[Interview Begins]

JONES: Today is October 24, 2024,.

COBB: 2023.

JONES: 2023. Excuse me.

COBB: Let's not out of year. They go by fast enough as it is.

JONES: This is an in-person interview with Navy veteran Charlene Cobb. The interviewer is Raleigh Jones, and this interview is being recorded for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. Charlene, let's start by talking about your early years. Tell us about that.

COBB: Talk about my early years. Well, I'm we're in there in Wisconsin, and that's where I basically grew up. My parents were living with my grandparents in Delavan when I was born. But then when my brother came along 13 months later, the they were in an upstairs apartment over top of my grandparents house or in my grandparents house. And it was just too small for a family of four. It was pretty tight, I'm sure, with a family of three. But we moved then to there in in the house that my brother, the one that was born in 54, still lives in with his wife and raised his family there as well, growing up in there. And it's a small village. There were less than a thousand people in the village when I grew up. And we had we had horses a block from the main street, the town. We raised a black Angus steer. We had chickens, rabbits. So, you know, it was it was an interesting time to grow up in a little village. When the village made an ordinance against having livestock inside the city limits or the village limits. We still had a horse that we were allowed to keep because we had the horse before the ordinance went into effect. Once the the pony died, then no other animals could be brought in. But we were allowed to keep it. So it was nice growing up in a small village here in dairy and went to Dairy and Consolidated School, which was initially it had been all the way through high school. But then just before I started kindergarten, the school system combined with Delavan. And so the high school was then in Delavan, but the grade school kindergarten through eighth grade was here in dairy in. And I walked to school. I lived, oh, like three blocks from school. And we walked back and forth every day, didn't take a bus for the first time until I actually went to high school in 1966. Prior to that, I didn't think I would be going to school here. My family, my dad always wanted to live up in the central part of the state and he had found a place to move to. And we actually moved Labor Day weekend and we moved up and I think we took a load up on Thursday or Friday, Friday maybe. And then my dad in my.

JONES: Last year was this.

COBB: 1966. And we we actually moved up there. Dad had found a house that he that he liked, like he said he wanted to live. It was in Adams County. He wanted to live up there. And we moved up on Friday and then dad came back down to pick up another load of stuff and came back up on Saturday with a second load of things. And my grandparents brought stuff up and came up at the same time. And when they got up there they sent us kids out to play and they had a conversation. And basically the essence of the conversation was that my grandmother was so upset over losing her five grandkids that far away from her that she actually my mom said she thought she probably had a mild heart attack that night. And so the consequences of that was we moved back the next day and I started school. The school had actually started like the day or two. I hadn't gone to school because we were moving, but then came back and started high school in Delavan, went to Delavan Dairy in high school, and as it turned out, that was probably God's hand in everything because. My mother got cancer and passed away in July of 68, and being a sophomore in high school, my grandparents really stepped up. My little brother was born in 64, so when mom passed away, he was four years old and not in school yet. My grandmother actually lived with us for the first year to take care of my little brother until he was in school. And so it's a difficult time to be a teenager going to high school and not have a mother. After high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and there again I had looked at going to Eau Claire or some places further away, but Grandma said that I should be closer to family and deferred to to her and ended up going to Whitewater. It it wasn't a bad choice. I mean, I was education. Major Whitewater was known as being an education college at the time. It was a teacher's college back in the seventies, along with their business school, which was another important part of the college at the time. I actually lived on campus for the first couple of years that I was there in college, and then I did commute for a time from here into Whitewater to go to school in the in like 1973, I almost joined the Marine Corps. I had gone with the ROTC or the recruiters that were there. I would have finished. They would have helped. The Marine Corps would have helped me finish college, and then I would have owed them a commitment for doing that. And I was supposed to go to Milwaukee for the testing and some of the paperwork and stuff, and the guy I was dating at the time convinced me to spend the weekend with him instead of going to Milwaukee. And I did. And then I went back the year I was still in school. And in 1974, I it was interesting when I went to college, I got scholarships and grants and loans for the first two years. I guess they figured that if you got that far along, then you'd find a way to pay for the last two years of going to school. And in 1974, I didn't have enough money to continue going to college. So then I was working. In fact, the last semester I was in school, I was working like 50 hours a week and still taking a 12 hour course load of college classes. And then I got laid off from my job. So I was, you know, looking for another job. And and when I had initially said I was going to join the Marine Corps, I'd gotten pushback from my family. They were like, why do you want to do that? Well, then when I got laid off and was looking for a job in the mid seventies, there was not as easy to find a job. There was a lot of layoffs and a lot of people out of work. Then all of a sudden.

JONES: Let me interrupt you. What year did you graduate from high school?

COBB: 1970.

JONES: Okay, Well, let's pick it up. It's 1974.

