|
|
Presented At The 2009 PWG Reunion In Rockwall, Texas
Ladies and Gentlemen . . . and Prop Wash Gang members:
Unfortunately I am unable to be with you for this year's reunion. I would like to say that I am with you in spirit, but I gave up drinking spirits a long time ago, and on the subject of spirits, even Martha says I do not have a ghost of a chance on Halloween night, even if they do raise the dead then.
So in my absence I have asked Col Bob to read this little letter to you all. I am not sure this is going to work out. Everyone here knows that enlisted men don't listen to officers. Officers listen to NCO's. That's how they make bird colonel.
The last time I wrote a letter to the reunion, I wrote about our Airborne Mission Supervisors and how they were the ones most responsible for successfully and safely shepherding us through all of our missions. I asked then for all the AMS's to stand and be recognized for returning us to our families, friends, pets, neighbors and the wonderful people who work behind the bars all over the globe where we were stationed. Hopefully you will all stand again and be acknowledged for the heroes that you truly are. Those of you AMS's who do not believe that you were ever heroes, now is your chance. Call the waitress and order a round of drinks for everyone. Then you will surely be recognized as a hero.
Tonight though, I would like to recognize another group who flew on our missions and were and still are also greatly responsible for our safety in the hostile air where we flew. These are the diddy-bops.
For those of you here who do not know what a diddy-bop is, it is a job classification for the truly weird airman in the spooky Air Force where we served. They were technically airborne Morse intercept operators back when I flew, but they were always called diddy bops.
We were once called USAFSS, but apparently the Air Force had a lot of extra letters lying around the pentagon, so they have changed the name of the command several times over the years, and now none of us who have trouble remembering where we left our eyeglasses, TV remotes or the newest baby grandchild has a clue as to what USAFSS is now called. Maybe Col Bob can tell us. After all, there has to be some reason we have officers.
Anyway back to our diddy-bops.
The diddy bops did not fly with us until after we lost 60528 in 1958. Then, after that tragic flight, they were added to our crews to provide us with the internal security to prevent another shoot-down of one of our birds. Forty-one years later, the record of their success in protecting us is as perfect as their record of not buying a round of drinks after the mission had landed. These men were very special to all of us, but that has never stopped us from teasing them every chance we got. I doubt that it will ever stop.
For those that were airborne analysts and flew the Number two position on those flights, the diddy bop was like a sentry patrolling the perimeter of our aircraft, ever on the lookout for the deadly threats that might be lurking behind a cloud bank. And they were very good at their jobs. There were no dangerous surprises, and the rest of us could do our jobs and only worry about spilling coffee on water soluble paper.
Diddy-bops are strange people. Most of our crews were made up of linguists, another strange breed of airman who had been trained in languages you would only encounter in the United States if you were riding in a New York city taxicab, shopping at a convenience store or liked to eat foods that no one else had ever heard of. But Diddy-bops were linguists, too.
Diddy-bops have their own language. They studied and became proficient in Morse Code. Our own Dave Bristol was one of the first diddy-bops, and he actually studied Morse Code under Samuel F.B. Morse. Over the years Dave learned to wean himself from the dashes and that explains why today he is dotty.
Diddy-bops hear different things than normal people do. They understand sounds that we do not. When a big vehicle is backing up and beeping, the diddy bops know what that vehicle is actually saying. Personally I do not really want to know what something named a Peterbuilt is saying, but I did tell you diddy-bops are weird. Diddy-bops are capable of carrying on a conversation with jackhammers, Gene Krupa records and their own wristwatches.
Being a diddy-bop requires a lot of work learning dots and dashes. For many just learning the difference took months of practice tapping a swizzle stick on a bar top. And it could be dangerous, too. One diddy-bop--who shall remain anonymous--was almost killed when his wife misunderstood and thought he was making a dash after some floozy named Dot, who stuttered so badly that everything she said began with something that sounded like, "di-di-di-dah-di-dah-dah-di-dah . . . . " We linguists would like to show off by speaking the languages that the Air force had taught us. One time on a mission I was on the intercom with the diddy bop and I thought he was trying to talk to me in morse code. But I was wrong. He was just belching from the in-flight lunch he had eaten.
Speaking as a tin-eared supposed linguist that was allowed to fly our missions, I can say honestly that the standards to be an airborne diddy-bop were a lot higher than what I personally had to meet, and I would rather have flown without a parachute than without a Diddy-bop. With a diddy-bop I was not likely to need that parachute. Without him, I did not know.
To all you diddy-bops, my very belated thanks for great work all the time. And now will you please stand up so everyone can recognize you.
From California where being airborne diddy-bops is like being Victoria's Secret lingerie. You can see right through them, they push up one and two and they turn something plane into a flight of fancy.
- Mahanaze