OASU West Pac Detachment
Out of Patuxent River Maryland
June 1967 to September 1976.
Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Assigned to OASU West Pac Detachment to support Project Jenny. Checked into Patuxent River thinking I was going to be cutting grass on the golf course. Little did I know that the Gas Turbine NEC I picked up at Great Lakes put me in with the aviation community. The Air Conditioning, Diesels and now a Gas Turbine NEC'S were all needed to be assigned as a crew for these special planes. It took me six months to earn my Air Crew Wings, I then went from a black shoe to a black/brown shoe with wings (Air Crewman). Not too many of us black shoes earned our wings. OASU did not last long and we became VX8 then VXN8, same job with more added on.
If you look at some of the links below you will see that our air craft supported many different projects. In the 60's and 70's a lot of the work was classified as Black Ops. This is what the United States placed many projects and money under to accomplish things without publicity as to what the cost of and the classified mission was. Some of the work in Jenny was this.
Many days you would see aircraft with no marking in one of our assigned slots, stay overnight and leave early. I remember this all black P2V with jet pods and no visible lights with guns mounted on her. Along with a few other gun ships. It stayed overnight. Air America's C-47's stayed overnight, was glad to provide assist and help with things when they needed items.