COBB: And well, know by this point in time, it's like the end of 75, 76, because like you said, my family had kind of changed their mind that maybe I should join the military. And one of one of the jobs that I held, I worked for a summer up in Wisconsin Dells at a resort, and there was a group that came and well, it was a square dance club that would come up there and spend the weekend square dancing. And they had a guest speaker, had a an individual entertainment for their banquet. And he was a comedian that did a stand up act. And he what he did was he was an air traffic controller. And so he has all these planes and going in and out of an airport in a skit. And then he finally he has the ball in holding and he goes to lunch. Well, I realize that's not how air traffic control would work in the real world, but it was meant to be funny. But it intrigued me that being an air traffic controller could be a fun occupation. So in the early 76, I started looking into joining the military and I wanted to join the Air Force because I wanted to be an air traffic controller. And coming from the Midwest, coming from the small little town of Derry in Wisconsin, the Army had tanks, the Navy had ships, the Air Force fed airplanes. That's kind of what I thought. So I wanted to be an air traffic controller and work with aircraft, so I wanted to join the Air Force. My grandfather had been in the Navy during World War Two. In the Pacific. And every time I talked about going to talk to the recruiter, Grandpa asked, Did you talk to the Navy recruiter? I was like, No, grandpa, I am going to join the Air Force. I want to be an air traffic controller. Well, one afternoon I was in the recruiting station to see the Air Force recruiter. He was running behind and the Navy recruiter was sitting in his office. They were all in the same building together with no one in his office. So I said, Can I talk to you for a minute? He said, Sure, come on in. I figured that I can go home and tell Grandpa I talked to the Air Force or the Navy recruiter, but I was still joining the Air Force because I wanted to be an air traffic controller. Got talking to the Navy recruiter, found out they had as many airplanes as the Air Force did. They also gave me a better deal. The Air Force recruiter. It didn't matter that I had gone to college for three and a half years. I would start out as anyone. They were looking at it being like a 12 or 13 month delay to entry for getting into being an air traffic controller and the Navy recruiter let me. They said I'd be on a delayed entry for about three months and that I would start out as an 83 because I had been to college before going into the military. So I went home and told Grandpa, I join the Navy and that's how I got into the United States Navy. It wasn't until many years later that I found out that my grandfather, he did underwater demolition in the Pacific during World War Two, that he was a precursor of the Navy SEALs. So he was he was proud of the fact that I joined the Navy, and I'm proud of his service in the Navy. So that's how I got into the Navy. And that was on the delayed entry from January in 76 until March. I went to boot camp in March of 76, and that's part two. So I don't know if there's anything about previous history that you want to know or that I should talk about.

JONES: Okay. Yeah, there is. I just want to follow up on something. I understand that Grandpa backed your desire to enlist. What about the views of your folks? Did they. Did they concur with him?

COBB: They did. Like you said, initially, when I had first talked about joining the Marine Corps, I got pushback from them. Like, why do you want to do that? But by the time the mid seventies had rolled around and I was talking about it again, my my dad was he was amenable to it, you know, and my dad was also a World War two veteran and the same as my grandfather. He served in the Army and was in Europe during World War Two and actually was a Purple Heart recipient. He was wounded in France during World War Two. So and then my younger brother, I'm the oldest of five. I maybe should have mentioned that growing up. I'm the oldest of five kids who were five of a total three boys and two girls. And my youngest brother, the one that was born in 1964. He also spent time in the military in the mid eighties with the US Army. My other two brothers and my sister. My sister is a registered nurse and my brother Marlin worked in a factory that he started in high school and my brother Randy is a general contractor, so none of them have any military service.

JONES: So thus two of the 5 to 5 kids served in the military. Know. Okay. So when you joined in 76, did I understand correctly that you had three years of college?

COBB: Three and a half. Okay. That point in time and I was an elementary education and library science minor. And then when was that? Probably. My sophomore year and my sophomore year. Beginning my junior year, I added Theodore as the second major game.

JONES: Okay, so we've covered part one. Now we're going over to part two. And as you've indicated, in March of 76, you're off to boot camp. Tell us about that.

