Missions to and from the US Embassy in Manila every day for practice evac and show of force.. It was not a good time for Americans in the Phillipines at the time.
Somewhere during this time we hitched another ride back to Okinawa Japan to get ready for a very large exercise called Team Spirit. Team Spirit would be taking place in South Korea.
The squadron launched 10 or 11 of 13 aircraft to South Korea for exercise Team Spirit. The helos had to be flown from The very southern tip of Japan at Okinawa all the way to Pohang South Korea via many small island chains through the East China Sea. This photo is passing another small volcano on a Japanese Island.
Team Spirit was a success. Many crazy happenings including interactions with Russian spy trawlers, Russian Bears and a Mig of unknown origin shooting right through the exercise area. Here we are on the final day of Team Spirit attempting a 10 helo echelon formation fly-over the base camp. We all almost died that day.
Hitched a ride on a C-141 on the advanced party back to Hawaii. Stop over in Guam. We also visited Kwajelain, Midway and Wake islands.
After Hawaii I went to Virginia. Much more boring...but we did do a cross country flight from Va to 29 Palms Cali in 4 helos. It took 4 days flying 8 hours a day at 120 kts and 200-2000 feet AGL. Only one break down with an emergency landing in a Farmers field in Oklahoma. The entire town came out to see why 4 Marine helos had just invaded their town.
Here we are passing Meteor Crater Az.
And finally here is a neat pic with high speed film. You can see the woblly ass blades doing funny stuff.
