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital soon afterward.
Another victim, Terrance Hyman, was shot in the apartment complex’s parking lot. He was treated and released.

After the shooting, Kroboth and two others – Lamont Ray Wilkins and Kathryn Maria Rezendez-Ramirez – fled to Georgia.
They were arrested about a month later, after Wilkins fired at Atlanta police officers from a stolen minivan and the trio holed up in a house near Emory University.
Kroboth is expected to be sentenced on Feb. 3. Wilkins, who attempted suicide after his arrest, and Rezendez-Ramirez are still in Georgia, awaiting extradition.

Rocking and Rolling...

Well we are out here on the raging main... our first night at sea in a while plus there is a CAT 5 hurricane only about 300miles south... Dont like being tied up to the pier.. Anyhow life is good that we are back out to sea for a while and I am sure I will sleep like a baby tonight.. Already have a few people getting sea sick.. kind of funny!

This will be fun!

HURRICANE RITA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE

NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL

255 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005

DATA FROM RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT RITA HAS REACHED

CATEGORY FIVE INTENSITY WITH ESTIMATED MAXIMUM SUSTAINED SURFACE

WINDS OF 165 MPH.  THIS WILL BE REFLECTED IN THE 4 PM CDT ADVISORY.

Another View From the CO

Here is a good blog line as well… a different perspective of our mission…

 

http://lgc-colloquium.blogspot.com/2005/09/navy-in-new-orleans.html

OV Crime Beat..

Yes I am still tracking the news back home.. this is why Crackerz packs heat!
NORFOLK — A third suspect has been charged in a man’s beating death, police said Tuesday.
George Andrew Leslie, 42, for whom no address was available, was arrested Monday in Virginia Beach. He is charged with murder in the death of Perry Baxter Ellison, 50, for whom no address was available.
Ellison was assaulted Aug. 26 in the 100 block of W. Ocean View Ave. He died Aug. 30 at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Two other men are already facing charges in Ellison’s death. Leslie was being held in Norfolk City Jail, according to the sheriff’s department

Understanding the dynamics.. .

Here it is Monday morning the 19^th and the ship is sort of in the process of redeploying some of its air assets back to Norfolk and other points.  Yesterday the test and evaluation squadron VX-1 flew back to Patuxent river.  Today the H-53 squadron was in the process of taking all of its crew members and maintainers to the beach a couple of trips for those guys before they were to make the trip north back Norfolk. 

 

Side bar comment, there is another tropical storm “Rita” in the Western Atlantic, which is getting some people nervous, especially with some of the fall out from Katrina.

 

Anyhow this 53 was coming back to the boat to make its last run for the beach when the airboss said, “551, I have some good news and some bad news, what do you want to hear first?”  The pilot said the bad news.  The pilot said, “ we will take the bad news boss”  So the boss delivered the bad news to the crew informing them that their long awaited trip home to Norfolk and cold beer had been canceled.  However the boss with a sense of humor this morning told the crew that the good news was that he saved a bunch of money with GEICO!

 

Needless to say I am sitting here in the SAC listening to the radios and I am in tears of laughter..  Too funny that the 53’s are coming back.. and the hilarious chatter on the radios…

 

Aaah the fun never ends aboard the GATOR!

 

 

Helo Bubbas

Yesterday (Saturday 17 Sept) was one of those days! Sam, my buddy, roomate and fellow pilot woke up early for our 6am brief. Our mission today was to cart a two star admiral around the county side. Well not quite that but just transport her and her entourage from Gulfport to the New Orleans Naval Support Activity and then Back to Gulfport. A pretty simple mission and one that we are good at.

With a mission plan in hand, a good weather brief, a solid aircraft we boarded our steed and headed out, a bit early by the way, into the wild blue yonder to pick up our charge.

We zipped along the coast, specifically the intercoastal waterway from New Orleans to the Gulfport area. It was amazing to witness the fury of Mother Nature first hand. All along the coast the destruction was awesome. The water was the main culprit. Absolutely amazing! Imaging yourself walking down the each where there is a tide. The high water line is where all the crud from the water collects. Sea grass, cigarette butts, soda cans, sticks. Well this is what the coast looked like from the air. Everything minus trees was washed to the high water line and just strewn about. We would fly over just foundations with nothing else there. Lots with only an in ground pool remaining. One of the most impressive sites I saw was a school about a half mile from the coast an on the roof of the school was the high water line.