COBB: After boot camp. Okay. And I was a little older, so I don't think it was quite as traumatic an experience ending up in boot camp. As for some of my. What would they be? Compartment mates. They were part of my company. My company mates. We had we had a lot of tears for the first few days there, boot camp of some of the younger ones. But I had you know, I had been off to college and kind of on my own already for a time when I when I went to boot camp. It was different, though, because all of a sudden you're sharing a room with 80 of your closest strangers and everything is we were, you know, our our bunks were lined up, They were bunk beds. So top and bottom, I had a bottom bunk. But they're just, you know, two long lines down the the room that we were in, the the barracks room that we were in. And our lockers stood in front of our bunks. And I use the term lockers because that's what they call them. But there was one drawer that locked that we could put money or valuables in, and the rest of it was just basically an open shelf that you set things on and everything had to be folded and just so and placed into the locker, just so. And one of the notes they made when I was thinking about this boot camp, they they used corporal punishment. If anybody failed the locker inspection, they dumped all our lockers. So I remember one night coming back after we'd been out all day and there was a big pile of underpants, a big pile of undershirts, a big pile of socks. And they had taken our bras, hooked them all together and strung them from one end of the compartment to the other around the the posts that held up the building like a clothesline strung across the room. And there again put some of our younger members in absolute tears. And I started to laugh. I thought it was funny to walk in and see the mess and we stenciled everything. Everything had my name stenciled on it. So it was just a matter of going through the stack, you know, the mountain of because there's 80. There were 80 of us. And I think we had to have like six pairs of underpants and six socks and six shirts. So times 80 makes quite a substantial pile, you know, in the middle of the floor. So I remember I remember walking in just thinking about all the time they spent doing that. And it was because one person didn't have everything lined up exactly the way they were supposed to. One other time I had I had pinned the pins, your washcloth to your towel when you said that to do the laundry so you'd get it back. And we were getting ready to go because they'd linus all up and we'd march out. And I was in a hurry. And so I pinned, I took the safety pin and pinned it on the inside of my laundry bag that hung on the end of the bunk. And so I failed the bunk inspection because I had gear adrift, having that safety pin pinned to the inside of my laundry bag. So then I had to take each piece off of my bunk, go outside and down around and lay it on the ground in front of the quarter deck one at a time. And then once I got down there, then I had to request permission to take it back and I got to take it back one at a time, put it back on my bed. It was like I said, maybe it was because I was a little older going to boot camp, but I just a lot of that stuff I just found I found humorous at the time and I still find it humorous that and I get it. They were looking at trying to see if we could work together as a team and if we could follow instructions. I mean, they didn't care any more than. I do. Now, whether you fold your underwear leftover right or right over left. But it was, you know, how well do you follow instructions for something as inane as folding your clothes correctly or having certain things the way they're supposed to, and giving in to being an air traffic controller and following instructions. You know, that I did later on. Boot camp was interesting. We we had a couple of things that happened in boot camp. I went to boot camp in 1976. That was right when the Equal Rights Amendment had hit its heyday in the United States. So I got the boot camp, the some of the classes earlier that like friends of mine that I knew in the military, they were more like finishing schools for the ladies going through boot camp. But by the time I got there, they were like, Oh, so you want to be equal, huh? So all of a sudden we're having to do all of the same stuff that our male counterparts had to do, but we also still had to be ladies. So one of the things that that stands out that I remember is the guys, they would throw their clothes and we did also. We threw them in laundry bags with our company number on them and they were sent off to the laundry. I went to boot camp in Orlando, Florida, and beyond that, it was springtime and warm weather down there. They wanted to make sure there wasn't any problem with parasites getting into, and so they sanitized the clothing when they washed it. So that's why it was sent out to be done professionally by the laundry service. The guys, when the laundry bags came back, they took their uniforms out, put them, folded them, put them in their lockers or hung them up. You know, while we didn't hang them up, we put them in our lockers. Well, we folded them up, put them in their lockers, and they wore them just that way. But the ladies, because we were ladies, we had ironed our clothing. So after we had done everything the same as the guys did during the day, we went back to the barracks at night and had ironed our uniforms so they would look nice the next day when we wore them. When we went to p t, we were ladies, so we had gym shorts that we wore the p t in, but you couldn't wear shorts in public. So we had wraparound skirts that we put on over our shorts to go to wherever the gymnasium or the athletic field, wherever we were going. Once we got there, then we took off the wraparound skirts. They were the same color as the shorts we had on. And I'm sure we made quite an interesting picture. Here you are with light blue shirts and kind of a royal blue shorts with the skirt over the top and white ankle socks and tennis shoes. And then my cover, of course, I had to have my cover on. And of course, to to to go to and from wherever we were going. Like I said, it was an interesting time to go to boot camp, right when things were shifting from boot camp for ladies being just a finishing school to boot camp being boot camp. And I don't know that they did this on purpose, but a lot of it there probably not. But there were not that many female companies, so they'd line us up to March or when we even when we did p t they'd line as up in company formation to do, to do our p t and then we would, we would run in formation and there would be a female company and there'd be a male company. Well, you want to, you want. Inspiration. For running have 80 guys in combat boots running behind you. It was it was it was an interesting time. It really was. One of the things I remember about boot camp is we were doing our final T it was the last one that we were doing before graduation from boot camp. And I mean, I've been doing, I've been doing pt3 or four times a week for nine weeks up to that point in time or eight weeks, because I think it was like the week before we graduated that we did this T and the big gymnasium we were in, they had a wall that they could pull between them, between the parts of the gymnasium. But they had the wall open that day, which I'm sure they did on purpose because they had a male company that was on their one one day doing their very first party on one side. Right at the gym. And then they had my company on the other side of the gym, and we're doing our final pit before graduation. And the whole time we're, you know, I mean, we just were knocking off the set ups and the push ups and stuff that we needed to do. And the guys are struggling because they're just starting out and they're their company commanders are yelling, What a bunch of wusses. You going to let the women beat you? And you could just see that, you know, the guys are just getting redder and redder and redder and their faces as they're trying to keep up with us. And nobody told them that we were doing our last one and they were doing their first one. But so there was some of that that happened there. And and boot camp when we had our our Liberty Day, I went to Disney World along with several of the company. But there was a segment of our company that went downtown Orlando to party. And so after as Liberty was ending that night, we had to they'd call us from the quarter deck to come down and we'd have to half carry some of our counterparts or compatriots back up to our our bunks and, you know, kind of get them undressed and into bed because they weren't really in very good shape after being party in Orlando all day and lights. Wow. It meant quiet and everybody go to sleep. Well, we had a bunch of drunks that were not settling down. And I remember laying in my bunk just hoping everybody would soon settle down and be quiet. And all of a sudden there's a voice that says, So you want a party, huh? Well, I knew that wasn't anybody that came from my compartment, because, you know, I'd been with these ladies for nine weeks, and I'm thinking, Oh, this isn't going to be good. And somebody, one of the drunkards yelled, Yeah, let's party. All of a sudden the light comes on and we all have to hit the line. And we did jumping jacks. I don't know how many. Every time one of them fell down, we started over. So we did jumping jacks for quite a while. And then finally when there when the company commander, whoever she was, she was probably the duty officer let us go back to bed and she said, Well, what do you think? My party looks like that much. I want to go to bed. And speaking of going to bed, that was something that when I got to boot camp and they told me I'd go to bed at 930 at night, I thought, Oh man, that's going to be hard because I prior to that, I was kind of a night owl. I kind of the only time I like seeing the sunrise is when I've stayed up to watch it and then I go to bed. So a lot of times I'll be up until midnight one, 2:00 in the morning. Even now I am somewhat of an owl, and then I just kind of sleep in in the morning. But so I was thinking about that. But I'm here to tell you, they drag you out of bed at 530, 6:00 in the morning, and you're busy all day long by night. And then the other thing, I'm sure that's psychological. You couldn't once I made my bed in the morning after I got out of it, I wasn't allowed to even sit on it again until Tet, too. So at 25 minutes after nine, you could finally be back on your bed. And it was like, Oh, please, please. It's got to be 925. Yep. And it was I had no problem going to bed at 930 at night after being up and running around all day. Another interesting thing I was in fact, I was just telling somebody came up in conversation just the other day getting our inoculations. They lined us. They had people with the guns. They'd still use the guns in the seventies, and you would line up and go down the line and they'd be shoot me in both arms. So late in boot camp, Boot camp was interesting and I, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I mentioned everything I had put on my list to talk about with with boot camp.

