Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light 34

1975-1978, I was with HSL-34 Det.7 at NAS Norfolk. We deployed to the Med and the NA in BuNo 149773 on the USS Jesse L. Brown (FF-1089)

I'm a "black shoe" who served on USS Jesse L Brown (DE / FF-1089) from the late fall of 1974 until July 1978. Once I heard from my guys that we had the same aircraft onboard for a second deployment t had to see if anything remained from the custom paint job that adorned the nose of "Leroy" during our 1975-75 Med deployment. The original paint job was still visible under yet another coat of paint. . For the next 10 or 15 years I always thought that HSL-34 was the best squadron in NORVA. After I left active duty I worked at Kaman (Military Marketing) for 11 years. I was never able to determine whether my cousin, who worked on the H-2 production line in the 1960s, had worked on BuNo 149773. At one point he worked with Jack King. Whenever I was in Norfolk I always hoped that I see BuNo 149773 After | "left" Kaman Aerospace (along with 40% of the work force), I continued to drill with the Naval Reserves at the Shore Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Newport, RI.as the Weekend Repair Officer. Often, I would run into the LAMPS pilots and crew-members when they came over to SIMA Newport to check on a repair job. Of course, I made every effort to finish all repairs to ensure that the ships would be ready to go. (As a side note, one drill weekend I found out the hard way that a civilian crane out of Providence costs $1,000/hour to rent. A young Ensign ("black-shoe") on one of the Frigates signed off on the paperwork for crane and it left the pier before the data link had been tested. I believe the test gear that should have been used was the |UKM-3 I was ticked off at the Ensign, but there wouldn't be any reason for the Frigate to leave port for ASW training without a functional data link, so SIMA had to pay several thousand dollars to get the crane back. If anyone is interested in 1980s vintage "sales promotion" items such as SH-2F stickers and patches, H-2 glassware from the Naval Helicopter Association, SH-2f tie tacks, etc or even an acey-deucy sticker, please contact me . BRG Captain, USN (retired) -

1987-1990, I was a pilot in HSL-34, deployed with both SH-2F 149768 /231 and SH-2F 151303 /235

1991-1993, this is Ams to Gerald W Franklin Sr United States Navy retired I was one of the last green checkers. I deployed on the USS Jack Williams (FFG-24) and USS Antrim (FFG-20) as the leading airframes technician on the sh-2f seasprite helicopter lamps