We're experts with the JFTR.  

had a similar experince in the same place in the late 70s, and yes it wad the russians even saw pics our guys took of them flipping the bird because we found em. also went late one night with a pilot and got a full tour of a loaded out plane, went back a week later for the airshow and had to leave the plane when I asked about certain equipment that was not on the plane. radars and such...

My father was a crew chief on P-3's before retiring in the early '80's.
His story was that while in Kadena Okinawa, his plane was taxing for takeoff for a patrol mission.  While taxing, a sonobuoy fell from one of the tubes in the belly on to the taxi way.  Before it was noticed and before a F.O.D. crew could get it, an SR-71 taxi-ed over it damaging it's landing gear and giving the Sled's crew a very short mission.  

His P-3 crew came home with new patches that tour.

Tracked a Russian kilo on the surface when it was sold  to Iran back in the early 1990's. Russian crew didn't give a shit and hung out on the deck the whole time. We took some empty sonobuouy containers, filled 'em with something to keep them afloat, snacks and porn and smokes in plastic bags, and tossed them out on parachutes in front of them. IT got to be that they'd look forward to the daily PX run and when we'd show up, they'd be standing on the deck cheering and waving.

When did the good ole fashioned smallpox blankets make it into the containers?

AFTER leave in Thailand.

Tracked Soviet subs and rigged Soviet ships, conducted SAR in the Pacific, caught Iraqi oil smugglers red handed in the act of transferring oil, tracked drug traffickers back to Columbia and called in a Columbian AC-47 to strafe the area, crossed the Equator for the first time over South America, dropped helo parts to ships on station, supported Marines and SOF in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines, got shot at with some big AAA and SAMs, conducted fisheries patrols from Diego Garcia, tracked the Nork Scud missile ship across the IO referenced in Chris Kyle's book and provided cover for the Spanish SOF, got intercepted by the Chinese.
Flew 13.4 hours in one flight, landed in Kinloss, Scotland with 5k of fuel remaining.  Blew a tire and took two birds down number 4 intake in Valkenburg, Netherlands.  Dropped thousands of sonobuoys and dumped a lot of gas.
Deployed or detted to every continent except Antarctica, 40+ countries, drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of strange stuff, collected a lot of per diem and saw an inflatable sheep with a dildo in its ass in a window in Copenhagen.
Lived in tents, hovels, barracks, bachelor quarters and 4 star hotels on the beach.  Snow, sand, forest, rain forest, tropical and temperate.
Good duty.




ETA:
Edited for dport

If you "caught" them, I want to hear how you boarded them.

By deploying the onboard SEAL team.


I meant "caught them in the act"  ICE'd photos back to the COCOM who then ordered the take down a few hours later.

Touche' my shoe brother!!

Story please.

Bah! I would have totally bought the onboard SEAL team story, deployed from the sonobuoy chute no doubt!

Let's see a P-8 shut down two engines to improve loiter time.

If you have your family put this on your grave stone (not too soon ), you will forever be my hero.

Static line or freefall out the main cabin door actually.  
Have done it with a team of 8.  
They have to jump out hard with a running start or they impact just under the empenagge.
I've got video somewhere.

Good things to have around if you want to do some serious submarine localizing.

We had a LCDR P-3 NFO as Comm Officer on my first ship.  He was shocked to learn he would not be getting per diem on our 6-month Med deployment, and wouldn't be able to fly home for a squeeze mid-way through either.

Maritime Patrol plans doing missions over a landlocked country.

Given that they can be on station twice as fast and loiter at a more fuel efficient altitude, they don't need to.

TAG

I got one. Back in 1999-2000 (Make that 1989-90, crap I'm getting old) I was an IFT on a flight where we went DACM (Defensive Air Combat Maneuvers) with a Mig-23 over the Sea of Japan. We basically countered all the moves the Mig was trying to make to get behind us. I think the Mig pilot got really pissed since he did this crazy scissor move over the top of us and finally got behind us. The PPC got his peepee spanked over the whole incident because we gave away some P-3 capabilities according to someone.

The funny thing was SS-3 had the whole thing on IRDS and was yelling "guns guns guns" over ICS the whole time as he was pretending to shoot the fucker down!

IIRC, they can shut down one and ride around single engine with no problems.  But when you have air refueling capability and a KC-135 or KC-10 is available, why bother?

Prowlers flying through the Columbia Gorge will get your attention.  

Yep, this man knows how to tell a sea story

Long boring story compared to the guys house to house fighting on the ground.
Not much to tell.
When I first deployed to Keflavik tracking Soviet subs, I never thought I'd be flying overland Iraq with a Marine FO onboard ten years later.

Supporting the Marines assaulting into Iraq.  
We'd fly above and ahead of the assault force.  We had a Marine FO and an Enlisted radio operator onboard.
Operating kind of like a manned Predator that worked directly for the commander on the ground, direct sensor to shooter.
We'd use our 3 EO cameras and imaging radar, streaming real time video to a Marine with a laptop standing next to the commander so they could see enemy emplacements, vehicles, etc. along their line of advance and "make them go away" before the ground forces got there so no surprises and for BDA.