JONES: Okay, let's talk about your next training then.

COBB: Then I went to Nets Center Millington or an ad center, Memphis, which is in Millington, Tennessee, which is our air traffic control school bus, that when I joined the Navy that I had wanted to be an air traffic controller. So I went to air traffic control school in Memphis or Millington, Tennessee. It's actually just north of Memphis. And when I first got there, I had to do they called it Peace School, Preparatory School and. That was all programed instruction. You read through a manual and then you took a test. And once you successfully completed the test, you moved on to the next module. And there were, I don't know, half a dozen or so modules. I finished all of those. And after you finished your last test, then you got paper from the computer center because they would run your papers through a computer terminal to grade them. Then they would hand you paper and you'd go, and there was another office you went to, and then they would send you over so that you could be assigned to your a school class after you finish that. Well, I got in there to turn in my paperwork and the the chief that was there, he said, Well, you're too late for the class for next week. So you'll be you'll be in a holding company for a week until you can start school. He says, Or you can just stay here and work for me. And he said, Or you can volunteer to stay here and work for me. And I said, Well, you know, the acronym Navy is an acronym for Never Again, Volunteer yourself. And I said, So, you know. He says, Well, what's the worst that could have you do here? I said, Clean toilets and mop floors. He says, What do you think you're going to do if they send you to the barracks? I said, clean toilets and mop floors. So I said, okay, I'll stay here for a week. And what I did is I sat in his office or at the counter there in his office and handed out the little slips of papers to folks to send them over to get their assigned to their school. And then he he ran my final paperwork through in time to make it so that I could be assigned to the class the following week, an air traffic control school. So I work there for a week. So it was a pretty cushy job. So I was glad I volunteered to work for him for a week. But then I started air traffic control school and I found it very interesting. I had a great time in air traffic control school, studied really hard to learn everything and ended up able to graduate to near the top of my class where I was eligible for what they called at the time rent accrual. And what that meant was that instead of going to my duty station as an airman, I went to my duty station as a petty officer third class, and I had to extend for a year in order to do that. And the military, that first duty station got that extension, got eight years extension. And initially, I wasn't going to do it because I was already an airman and I would have been eligible to take the third class exam like six months after I got to Oceana, which was my first duty station. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I was talking to one of the guys that was there going to see school that had come from Oceana. And he said that the climate at the time at Oceana, they really didn't want women air traffic controllers, but they were stuck. I mean, the Navy was sending us there. But he said, you go there as an airman, you won't see the division for six months. They'll have you to be someplace for as long as they can. He said, if you go, there's a third class, they won't be able to do that.

JONES: What's the acronym to the.

COBB: Temporary assigned duty?

JONES: Okay.

COBB: And so I thought about it and decided that, yeah, I would do that. So I, I took the promotion E for extended a year and went to Oceana as a third class when I was.

JONES: Okay. Before we go to that, how how long was were you in Millington?

COBB: Basically, while I was boot camp, I went to boot camp in March and I graduated right before Memorial Day. And then I was home on leave for a couple of weeks and then went to select the middle of June. I would have gone to Millington and graduated from a school in October, I think. So the the course the course I think was like six weeks long at at the time for air traffic control school. And we had the first unit was basic. We learned aircraft nomenclature and acronyms and some basic air traffic and. All information. And then part two was tower, and part three was Radar. So we had an opportunity to experience both evolutions and nowadays it's all done with computers. But at the time that I went there in the mid seventies of our tower lab, it looked like they they took a ping pong table and painted a runway on it. And then we had a control, a mockup of a control tower in the corner where the controllers would stand, and then the rest of the students from the class would be we call them bug operators in Tower Lab. They actually had little airplanes on the end of sticks that they would fly around the pattern and land and takeoff off of this. Like I said, it was like a ping pong table that had a runway painted on it. No net, of course, just the the table. And they would walk around the table with planes and. Well, and I did it, too. I mean, when you weren't when you weren't one of the controllers in the tower, then you were one of the the plane operators on the in the down in the room. And when we got into radar, the same thing, the the ones that were in lab working as controllers sat in a room with a radar scope. And then the rest of the class was in what they called the bug room. And it was just a room that had these terminals that by pushing buttons you could make the airplane go up or down, turn left, turn right. And it was just it was just a big room of oh, probably it was 70 or 80 terminals in this big room, maybe even more that students sat at controlling the targets that were moving on the radar screen for the individual in the radar labs.

JONES: Is it, given the fact that this was, you know, the pre-computer age, is this what you were looking at, something similar to an old video game.

COBB: The the radar scopes when you were actually in the radar room? Those look like radar scopes that when I got to my first duty station, the the the codes and stuff that were generated on that scope look like what I saw when I got to Oceana. The thing it's hard to describe what the because they were just terminal that had buttons on it that you would you know that you could turn left or turn right or and then there was a dial where you'd have a certain heading if you wanted to turn it to a certain heading and stuff. And what it did is it was tied to the to the lab that it would generate a target on the the screen, in the computer, you know, in the radar room with whatever. And it had you had the capability of dialing in a transponder code, just like real airplanes could do. So it simulated looking like a real aircraft on the radar scope, which just it was this generated target from the bug.

