Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Whale returns to NAS Whidbey

I'm a Plank Owner of VAQ-137 out of Whidbey. If God made a place that was greener and more beautiful, he kept it for Himself.

Campfire member Sourdough44 was also a VAQ-137 "Rook" but just before my era. You must have been there with the EXCAP model Prowlers or maybe ICAP I?

I can remember one morning in the seventies I had taken a truck load of fertilizer out to Matawa and my boss flew my relief driver down to the fertilizer plant to relieve me and fly me back to Royal City to pick up my P/U after driving semi all knight. My boss and I stopped off on our way back to Royal City to talk with a farmer out on the Bench and after taking off and clearing the Bonneville Power Lines we met two Navy A-6's from NAS Whidbey flying ground cover under the Radar at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on their way down to the Boardman Bombing Range.

It was quite an experience to meet them in the air like that.

I joined the squadron right out of A school in July of '73 before commissioning. People were coming in for months before we were pulled away from VAQ-129, the training squadron, and VAQ-137 was created. I was an avionics tech on the ECM side of the shop until August of '76 when I was discharged. I will always remember the WESTPAC cruise of '74-'75 aboard USS Enterprise where many a boy became a man in the PI.

I remember reading a Tom Clancy book, the one where Jack Ryan becomes president, about 10 years ago where Clancy wrote that VAQ-137 had become an all female squadron. Please say it ain't so.

There's females yes but it is by no means all female. The Rooks have a nice website now http://vaq137.ahf.nmci.navy.mil/ including a history section you'll like.

That was the last Clancy book I read. My wife waited in line to get an autographed copy. There was a sign there that said no personalization's and do not talk to Mr Clancy. She looked at the picture of him next to the desk wearing a flight suit and told him "my husband wears one of those every day but he doesn't iron his" After the Prowler slurs in the book I moved on.

My father was in VA-145 Swordsmen when stationed at Whidbey. He was on the USS Ranger during our 3 years up there.