What’s in My Lost-Lost Flight Gear Bag?

so check this out I was raging around the attic the other day and I came across these two covers this is my mid shipment cover this is actually the cover I was wearing when I got commissioned this is the one I threw up in the air at the stadium May of 1982 and then this was the last cover I wore on active duty my commander cover it's got the scrambled eggs on the front but under these covers is my flight gear bag let's check out what's in it all right let's take a look okay bag within a bag this is my helmet bag naturally I would expect my helmet is inside my helmet bag but let's see what's in the pockets here ah so here are my log books and see done up in Diamond Back noahide courtesy of our par rigers took pride in being really good with the ngah hiide so I have three log books from my career starting with my time in the training command you can see here I am flying [Music] t2s and then we go on to the F14 rag you can see you got date Bureau number type model series you have Mission code the red is for nighttime and then the name of the pilot I flew with is over here find my first cruise my first pilot was was rex or you can see we're flying here aboard the USS Independence CV 62 and then we had my second Cruise aboard Kennedy flying mostly with the co vodka gel you like to fly with the same guy as much as you could here we are now on my next tour vf43 flying what started as the F14 A+ is kind of interesting that the airplane is annotated in some months as the f14a plus that was the first type model series designation for the F14 with the f110 motors and a few other things and then they decided to make it the f14b see the first indication of an f-14b is in June of 91 and then when you're done flying they annotate your log book like this and see there's the puking dog so no further flights in 143 so after 143 I went to the rag and at the rag you can see as a basically f 14 training Squadron instructor I'm flying both A's and B's and the names here are the student Tomcat pilots who are on their way to a fleet Squadron in these months you can see I'm flying A's and B's and actually I'm flying with Admiral Les exclusively three star admiral he was airl and that's back when it was okay for three stars to fly Fleet airplanes so even when I was the I was able to keep in the cockpit that was a lot of fun and got to put on my rag instructor hat because Admiral Les was an A7 guy by Fleet experience he was obviously qualified in the F14 and a great pilot he had been CEO of the Blue Angels and some other things a lot of fun to fly with so from there I went to my department head tour in vf12 so they had transitioned from just transitioned from the a to the B so again got lucky flying the B now we're aboard the USS America flew with the EXO at the time Kurt Dale Kraut former Top Gun instructor great guy he and I had good times in the airplane we were a well-oiled machine and we really flew a lot of sorties in support of that operation to get the serbs out of Saro um so you can see the log book is absolutely full and then following that cruise I became the airwing opso for the same airwing and that gets me into my third log book so now we're aboard the George Washington and as a function of that I'm not flying all that much because I'm doing a lot of Staff work so you know flying at best half what I was flying before now I'm still flying with vf12 because it's airwing one we've gone from America to the George Washington so you can see CVN 73 and that kind of wraps it up so this is this is a lot of fun to find that in the helmet bag but of course in the helmet bag here we go helmet so in the helmet is my skull cap these were the custommade Diamond Back skull caps you know you just wear this kind of a like a Monty Python Holy Grail look here so this is an hgu 55 you see here mounts for the night vision goggle device my first helmet was the hgu 33 with this visor housing I got this one to commemorate my flight with the Blue Angels gold visor very blue angel light so the hd33 was replaced in the early 90s with the hd55 which had been an Air Force standard much lighter without the visor housing so under G this was a lot more comfortable and the visor just snapped to the front of the helmet so here's my diamond back tape job this used to say mooch and let's see if it let's see how it fits all right there you go in Top Gun Maverick you can see they're wearing hgu 55s rather than the new helmet which is sort of strange looking to my eye it has a different visor housing that makes it look kind of insect like so I prefer the Streamline look of this helmet obviously Tom Cruz preferred the Streamline look of this helmet as well and you can see that in Top Gun Maverick they're wearing clear visors along with their call signs on the front of their helmets all right here's the git this is actually an Air Force style git it's not made of the NX material it's more like a you know more cloth feeling git the other thing about it is the zipper instead of zipping from the bottom up Zips from the top down so the way the git works is the hose is plugged into a receptacle that's located in the cockpit and under G air is vented up the hose into the bladders that are located along the legs and that expansion causes the git to constrict around the aviator's legs which is designed to keep the blood from pooling in the lower extremities and assist The Aviator in maintaining Consciousness under G so nothing in this pocket and there's something in this pocket o a pill pack this thing's been in here since at least 1998 so people sometimes ask hey how do you go to the bathroom in in a tactical jet when you're strapped into an ejection seat Well you use a p pack um pretty self-explanatory but I'll tell you what let let's try a little experiment and I'm going to waste this one in service of the channel here so i' got a bottle of water handy so let me open this open this puppy up so so ideally what happens is when you use this the sponge expands and and absorbs the liquid so let's see what happens there you go I I don't know if they're still using these particular models of the P pack but that's where you go I flew with one pilot in particular using the P pack was a ritual especially at night we'd get into Marshall wait for our approach time and he would say I'm going to make a sandwich and he'd use his P pack I think that's kind of how he got in the zone to get ready for a night landing so in any case b back don't leave the ship without it all right and then we have the harness clip to the harness is the O2 mask and then also and I kind of feel like I should have turned this in here is what is called a mini rag mini regulator so this goes from The Mask to the side of the airplane it has both the communications connection as well as the oxygen ready to go in this pouch we have survival knife it's got the hook for cutting your parachute cord also you can see the the par riggers taped the knife so that the switchblade wouldn't come open before you were ready for it and puncture your life preserver and then on the other side we have water bottle attached with cord no water in this one and obviously that's not a whole lot of water and then you had the place for the flashlight here something to point out with the harness are the coke fittings these are the things upper and lower that connected you to the ejection seat in the airplane now missing from my flight gear bag is the lpu life preserver unit which would fit over the top of the harness in the final scene of Top Gun on the flight deck when they all get back they're wearing the sort of lpu that was used at the end of the90s into the 2000s the current lpu is more streamlined sort of just a neck ring so the only question now is does this stuff still fit so I'm going to pull an alley Spagnola and do a little video magic here we go all right there you go I'm ready to man up all right that'll do it for this episode if you're a first time viewer please ring the bell become a subscriber so you don't miss anything give me the likes and comment check the links below for Merch and also where to get the punks Trilogy my first three novels about an F14 Squadron just re-released by the naval Institute press use the discount code Punk YT at us.org and checkout for 25% off and if you'd like to help support this Channel please consider consider using the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com Caroll and I look forward to talking to you again [Music] soon

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 72,469

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, Top Gun, Top Gun Maverick, DCS, DCS World, fighter pilots, U.S. Navy, aircraft carriers, flight gear, G suit, oxygen masks, carrier aviation

Id: anMvpGb1qgY

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021