JONES: Room.

COBB: Was where was I? I was I talk to you about.

JONES: Well, just the training process.

COBB: Yeah, just the training process. So we we went through the three stages of training when I was there in a school and toward the end of the radar unit, which was the final one before we graduated, we had an opportunity to fill out a dream sheet to tell the Navy where we wanted to be stationed. Well, I, I wanted to join the Navy to see the world. That was the recruiting posters in the seventies when I joined. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to see as much of the world as I could. So I put in all overdue all overseas duty stations on my dream sheet. And the day that our orders came in, they were in, we were in class. And our instructor came in. He was a second class air traffic controller, and he's handing out the duty stations to everybody is as we come in. And he gets to me and he says, Any associate? I said, Where's that? And he goes, Virginia Beach. And I went, That's not overseas. And he goes, Hey, give that girl and a in geography. And so I went to like I said, I had done the ran across the and Oceanic got that year from me and so I my two year tour out of a school turned into a three year tour to Oceana. So I thought well then I'd still have two years. I could go overseas someplace. Well, I got to Oceana, and within a month of my being at Oceana, I come in to work one day and there's this little onion skin piece of paper in my mailbox, and it says, I've been extended at Oceana for a year. I was like, Oh, I didn't extend. What had happened was they were they were shorthanded and had applied to the bureau to kind of correct the issue with getting more people in there. And one of the things that the bureau did to alleviate the problem was they extended and they picked a date. So as of November 15th of 1976, anybody that was stationed at Oceana got extended a year. And I, I had only been there a couple of weeks. I mean, I had just gotten there, but I fell into that group. And so they extended me. So now I ended up, you know, four years there. Well, I thought at one point that I could re-enlist and get out of there. So I was looking at where they would set, you know, where I could re-enlist to go to to go overseas. And that for them, nothing really interested me of what they were offering at the time. And then next thing I know, they've extended me so that my pride matches my ethos, because from my what I had at Oceana and pretty is planned rotation date is end of active obligated service what they did that's I only had six months from when I was supposed to leave Oceana to the end of my enlistment was only six months. So they just adjusted the date. So that put four and a half years at Oceana. So when I did actually re-enlist and I'll talk about re-enlisting in a minute, because that was interesting. So it's like I didn't want to stay here. I didn't want to come to Oceana to begin with. And now I'm here for my entire enlistment.

JONES: But let me interrupt. You haven't actually gone to the Pacific yet? No. Okay. You're still going to be getting more training in Virginia Beach? Correct?