We finally made it to the landing zone at the CB base, essentially a big parking lot. There was large group of people there so everything seemed ok. We kicked our crewman out to find our passengers. It was pretty obvious what we were doing, kind of hard to hide a helicopter. Our crewman found some navy chiefs who told them that the Admiral decided to drive to New Orleans. So with this new information in hand and a C2 (command and control) aircraft over head we called back to “mother” to ask for guidance. Mom told us to return to base, so that is exactly what we did. Of course we took our time gawking at all the damage along the coast.

Upon returning to the ship, we shut down and proceeded to do our engine wash, assuming we were complete for the day. Not bad for an hours worth of work. Here it is 9am and we were done for the day!

Well almost, Sam had gone in to the ship to start the paperwork process and while he was inside he received a call telling him to get back in his rotating, vibrating steed and go back to Gulfport and retrieve our wayward admiral. So that is what we did. After some confusion on the flight deck, which has been the case ever sense we have been in New Orleans..

Side bar comment: Confusion on the flight deck. The way the ship is docked provides for only 4 landing zones. When traffic is busy like it usually is, this causes a great deal of heart ache for the deck guys. Aircraft will come in have to shut down and fold in a short amount of time to make room for the aircraft coming in behind us. After the bird is folded, it is “boned” or put into its parking spot out of the way for landing aircraft. A painful process and the only reason it is painful is because the deck crew bless their hearts are extremely slow when it comes to maneuvering aircraft around the flight deck. Not entirely their fault however they should be getting better. Our deck crew has been busting their collective asses to make this mission a success. In reality, they should get a ton of credit.

Back to the story at hand, Sam and I launched our bird, of course after it was put back together, we were also doing a 60-hour engine wash on the aircraft as well. Ok so the bird is back together and off we went charging into the morning sky back to Gulfport to pick up our way ward admiral.

We landed back at the Sea Bee Base and loaded our VIP then headed back to the Naval Support Activity to drop her off. After a quick drink of fuel on the USS Shreveport, we headed down the Mississippi River for a little sight seeing. This area is pretty badly beaten up. Still lots of flooding and towns for the most part wiped off the map. The oil refineries in this area seemed to have made out alright, not a lot of structural damage however some of the facilities along the river were damaged. We flew all the way down to Venice, and yep in lots of areas it looked like Venice Italy minus the gondolas and spaghetti. The summer stench of Venice and the trash was there along with lots of seagulls. I don’t think pigeons like the Mississippi delta heat and humidity.

Or time and fuel was up so we had to head back to the city to pick up the VIP and take her to the Joint Reserve Base, (JRB) for a while. While here we shut down and chatted with some air force reserve pilots for a while. Learned a little about the reserves and found out that there is a lot of money to be made flying helicopters if you are willing to travel and be out of the county for a while. We also learned that the air force really spoils its aircrews. When their aircraft breaks, they go Houston or some other far off point, sleep in hotels, drink beer and have a good old time.

After our short break we were once again on our way back to Gulfport to drop off our VIP. The weather was looking ominous to the north as we headed there and hoped the weather would hold until we were back aboard mother.

Another side bar comment: After all was said and done, it turned out that the admiral we had originally launched to pick up in Gulfport was actually at the LZ when we landed there the very first time. She however did not realize that at that time, our scheduled pick up time that we were there in fact o pick her up… Can you hear the music?

Ok, so we dropped off our passengers and we were cruising on home along the canal I was at the controls and Sam goes, “Dude that guy in that boat is waving at us like he needs some help!” So I slow us down and bring the helo around to see what the story is. Obviously communications by hand signals sucks at best and at worst futile when speaking with foreign hand signals we made the quick decision to land on the bank of the canal and kick out our crewman to see what the story was.

This was another one of those interesting landings. The canal bank was sandy near the water and had very tall marsh grass way from the water. We found the best clearing that we could and gently eased the aircraft on to the surface hoping that we would not sink into some goo and get stuck or FOD out the engines. This could have been bad. Anyhow we landed just fine and the marsh grass came up to the top of our cockpit windows. Kind of cool, I am slapping myself for not having the crewman take a quick pick of our LZ.

