Foreign Friday

By -
"Big Red" VP-19
Misawa, Japan
1980

The P-3 were frequently seen landing and taking off, but they were not as noisy as the F-4s. The P-3 planes and crews rotated in and out of Misawa AFB, too. Their mission was surveillance.
"Big Red's" tails were gorgeous, and we lovingly called them "Red Tails in the Sunset."

Steve, one of the P-3 crew members (shown on the right) became a good friend with several of the teachers, and we were invited to his celebrate his promotion to LT-JG.

To commemorate the occasion for Steve, I enlarged, crewel-embroidered, and framed the "Big Red" emblem. I can't find a photo of the finished project anywhere, so I must have neglected to take one.

Comments

  1. Changes in the windMay 20, 2011 at 7:20 AM

    What a great gift...wished you had a picture:)

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  2. hakuchoMay 21, 2011 at 8:52 AM

    Oh, no...no photo, too bad :( But I imagine it was wonderful and appreciated :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. kathy bMay 22, 2011 at 4:18 PM

    Well, that was a tease..>I so wanted to see it!! i'll bet it was wonderfully recieved

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  4. UnknownSeptember 20, 2012 at 11:03 PM

    Hi Nancy,
    Funny meeting you who has been associated with two significant parts of my childhood. I was 7 years old when you encountered VP-19 at Misawa. You see Big Red was stationed out of Moffet Airfield in Mt.View,CA . My father was assigned to 19 and he was on that deployment there in Misawa with you. As a little boy I would watch those tail wings launch and not return for up to 10 months at a time. At that time of the cold war my dad couldnt even tell my mother where in the world they were or what they did, which was much more than surveillance back then. The squadrons would do rotations to the Misawa ASWOC were 24 hours a day crews were actively hunting Soviet subs and their fleet and even going behind the lines into Russia to spy. VP-19 was a very famous P-3 squadron with a great battle banner and the raddest tail wing of any military squadron of the 80's. At Moffet they were the top dogs back then everyone who got stationed there wanted to be assigned to VP-19. When I was 15 My dad was assigned XO of Misawa's ASWOC and I spent almost 3 years living at Misawa. They were wonder years the tension and threat level in Misawa in the late 80s was surreal. Twenty years later my Misawa family is still my family and we are all uniquely bonded.
    But that 7 year old boy had never heard of Misawa and no clue were my dad was or what he was doing. Those pictures and your experiences are part of my history that I had never seen and part of my fathers military legacy. I am grateful you posted and shared that thank you so much
    Sincerely,
    Mark Ricker

    ReplyDelete

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