COBB: Correct. What with air traffic control, the all the school did was see if you had the aptitude to be a controller. Once I got to my duty station, then I ended up having to go in and the job training to actually be qualified in the positions that were there at Oceana. And when I first got there, whoever I had talked to, I don't remember the guy that I talked to in a school, but he was absolutely correct. The climate at Oceana at the time. A lot of the guys didn't think women should be in the military at all. And if they did, then we should know our place and be secretaries and nurses and that kind of stuff. We should aspire to be in air traffic controllers. So when I got there, the the only place they would let me work was flight clearance. And so basically what I was a glorified secretary. Pilots would come in to file flight plans. You'd take it from them. We would enter the information. And back in the day, this was prior to, you know, the computers we have nowadays, what we would do is we would do a teletype tape. So you would type up the flight plan and it would come out in a series of dots on a teletype tape. And then you'd have to run that through to send it to the FAA for the flight plan to be entered into the system. And the I don't think the Navy did it deliberately was kind of funny, though, But as the guys were transferring out, as they were reaching the end of their rotation, they were at Oceana and were transferring out the ones that were coming in were female, and then they were all being put to flight clearance. So we ended up with all these people working in flight clearance. And so we were on a watch bill that was not very much fun to work. It's what they call an eve day, mid 32. And what that means is you're at work every single solitary day of the week as a case in point. Today's Tuesday. So if this were the beginning of my watch section today, I would have to be at work. Well, we had to go in a half hour early, so I'd have to be there at 230 this afternoon for my watch to start at 3:00. Then I would work until 11:00 tonight. I would get off at 11, go home and have to be back by seven Wednesday morning to work until 3:00 Wednesday afternoon, then come back in at 11:00 Wednesday night to work until 7:00 Thursday morning. And then I have 32 hours off and then I come back in and let's see, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday morning. So Friday afternoon I would come in at 230 in the afternoon to start the rotation over. And then I would work Friday afternoon, Saturday, Saturday night, get off Sunday morning, come back in on Monday. So like you said, you're at work when you work that watch bill without any breaks. You're at work every single solitary day of the week. You may be getting off at seven in the morning and have the rest of the day off. But you're still there on Friday and Thursday morning and then have to go back to work again on Friday. And with all of the people we had working in flight clearance, we only had to have two people on a mid watch. So we had six people. So that meant I stood every third mid instead of every mid and weekends. The same thing. You know, you maybe need two or three people there on a weekend. So then the other two are, you know, the other three, two or three people could have the weekend off. And that was nice. You know, that was fun. But the guys that were working up in the radar and the tower, they were standing every other mid every mid working every weekend because they didn't have the extra people to allow them that time off. And so finally they went and complained to the office and said. We don't care whether they pee sitting down or standing up. We need help up here. You've got to let them come up and work and tower and radar. And so then that's when I finally was allowed to go upstairs and and actually start training as an air traffic controller. But they still didn't really think we should be air traffic controllers. So when I trained on a position, I had to know that position forwards, backwards, upside down, sideways, you name it. When I trained on the the PA precision approach radar. And that's a system where an aircraft you work one aircraft with one controller to bring a pilot in to land when the visibility isn't very good. And so the radar is set up in such a way that it gives information on my scope of where they are in relation to the ground and where they are in relation to the end of the runway. So there was two different targets on this on my radar scope that would show that position. And then I controlled him based on, you know, keeping him on an course and on glide path so that he would come in to, you know, put him right over the end of the runway. And that way they had to see it before they actually landed on or they got waved off and had to try again. But they could get a lot closer than they could flying on their own or flying attack an approach or anything like that. It like you said, it's precision approach radar. It theoretically could actually bring them in to landing on a runway. They never saw that. If the the radar equipment itself is set up in such a way that it's a very accurate radar bringing them to that point. Well, to work that position, I had to I had to do regular approaches. I had to do short approaches. I had to do what they called no gyro approaches. And then I a no gyro approach was is where the aircraft has lost its directional gyros. So instead of telling them to turn to a specific heading, you just tell them to turn right, watch them track, tell them to stop, turn, watch how they track, tell them to turn left. You're giving them soft turns and watching how they're tracking on your radar scope. And so I had to do those kinds of approaches. I had to do what they called the surveillance approaches rather than the precision approaches. And I had to do several of them. Then they, you know, I got in so I could do all of those proficiently. Then they decided I needed to be able to set up the equipment so somebody would mess with all the dials on the precision radar, and then they'd stand there with a stopwatch while I reset the the terminal so that it was operational and we could actually use it. And they wanted me to be able to do it under 2 minutes. And I think I had gotten it down. I think I'd gotten it down to about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, and I just wasn't able to to get it less than that, you know, doing that. And I was frustrated. And one day one of the technicians came in and I was over there just pulling my hair out, trying to figure out how I could get this radar set up. And he's like, What are you doing? And they said, Oh, they want me to set this up in less than 2 minutes in order, you know, for me to get qualified. And he said, Well, you want to know what we do? He was one of our technicians that worked on the equipment. I