Come to find out, it was some divers who were working on a pipeline or something and their motor had broken down and the other group of boats in their party was no where around. So we decided to take on the two with us to their base camp to start the recovery process. One of the divers did not want to leave the boat. Understandable. Well the gentleman we took with us was the older of the two. We strapped him in and took off for the base camp which was supposedly just up one of the many rivers in the area. Well as soon as we got this guy into the air, it seemed as thought he lost all sense of direction. Apparently he is a better mariner of the deep then that of the air. We tried every option we knew to help him find his home, even giving him our map to point out where he needed to go. However he failed to bring his reading glasses and was unable to accurately mark the position on the map. The guy was from out of town and did not even know the name of the town where the base camp was located. Additionally all the placed we flew over (as far as Slidell to the north) that he directed us to we could not find the correct location. With our fuel level low and frustration level high, we took our passenger to the ship to refuel and have him call his wife who had the number of the place he was working out of and in turn called the company to A. Find out where in the hell they were located and B. to tell them they had a boat that was broken. What a fiasco! Anyhow with help on the way, we elected to return this gentleman back to his buddy on the side of the canal. So we did. It was a little bit of a challenge trying to explain exactly what had transpired to the airboss however like all the craziness around here, he took it in stride.

Our planned 1 hour day of flying actually turned into a 7.5 hour day. Not to shabby and a typical day in the life here with JTF Katrina!

Flowers from Nutz

POTUS Day

It has been a while since the last up date. The only good excuse I have is that where we are moored, the ship has cell service. So with that being said I have been able to call a few people every night and give them an update as to my status..

Anyhow I think I left off right before the President showed up and stayed the night on the ship. An interesting day with the secret service running around securing the ship. HMX-1, the presidential helicopter service doing practice approaches and other craziness such as the Whitehouse Communications Agency setting up all of their gear. When the Boss goes some place, he has a lot of players working for him. We, up ships company folks have been having fun BSing with the Secret Service. They are pretty good at keeping secrets hence their title. We are even trying to mooch some memorabilia from them in the form of patches coins etc. Always a struggle.

Well the boss eventually showed up, I was in the SAC where I was able to watch his arrival on both the ships closed circuit television feed and the news feed from CNN. Pretty interesting. As GW came aboard the ship and actually entered the skin of the ship a couple of us peered into the passage way to try and catch a glimpse. We were in luck for after a couple of minute wait, he walked right by, stopped waved and said “hello guys”. There were only 3 of us in the P-way so that means he was talking to us three.

The night proved to be pretty interesting as well with all of GW’s security elements roaming the ship. Big crew, don’t screw with the boss or your ass might just turn into worm food. These guys don’t joke around. Like I mentioned before Chris Broussard, a buddy of mine would have had a hay day shooting the breeze with all of the different bubbas talking about the pieces they carry.

Well GW spent the night aboard the mighty IWO JIMA so it is kind of cool to say that yep I stayed in the White House on the Mississippi. The new epicenter of the most powerful nation on the planet.

From what I am told GW is an early riser and he spent his early morning on the mess decks chatting with the enlisted kids. Good for him and there was not much fan fare either. He just went down there and started gripping and grinning and answering questions and talking pics with the kids.

Before you knew it he was gone, off the ship in his white toped black hawk, out doing the nations business. Maybe we will get lucky and he will return again to the mighty IWO.

Crackerz is Crazy About Nutz

I have the most wonderful husband ever! Today I received the most beautiful bouquet of red roses. The roses were beautiful but the kind words he put in the card are what choked me up.

Nutz, I love you and I am the luckiest woman in the world! Thanks for being you!!

IWALU,
Crackerz

More Pics from NOLA...Courtesy of Nutz

More from NOLA!

