1957 - Hawaii/Australia

Lt. Hughie's squadron was in Hawaii (either before or after being sent to Alaska to look for commies reading the Bible on the deck of a SPY SHIP) and in training.

When the dust settled - what does settle with airplanes? Wind, water, the plane?! When the planes settled, Hughie's flight crew was named to top crew in the squadron, big honor.

Not long after, the commander called the officers together because he had some good news. Two airplanes were being sent to Australia, The Land Down Under

Oh! Do you come from a land down under

Where women glow and men plunder

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder

You better run, you better take cover.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, 2 planes being sent to Australia. Of course, this was a primo assignment. The squadron commander told the men he was going to take one plane and offered the other to Hughie. He then said he would cherry pick the best men from the squadron to fly with them. 

Hughie decided otherwise. He told the commander that he and his crew had just been named to top crew in the squadron, so they should all get to go...together. The commander thought about it and agreed. He decided he would take his crew and Hughie could take his crew. 

The two crews flew to Australia, showed the Aussies their new innovation, and flew home. Hughie speaks of the trip fondly.

1957 - Alaska

Hughie was stationed in Alaska without the family. The family was suffering for the Navy in Hawaii. (However, the author had not been born yet.)

His squadron was sent there to keep an eye on the Soviet Union and their spy operations because, as Sarah Palin said, you can see Russia from Alaska.

One day, Hughie was sent out looking for a Soviet spy ship. As you suspect, a spy ship doesn't look like a spy ship. It doesn't have SPY SHIP written on the keel or the fore/aft or whatever. (Navy skipped a generation.) But...how many pleasure boats are out in the middle of the North Pacific or Bering Sea? So, really. The Pacific is a huge ocean and finding one ship in that vast ocean has to be like a needle in a...in a...ok, so it's like trying find one ship in the vast ocean.

Hughie's crew is the one who found the ship! I guess once you see it, it's hard to hide the ship, unlike submarines, which are marines that are sub...I guess. (Remember, skipped a generation.) So they start taking pics of the spy ship - which interestingly enough was called SPY SHIP. As they circled the ship they took lots of pictures so they could guess at their capabilities, I guess.

Side Note: as a rule, airplanes don't fly directly over a ship. I didn't know that, did you?

The pilots and crew could see there was someone on the deck reading, I guess to make it look like a pleasure craft...in the middle of the ocean...near Alaska...ok, I'm not buying it either.

When they accomplished their mission, they flew back to their base and got the pictures developed. For those of you born in the 2000's, that means they did not have automatic access to the pictures and none of them were selfies.

One particular picture made them laugh. The picture of the person on the deck reading was a man dressed as a woman. The book he/she was reading? The Bible. 

Those Soviets were truly a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma*.

The mission was a success!

*-Winston Churchill said that about the Russians in 1939. Still rings true today, eh?

1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis

Some of you remember (and others of you have read or seen movies about) the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Like Forrest Gump, who seemed to be everywhere, so was Lt. Hughie Don Sheffield. Hughie was at the Pentagon during the whole crisis. 

A quick, simple background - The US discovered that the USSR (cue Darth Vader music) had placed missiles and were placing more missiles in Cuba - missiles that could have nuclear (not nucular) warheads on them. President Kennedy drew a line in the sand and told Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, to remove the missile silos on Cuba and recall the ships with more missiles and support equipment that were enroute to Cuba or we would be at war. The 13 days in October, 1962, were defining moments where the Cold War almost became a hot war. We were as close to nuclear war as we have ever been.

A detail most people don't know is that when a major crisis occured, such as this one, the Pentagon closed down - no one in and no one out. Lt. Sheffield was on duty at the time the crisis began and stayed at the Pentagon for the full 13 days. 

Hughie's job was to be on the staff that monitored where our nuclear missile submarines were at all times. That regularly updating information was kept in the office he and the other Naval personnel worked in the Pentagon. As you can imagine, this would be of extreme importance during the crisis.

Side Note: Hughie was pretty proud of the fact that there were a small number of military personnel who were allowed to have the submarine information, and when admirals and generals who were not on the need-to-know list came and commanded him to give them the information, Lt. Sheffield was able to tell Admiral BusyBody and General WannaKnowItAll, NO! He liked that. End Side Note.

As you may have guessed, the Soviets backed down, the ships went home, and war was averted.

Hughie got to go home and live to a ripe old age. Hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands of lives were saved. The Evil Empire has been relegated to the trash heap of history. God bless our troops and God bless America.

End Note: Another fact - that when emergencies happen and the Pentagon is shut down, there is to be no communication from the Pentagon out. I was told many, many years ago by Hughie Don, he had set up a warning system for my mom to let her know he would not be coming home. If he sent flowers to her with no note, he was stuck at the Pentagon. 

I tried to verify this last part of the story with my mom a few years ago, but she did not remember it.