said, Sure. He said, Well, we never know how you control or screw up our equipment, which there were a little bit of a rivalry between the two groups, he says. So what we do is we just turn all the dials as fires. They'll go to the left and then all you have to do is start at the top and you just turn them, you know, three turns for this one, two turns for this one for turns, you know, And he says, and you just put it back to and then once you get it back to basically where it should be, then you do the little fine tweaking of it. This is a piece of cake. It's was like, cool. So the next time they got their little stopwatch out, I did just exactly what he said he did and was able to do it less than 2 minutes. Well, then of course I had to do it several times because they just figured that was a fluke and I couldn't really do that again. So I ended up having to do that number of times and then decided I needed to set up the surveillance scopes. And so I did that. Until I. I could do it in my sleep. And they still weren't signing me off on the position. And one night now I don't know. Can I tell Can I tell something? That's probably I'll probably pass the statute of limitations this many years. 40 years in the future, huh? One night we. We're working and they secured down. They let people go home. It was an eve watch, and so they let a bunch of people go home. And there was just two of us in the radar room. And the guy I was working with, all of a sudden we had a flag, a fog bank come in and we had planes coming back in. They couldn't come into the break. They couldn't come in to the tower VFR. They had to be using radar to get into close enough to see the runway. And the very first approach I started out, I said, you know, my spiel of student under qualified supervision and I finished that GCA ground control approach, that precision approach, radar, turn the guy over, you know, to landing. And the guy I was working with, he says, Don't say that. And I said, What? He says, Don't tell him you're a trainee. He says, What are you going to do if they ask for the qualified controller because the weather's not real good out there, he says. And he was you know, he was technically my monitor, but he was also working, approaching arrival. So. So then I just told him I was their final controller and the next day he went into the office and told them they needed to sign me off and backdated some so they'd be legal for me work at that. And that's how I got signed off on a precision approach radar. And once I got signed off on it, then I work clearance delivery, which was the glorified secretary position, and they had one of my male counterparts. He got signed off, oh, like the week after I did.

JONES: Okay, let me interrupt. Are you still at Virginia Beach?

COBB: Yep, Still at Oceana.

JONES: Okay. Why is it why is Virginia Beach called Oceana?

COBB: The the air station There is Naval Air Station Oceana. It's just located in Virginia Beach.

JONES: Virginia Beach, Florida.

COBB: Nope. Virginia Beach, Virginia. Okay. They're in the Norfolk area. It's there were a lot of military bases there. There's Norfolk, Little Creek Dam Neck and NASA, Oceana Dam. Nick was the fun place to go for the beach that was right on the ocean. They had a nice enlisted club that sat right on the beach, right on, you know, just south of Virginia Beach, where people pay thousands of dollars to go. But anyways, work in there at Oceana, like you said, it was interesting. And the the climate at the time that I was there in the seventies and I wasn't the only one the other the other ladies, in fact, one of the ladies, she actually ended up going to work as a secretary in the office because her monitor the people in her crew, they had told her she'd never get qualified because she was too happy and she said she didn't need that. So when they had an opportunity to become the secretary for the commander, she took it. And then after she got out, after her enlistment was out, she got out. And the last I knew of her, she was working at the air Route traffic control center in Cleveland, Ohio. So so I guess she wasn't too happy to be an air traffic controller. But anyways, I like I said, one of the guys I worked with got qualified on the PR right after I did like a week after I did. And then once he got qualified, then I ended up working class delivery. Well, one day I'm working clearance, doing my job on clearance delivery and the technicians called to turn our radar back over to us and we had to check it out to make sure we that everything aligned up the way it was supposed to for us to accept and take control of the radar and the like. You said, my my counterpart was over there doing that and he was there for a long time. Well, I just thought they had gotten the new technician that the same thing with the technicians. They would go through and show them how to do everything. But then at a certain point they would just turn them loose and let them do it on their own, and then they would have to make it get it to the point where it was acceptable to us, the controllers, before we would accept it. And and you put your initials on I mean, you basically signed that said you were accepting it, that everything lined up the way it was supposed to. So I just figured it was a new kind. New technician. And finally, the guy slides over and he says, Can we switch positions? I don't know how to set the radar up. They made me do it in less than 2 minutes. They didn't make him do it at all. So I take the phone and it's one of our regular technicians. It's one of our our, you know, very qualified runner, you know, regular technicians. He's like, who was that bozo flight? And I went over and I checked and the radar was fine. So I accepted it, gave my initials, you know, and and that's all of our lines were recorded. So it was not a recorded line that I had accepted our radar and it was satisfactory for operational purposes. So that happened like a week or two later. The same thing. The we had the PR it, it was a very the antennas on that were a very directional antenna and we switched runways. So that meant swinging the antennas around to point down the new runway. The the unit sat out at the middle of the airfield and occasionally when we'd go to swing the antennas, it was done automatically just push a button and it would swing the antenna around to the new runway. And then once you got it locked into place, then you'd have to to check it out and make sure that it it lined up and and met may met the criteria for operational use. But occasionally as that as a trailer was swinging around, it was just on a like a railroad car round table thing where they swing railroad cars around and it would get hung up and wouldn't drop into the pin when drop in the place when it would get around to the new runway. And honest to God, a lot of times just driving.