I think I left off after or busy day of flying around the city where my crew and I logged 11 hours of flight time… A lot of flying on our part.  Anyhow the next few days were filled with us bringing order to the chaos.  Things change on a daily basis, missions, how to conduct missions, who is our controlling agency.  For me, I am the operations officer so when I fly I am sort of out of the loop of all the changes.  When I land I need to run around do all of my post flight debriefings…. No not underwear then gather the required information to write the next days flight schedule.  A busy day that ends around 11-12pm.   There is really no easy way to explain how things are working here.  Our ship is sort of the New Orleans Emergency operations center and every other day or so all the chiefs fly to the ship which in turn turns the ship into a crazy environment.  Leaders getting piped aboard, the Governor, the JTF commander Gen Honore and a literal boat load of other people who get special piping when coming aboard.  One of the best stories I have heard about cockiness is when some generals aircraft landed he got out fired up a stogie and strode across the flight desk smoking away.  He got the point where he was to enter the ship and he put out his cigar on the flight deck.  This is pretty ballsy.   Another good story happed to one of our own.  General Honore was on the flight deck waiting for the Louisiana Governor to arrive.   He leaned over to one of the kids working the flight deck and asked when the Governor was going to land.   The kid replied, “sir I don’t think he has landed yet.”  The general proceeded to chew the kid a new asshole because he did not know that the Louisiana Governor was a she and not a he.  I doubt the general knew that the kid he chewed out was a Canadian and probably knows more about US leadership then some other US kids on the boat.  Just some of the fun aboard ship.

 

I forget the day Friday I think, but Vice President Chaney came aboard and was briefed by all the key players.  A few from our detachment saw him as he was whisked through the ship. This day as also filled with multiple VIP hits.  

 

Yesterday Saturday 10 Sept Michigan once again lost to Notre Dame and I owe Joe a beer.  Anyhow I went up flying for an hour over sector 4, our new area of responsibility for air cover if you will.  We however had to break off the mission early because of communications problems with our helicopter.

 

The city has been divided into 4 sectors, the Army and national guard each have one, the navy one and the coast guard one.  Our sector follows the Mississippi south for about 8 miles then north inland for about 8 miles to a marshy area then back toward the city and an industrial canal, sort of a five sided box.  Anyhow this does two things it allows for traffic deconfliction, eliminate midair crashes and stream line taskings. 

 

On the bright side of this disaster, it has given the Government a real world chance to test and evaluate a no shit dirty bomb/chem/bio scenario.  A lot of the lessons learned here will help if heaven for bid something on this scale not made by nature happens again. 

 

So what are things like?  Well yesterday I did get a chance to get off the boat and stroll around the streets of New Orleans downtown district.  I took Sam, Sherry and Shaiboon and we left the ship and walked along the river front complex down to the rail crossing in front of Harra’s casino on Canal street.  This is sort of the head quarters and life support area for all of the rescue workers and news crews.  Under the Harra’s drive up reception area there were people in line to get some grub, burgers drinks and such.  Lots of agencies from around the country are here, I saw a police truck from Pontiac Michigan, NYPD Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol the 82^nd airborne.  I do have a soft spot in my heart for the boys in camies.  I try and shake their hands offer any services the ship can proved for them, IE showers and hot meals and if they can a little AC to cool their bones.  There job is not a fun one, walking the streets and going door to door.  Fortunately they are not recovering bodies; this is left to civilian agencies.  I have even seen an LA county Coroners office bubba wondering around.  We continued out walking tour down Canal Street to Bourbon for the most part the city is in good shape except for all of the trash and where the liquor stores and sneaker marts were looted.  A shame.  As Sam mentioned it looked no worse then the day after fat Tuesday.  A few days of some good cleanup and the city will appear ship shape.  Granted some windows on sky scrapers were busted and some of the older buildings collapsed.  On Bourbon, we even found a bar that was up and running and selling beer.  I am not sure how cold the beer was, however there were people partaking, and we even chatted a little with the a wall street journal reporter.  We walked a few more blocks then turn up toward the French Market and past Jackson square I think that is the name of the joint where all the palm readers and horse and buggies used to hang out.  This area is in good shape.  Kind eery wondering around when there are no people around.   Café Dumond was still there however no Binets were being served.  We went by the little park where the news casters are all set up to do their evening updates and took a few pics.  Walking down the sea wall park to the ship, there are numerous tents set up for people to sleep in, appeared mostly to be support personnel for the civilian agencies. 

