ROUTE 66 TRIKERS FORUM

Bennington in the Cold War

In 1964 we made a West Pac cruise ( Western Pacific ) Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong and the Phillipines.

This was my first time crossing the Pacific and it seemed very adventurous for a 20 year old.

There were many memories, but some of the more outstanding were the frequent flyovers of Russian bombers.

This was nothing unusual, as the Air Boss, Commander Wold ( ? ) said, just the Russians again getting in their flying time. As the planes approached the task group, we would scramble two A 4 Skyhawks to escort them over us. I remember when these pictures were taken, we were a few days past Midway Island, in the middle of the Pacific, I was on the flight deck and the Air Boss announced, here they come ........................ and, right down the starboard side flew this huge Russian bomber, then he cut across the bow and flew off.

A few days later they posted these pictures in the hangar bay.

If you look closely, you will see our A 4's with a black nose, they usually didn't have that, we only had A 4 B's on board, which didn't have radar. ( If the Russian Badgers flew over at night time, we couldn't have done anything about that, so we painted the nose black to make them look like A 4E's which did have radar. )

Bill Copeland