THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 27, 1994 TAG: 9409270316
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENNIS JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Looking around as he walked to his plane Monday morning, Capt. Bernard Satterwhite observed - loudly - that he'd never seen so many people gathered to watch him take off.
He added, smiling, ``There must not be much to do around here.''
Nothing, in fact.
Satterwhite was boarding Attack Squadron 42's last plane, preparing for his five-hour trip to a storage yard in the Arizona desert where the A-6 Intruder will be drained, sealed and parked. Probably permanently.
By week's end, the squadron will be a memory, its remaining 300 members off to new assignments, its hangar empty.
``There goes 10 years of my life,'' said Petty Officer 2nd Class Randy Decker, an avionics technician.
``Fifteen of mine,'' another crew member chimed in, as Satterwhite, commanding officer of VA-42, taxied the bomber across the empty flight line for his 9 a.m. departure.
``Big mistake,'' Decker said, echoing a widely held feeling in the A-6 community. ``It's the best airplane it ever was. The avionics are greatly improved, it's got new composite wings, it's more reliable than it was 10 years ago.''
Decker was among the 30 squadron members gathered to watch this final takeoff, a scene repeated often at Oceana as its planes fall victim to military downsizing.
The Intruder has accounted for half of Oceana's inventory for the past 30 years, with as many as 150 of them at the base in the mid-1980s. Now just 36 remain, in three squadrons.
The last A-6 flies out in mid-1997 under current plans. But this month's departure of VA-42 may be even more painful for those in the A-6 community. This squadron is the training squadron, the common denominator for as many as three-fourths of the people who ever worked with the 700 A-6s manufactured for the Navy.
``It signals the beginning of the end,'' said Satterwhite, who will remain at Oceana as commanding officer of the Atlantic Fleet's shrinking Intruder wing.
The squadron's place in the community's heart showed in the emotional disestablishment ceremony Friday. Tears were shed at speeches by Satterwhite and others, including Adm. Henry Mauz, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet.
The tail from one of the squadron's planes was hung at the Oceana Officers Club, painted with the two symbols the squadron has been known by since its creation in 1963 - the Green Pawns and, recently, the Thunderbolts.
Wall space is disappearing at the club; another A-6 squadron, the Black Falcons of VA-85, conducted its disestablishment ceremony the day before.
Sometimes, when a Navy aviator makes his last scheduled flight, those there to greet him douse him with a bucket of water. But Satterwhite had no plans for ceremony Monday morning as he mounted the A-6's collapsible red ladder, strapped himself in beside bombardier-navigator Lt. John Trefz, and put the plane through its preflight check.
Satterwhite has passed through VA-42 six times in his 20 years of flying Intruders. He wanted to make this flight himself.
``I didn't know I would be the last CO. It's quite a feeling,'' he said. ``It's over. I wish it wasn't.'' ILLUSTRATION: NAVY COLOR PHOTO
A-6 Intruders from four Oceana squadrons pass over the Wright
Brothers Memorial in Kill Devil Hills during a demonstration flight
last month. The squadrons and their fates: Top left, Squadron 42 has
since been eliminated; bottom left, Squadron 35 will be eliminated
in January; bottom right, Squadron 85 has been eliminated; top
right, Squadron 75 will be eliminated in 1997.
by CNB