 

On the ship things have been interesting.  As you all know the President will be joining us this afternoon.  So yesterday his advance party showed up and things once again turned interesting with security and white house staffers running around the ship.  HMX-1 the aviation unit that transports the boss did some touch and goes on our ship as a dress rehearsal for his arrival.  Like I mentioned earlier not ever day do we do the kind of flying we are doing here.  Kind of neat to be the center of the universe if only for a small moment in time.  Ah how quickly I forget some little details, the Chief of naval Operations showed up yesterday as well.  He told the assembled gaggle of ships company in the hangar bay that we are doing a great job however he does not know when we are going to be able to go home. 

 

Last night all eyes were watching football on the numerous screens around the boat.  A couple of us shot the breeze with some of the Secret Service agents who are sharing our hall way in the berthing area and yes in their little black bags are no teddy bears.  Chris Broussard would be having fun checking out all the different weapons the different agencies are packing.  Not just your standard M-16 or 9MM some other cool little things like MP-5s and some new state of the art toys. 

 

Enough for now, more later. I need to hit the gym, and yes, yesterday was the first day I was able to get in and run a few miles.  Nice to finally have a little bit of time to goof off!

 

 

 

 

An Update from the Big Easy

It has been a while since i have pushed out an update and if you are old school you will remember the journal entries.  Well I have sort of become lazy in my old age and stopped writting in my journal... However this is partially because my laptop is having issues.. i must upgrade if I ma to continue..additionally I have been quite busy the past ten day... go figure.

 

Anyhow on this adventure i am the operations officer so I get to go to all the fun meetings and write the flight schedule, I do however like being in the mix of things and knowing what the hell is going on.  Ever since we got abour the mighty IWO things have been constantly changing.

 

Monday as the storm was just finishing off the gulf coast we recieved a warning order that we might be heading out to the Gulf...  an on again off again type thing.. The navy unlike the army does not use operations orders..  With that being said tuesday we finally got the "go" word and we fevorishly started packing our gear to head out to the ship... another point of contention with the way my squadron operates.  We dont set ourselves up for success by training like we fight..  anyhow not the forum for my opinion.. well actually it is.. We flew out to the boat and "mom" as we call our new home the IWO started haulling some serious ass to get to the gulf coast to provide assistance.   

 

We arrived on station off the coast of Biloxi and did a days worth of work.. mostly a few helicopter flights to the beach.. biloxi pensacola and even new orleans.  We even sent our hover craft over the beach with a bunch of seabees and some food/water to assist where we could..  That night the captain came back to the ship with new marching orders, to get the ship underway and steam up the Mississippi and provide assistance to people in NOLA.. so that is exactly what we did.. at dawn the following day the ship met the pilot at the mouth of the mississippi delta and inland we went, a voyage of about 70 miles and highly unusual for a ship of this class..  At the end of the day the ship was tied up at the Riverwalk in downtown new orleans just up the river from rue carrie and the french quarter..   

 

The very next day we (I use "we" in general, could be the ship as a whole or the squadron or the helo and crew) started doing things not necessarily standard operating procedure, flying helicopters off the ship while tied up in port.  Along with that, the obsticles at the riverwalk makes the flying even more hazardous.  I was one of the first helicopters off the deck to begin searching the city... of course after a VIP run to the Emergency operations Center in Baton Rouge, our first intersting landing zone of the day, a baseball diamond.   These places get pretty small when you have a big helicopter to bring in... After the pax pick up we zipped back across lake Pontichtrain to the ship to drop off our passengers and begin our first search

 

A very intersting experiance.. basically the whole north side of the city was underwater.  We cruised the around at extremly low level, about 150ft over the house, avoiding powerlines, towers and the plethora of other helicopters operating in the area.  I am talking a ton of helicopters.. you could look around and count about 25 that you could see and maybe a about a half dozen more you could not see because of thier color and proximity to the urban terrain below.    To give you an idea of how busy the airspace was, i was flying around a fire and out from the smoke plume came a civilian 60 with a water bucket on a collision course.  We turned hard to avoid the collision only to come in very close proximity to another helo which inturn required more evasive maneuvering on the part of your highly skilled pilot.  