On one particular night they were assaulting Tikrit.
We were flying at ~25Kft orbiting over the city.
I looked out the window just as the aft observer made a report over the ICS I saw fireballs coming up from the ground and arcing above our altitude before they started falling back to earth and burned out.
The only thing that could reach that high was the triple digit (i.e. 106mm size) artillery.
So we plotted the origins and stood off from those locations while continuing to support the ground forces.

A couple hours later we got retasked in flight to go up to Baghdad and link up with a SOF TF that was snatching some of the high pri targets (think deck of cards).
We did largely the same thing as we did with the Marines.  Imaging the neighborhoods they were going in, and looking out ahead of their exfil route until they got out of the area.
"There's three guys on the corner, and a dog down the street.",  "None of the vehicles are hot." etc.


During the first week of the assault into Iraq, several of the crews would be out ahead of the assault force and come across one of the highways with an Iraqi column of vehicles.
Several of us had SAMs shot at us.  
They fired them ballistically without radar guidance (because they were worried about taking a HARM from the Prowlers flying around).
If the missiles got close enough the proximity fuzes would have detonated.
Most of them went pretty wild though, the AAA was closer.

The next day we stumbled upon a couple SA2 TELs in the same area that were erected but no longer had their missiles.

One crew had half a dozen SAMS shot at them the first night of the war, turns out they were flying along rather than across the highway (duh!).
Missile left, dispense, missile right, dispense, missile left...
The TACCO told me the IFT stood up, put on his parachute and helmet, and sat back down in his seat staring at the bulkhead for the rest of the flight waiting to be shot out of the sky.


A couple of the crews had air bursts from smaller caliber AAA fairly close flying in Afghanistan.  
The mountains made the MANPAD threat a lot more pronounced than Iraq, hard to fly above them.


In the early weeks of the war the Iraqis were lobbing scuds and Seersucker missiles at the base in Kuwait.
We had a Patriot take out a Scud co-altitude to us about 2 miles behind where we just had been.
I have a snap from our camera system somewhere at home.

We were flying along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border imaging targets and I hear "Scuds inbound, birds away" over the radio.
We were heading East, I looked at my display and saw we were flying right over all the Patriot batteries.
I told the flight station to maintain heading and firewall the throttles, alerted the aft observers to look out for incoming and we got out of Dodge.
A few seconds later the aft observer saw the Patriot and then a few seconds later the interception.
The camera operator slewed over and got a shot of the smoke ball.  This was daytime.


Just like someone posted above, hours of boredom with short periods of excitement or terror (I've had landings that were more "sporty" than the incoming fire).
Again, I'd never compare the "danger" we were in to the guys dodging IEDs on the ground.
We got to go back to a nice cozy tent with 3 hots and a cot at the end of the day.

My father did the same thing in the 1960s to Chinese sailors garrisoning remote islands in the South China Sea.

Multi-Mission Aircraft  

I found some video on Youtube.

I thought you said Posleens at first.

Sigh...


We have a NG base near me that c-130's fly out of.
Navy base next door has P-3's.

Never a dull day around here.

Holy shit that's wild.  Thanks!  One of the best things I love about my job is the stories I hear from coworkers.  So far the P-3 bubbas win hands down.  I tell my buddy to write a book every time he decides to stroll down memory lane.

Of all my dramatic experiences in the military, after seeing 16 of my brothers die before my eyes, I love all our forces.  

As much as shit is talked about on this site, I have never had a problem with other service members.  Everyone has been super duper cool from my experience.  
But, yeah, the Air Force is pretty cool over all.    

Gotta love those short shorts.

My boss was nuclear sub commander.    Who else can say that?

Ali Al Salem.  What a butthole of a place to be stuck on.  Hated going in and out of that place when I worked on KAF.

Former nuke sub commanders?

Isn't that Travolta's 707 in the background.....

Whats the range of the P-8? I looked it up and found anywhere between 1200-1500 nautical miles. The area they have been searching for the missing plane is more than 1,500 off the coast. Can they all refuel in flight?

I believe that you are correct.  I got a real good look at it as be buzzed my home in Ocala real low; busted up my wifes china.



 

Had the privilege to "control" them in the Navy as an ASAC (Anti-Submarine Air Controller) looking for Russian subs.  Was a genuine honor and a blast.  Also had an Iranian one come out and harass us everyday in the Persian Gulf.

        WAR PIG





 

I grew up next door to Brunswick Naval Air Station.


My uncle used to fly P-2V's then transitioned to the P-3.





Me and 3 other guys from my ship saw a P-3 blow up in mid air, the plane crashed in Poland Maine...........i don't think they ever found the cause.


I think 11 guys were on it
 

My grandfather flew P-2s and P-3s most of his career. That clip of VP-4 was especially neat as he was in command of that squadron for several years.

18 hard points, 19,000 lbs of ordnance plus internal stores.

I miss seeing P-3's (and occasional S-3) out of NAS Jacksonville flying all around the city. Would often run into a lot of aircrew at car club events and autocross on Whitehouse airfield.  

I see them everyday (live in Mandarin, south a little ways from NAS)

 

Shoot, when they transition to the P-8 I wonder if people will start reporting airliners flying too low LOL

I always loved visiting my grandparents in Jacksonville and watching the P-3s and all the various helos.

RIP VP-22, the Blue Geese.

Astronaut quals.  Convinced new female crew that nude ASW was a tradition. Helmet, SV-2, gloves, and boots and naught else.