 

We were luck and did not have a mid air and we continued to seach the city.. Late in the morning we found some people on a roof top, we circled around to lower our swimmer for the rescue and it was a success.  However the people did not want to come out of the city.  There loss, we pulled the swimmer out, reported thier position and continued the seach to the north east of the superdome.  In this area, canal street was in fact a canal and we saw a few bodies and reported those as well.  We continued searching and came across a woman in the water very near the cite of the first civilian helicopter crash.  We actually landed not to far from the crash to let our swimmers lend a hand with some local officials who were trying to get the woman who was supposedly a nut case into a boat and out of the city...

 

Later in the afternoon we were tasked to pick up some refugees as we are calling the stranded civilians from a small landing zone (LZ) that was set up by the locals and fly them to the international airport.  After the drop at the airport we picked up some relief workers and flew them to an LZ that was set up at the convention center, once again another interesting landing. 

 

We finished off our day on the east side of the city near the amusement park and not finding anyone.  Sam another pilot buddy of mine did come across a sinking rescue boat and pulled two people out with his swimmer..  a good day for him and an even better day for the people in the boat...

 

My day ended after 11 hours in the cockpit at about midnight.   Of course we had the required evening meetings paperwork dinner and of course a shower..

 

More tomorrow.. if you are lucky

NUTZ

Some Pics from Nutz

Nutz sent me these pics!

Fires

Bill:

 

Fires are to the best of my knowledge set by hoodlums... that being said, helicopters once again are being used with "bambi" buckets to take water from the mighty "Miss" to douse the flames... pretty neat evolution.. I almost had a head on collision with a helicopter doing just this.. he was coming out of the smoke that is why we did not see him until the last minute.. pretty crazy here in the wild west..

 

Nutz

 

Big Easy!

Yep we are pier side just down the river from the French Quarter.. you will see us on wavy 10.. a news crew is aboard... bumped into one of the today show ladies and her dingleberry fell to the deck.. oops.. anyhow life is good and yes we are busy... Gen Honore and others have been dropping in and out in the past few hours... this is now the "flag ship" of the reconstruction search and rescue process....

Like I said we are pretty busy and the situation is pretty fluid... Sam and I went topside a little while ago and saw lots of police cars around the area a couple of big convoys; 100+ trucks heading into and out of the city. We also saw a fire burning in the distance.

We embarked a bunch of medical staff so things are definitley getting interesting.

One of the interesting things today was coming up the Mighty Mississippi River and flying off the ship while it went up the river...very unusual for a ship of our size to conduct flight ops...however at this time period a lot is unusual...making and breaking a lot of rules. Lots of damage along the river, shrimp boats and barges on the banks, a lot of flooding, the trees with no leaves cows wandering around.. all pretty quiet...

While we were FCFing we almost got run over by a big 4 engine joint star's aircraft... pretty crazy.. but hey I am still here to talk about it so it is all good..

Oh, by the way, who wants a Hurricane and a Muffaletta? Benjeas and coffee tomorrow .. yummy!

Later,

Nutz

Maverick Can't Hover!!

I hope someone is cataloging all the little stories about how helicopters are the saviors of New Orleans.. I am sure some one when this is all said and done will write a book… However something can be said about those who fly really fast and drop bombs and those that fly really slow and save lives… Helicopters here have been the little angels of mercy and in our case some big ass shitting angels of mercy IE Shitters’ AKA H-53’s or the “Big Iron”  We might be a little slow, not the pilots but the helicopters but we sure can get a lot accomplished.. rescuing and moving people and supplies.. pretty darn interesting…

 

More later

Nutz

RAZing

We took all the gas from VA and are pumping it into our ship.. sorry to have left you with the $3+ per gallon prices however we will put it to good use… Fun starts today in earnest. I am stuck FCFing a helo.. then tomorrow I jump into the fray!  We are coming with Sea Bees food water transport communications and all sorts of other goodies… will be interesting..

NUTZ!

From the Boat!!

Not sure if this is getting to the web however all is good and we are keeping busy.. Mom is hauling some serious ass to get around to the gulf and we are getting ready to engage the enemy of mother nature in the Red Neck Riviera and help out our fellow Americans. Pretty neat to be apart of this type of operation although it sucks to be away from home, in a way, I am going back to one of my homes… Keep tuned into the news, you never know where those gray helicopters might pop up next.

Shoot me a note if you get the chance…

deweyzj@lhd7.navy.mil

Later

NUTZ!

Help the Hurricane Victims

Photo Credit: FoxNews.com
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