Speaker 3 The truck up.

COBB: To the unit out at midfield would be enough to knock that pin down into place. The technicians didn't actually even have to go into the building. Sometimes it did, but a lot of times just them, just the the change in the air pressure them driving up against the trailer by the trailer would be enough to cause it to lock into place, but it still had to be locked into place in order for it to be operationally used to control aircraft coming in on it. So in the meantime, then we had to use the surveillance radar and do surveillance approaches rather than the precision radar until we got that fixed. And so the same thing I used to have to set these scopes up every time I came into work. So the same thing, I'm working clearance delivery. He's over trained and they're yelling, Are you ready for him? Are you ready for him? Because they've got a plane ready to turn final. And the weather is such. He needs to have the the radar approach to get him in close enough to see the runway. And the same thing. He slides over and says, can we trade positions? I don't know how to set up the surveillance radar or hey, yet we're both qualified on this position. And I ended up spending five years at Oceana. And toward the end, I actually I'm I went there's a third class is E-4 third class petty officer made second class the first time I was eligible. Made first class the first time I was eligible. So I was actually there as a first class. Well, then I wanted to train on approach control. And at the time I didn't they I didn't have enough time left that by the time I could have qualified on approach, I wouldn't have enough time left. They weren't going to train me on the position. So that's I re-enlisted for what they called rate benefit. And that got me extended six months at Oceana and they'd allow me to train approach control. But I was working as an approach controller and was a section leader. And one night the we cleaned the offices. That was part of our job was to not only clean our spaces, but we cleaned the office spaces too. In the evening after the day workers went home. And one of the guys that was working for me at the time, he comes in and he says, the new watch built out. It was in the chief's basket. I took a look at it and I said, Put it back. It's a joke. He's like, No, really, It was in the chief's basket. I said, I don't care where you found it. It's a joke. What they had done on that watch, Bill, was they had put all the females in one crew, and so we had an all female crew and then the other two crews were just guys. A couple of days later, I was in the office and the chief says, Did did you see the new watch Bill? And he hands it to me. It's the same one that one of the airmen had brought in. And, you know, a couple of nights before I looked at and said, well, I'm going to love coming to work. It's boy, what are you going to do? And the other two days, he says, What do you mean? I said, Well, you're going to get pilot complaints of being on those other two days. I said, What are you going to do? And he couldn't argue that point. He had put all his good controllers in one crew, and it wasn't that I was any better than my male counterparts. They made me better in order to get qualified, and every one of the positions I qualified on to become a facility watch supervisor there, I had to know more. I like I said, I had to know that position forwards, backwards, upside down, sideways, you name it. They made us memorize sections of the 71 10.65. Not only did I need to tell them what the rules are, but I had to tell them where in the manual that rule was found and what it said. And so we'd be I'd be working and one of the guys would want to do something, let somebody come in to the break or do an unrestricted climb or whatever. I'd say, You can't do that. And they'd said, Well, yes, I can. I'm working local. And I'd say, No, you can't, because according to the 71, 10.65, paragraph four, dash six, and of course I'd have to go get the book because they wouldn't believe me. But sure enough, that paragraph would say, You can't do that. And like you said, he couldn't argue that point and it never happened. They never did it where all of the women were in one crew, at least not at that point in time in the history of air traffic control. But it was like I said, it was it was an interesting time to be working as an air traffic controller, but it was fun. I loved working as an air traffic controller. A couple of events that I remember from working as an air traffic controller, one of them first of all, I was working on Approach control and our station helicopter. We had a helicopter. Most of our planes there at Oceana were tactical jets. We we had the go fast, do nothings, the the cargo planes, the P threes, those kinds of airplanes all went in and out of Norfolk, which was only like ten miles away from us. We had the F-14s, A-6 as Air Force, a force. Those were the airplanes that flew traditionally in and out of Oceana. But we had a station helicopter that did search and rescue for not only the military, but also they they were part of the network there under the Elizabeth City Coast Guard station for boats and distress and stuff to if they were needed, they would be called out. And one night I was working approach Control and had our station helicopter come in wanting to do the precision approach radar, wanting to do ground controlled approaches. And so I called the guy I was working with that night and said, you know, I got a guy for you. He comes and he looks at it where it says that it's a helicopter. And he says, I'm not working the helicopter in the pattern. I said, We don't have anybody in the pattern. How can you tell them you're not working them? He was a little more colorful in how he said he wasn't working that plane in the pattern. But we won't go into that for this purpose. But anyways, I said, okay, switch positions with me. I'll work arrival and you know, and work him in the pattern. I don't care. So we switched places. He took approach, I took arrival and then I don't know if he did it on purpose or if they just wanted it. But we had several of our jets come back wanting in to the GCA pattern also. Well, an age 46 helicopter flies a lot slower than an F for an F-14 or an A-6. And normally what would happen at Oceana is once they started getting jets in the pattern, they would just tell the helicopter to make his approach to a full stop or depart the pattern, and then they would just have to go play someplace else. But I found it fun to try and figure out how I could keep them all in the pattern at the same time, keep the jets in the pattern and work the helicopter in without having the Jets run over him out there. And so it was a challenge, but it was fun and I did it. I had three or four jets in the pattern and I had the helicopter and worked in the pattern. And that was probably one of the. Well, I remember it all these years later because it was it wasn't run of the mill. You put jets in the pattern. They all fly pretty much the same speed. So once you get them in the pattern and you get your three mile separation that you need between them, unless you do something really stupid, it's going to you know, they're just this nice little daisy chain flying around in the pattern. But then you put something in there that's flying at like half the speed. All of a sudden you've got a little bit of work to do. So that, like I said, that was fun night. And finally, the pilot, the helicopter pilot came up and said they'd make that approach to a full stop. So look. And they landed. And then a little bit later on, my my watch section was over. So I got off work and I was on my way out of the building and we shared the building with operations. So not only was our air ops officer in the building, the radar room was on the second floor of the building, and so was the office spaces for our ops officer. And at the other end of the building was the office spaces for some of our our station heeler pilots were, you know, for their daytime jobs and stuff that they did. As I'm walking down the hall, this lieutenant commander's coming in the other direction and he says, Were you work in arrival tonight? Well, instantly it's like, yeah, what did I do wrong? You know, that's just, you know, that's the first thing, you know, It's like, yeah. He says, Well, I just wanted to say thank you. He says, That's the most approaches I've ever gotten at one time at Oceana since I've been here, he said, I just want to thank you for keeping us in the pattern. He said, I just knew that you were going to be telling us because they could hear the other aircraft and could see the other airplanes. So I was talking to he said, I just knew you were going to tell us to make it to a full stop or depart the pattern, he said. And every time we came off of our approach, you said your climb out instructions remain the same. I said, Well, you wanted to be in the Paris. Oh, yeah, we wanted to work, he says. We just didn't think you'd let us. And so I was I was pleased about that. So like I said, that was one of my more fun times. One of them that made my heart stop was I was working departure that day and I had to choose that had come over to work. They were one of them was at 19,000 feet and the other was at 20,000 feet, and they'd been pretty much on top of one another flying around in their race track pattern that they did doing their they, they set up and did command centers and stuff and controlled aircraft and things. They did maneuvers and stuff that out in the warning areas. And they would practice setting up and doing all that stuff. And I had a I had a four take no, I had an eight six takeoff and an eight six take off from Oceana. And he wanted to go to 23,000 feet. Well, I had those two tubes, one at 19,000 feet and one at 20,000 feet. And I looked when, you know, and they took off when they six took off, they six was up here. The two twos were down at the bottom of my airspace. You know, there's like 60 miles between them. So I climbed the 6 to 23000 feet. Well, then I was handing off an F four to Washington Center and was having problems with the handoff to Washington Center. So worked on getting that straightened out so that we can make the handoff. I finally hand the A4 off to Washington Center and I think, Oh, I should check to see where my A-6 is. Well, I look and just as I look, the codes from all three airplanes are combined. They're all right on top of one another. The A6 the last readout I got of the A6 was 18,000 feet. He's going to 23,000 feet climbing right through 19 and 20. That were my two twos. And and that's when everything combines, you know, he's in a nose up altitude headed to 23,000 feet and goes right through the airspace of the other two. Honest to God, my heart stopped. I just I closed my eyes and just like, oh, God. And about that time, there's a little voice in my ear and they six pilot is like departure. Do you know there are two twos out here?

JONES: How close were the two? Well, who.

COBB: Knows? I mean, the, the, the targets, the readouts on the radar screen, they were they were probably less than three miles, which is the minimum. Separation. I need either 1000 feet or three miles separation. So I'm sure I didn't have both of those all of the time. And honest to God, when he said that, all I could think is, boy, am I glad. You know, there are two issues out there, because obviously if he saw them, he wouldn't run into either one of them. And so I just keyed up and he said, affirmative, stand by for handoff, because now he's getting up close to 23,000 feet, which was the top of my airspace above that belonged to Air Washington Center. So I handed him off to Washington Center. And I don't know if you've ever had a really close call in a car or something where you're where, you know, you're just like, well, that's how it's sitting there at the radar scope. I was just kind of in that panic like, oh, my God. And then I had to work the position for like another hour before my relief showed up. And I got off of the position. And the first thing I did is I went and got an incident report and I basically put myself on report, brought up the incident of what happened, turned it into my radar chief. He takes a look at it and he says, You know what you did wrong, don't you? And I said, Oh, yeah, I he says, You're going to do that again. I said that this lifetime, my heart can't take it any more. And then he said, he said, well, this'll look good when they complain that you know, that you didn't try and hide everything, that you were upfront about it. And everything we did was recorded all of our, you know, everything in the radar room or even in the tower was all recorded. So the telephones we use, the the frequencies, we used everything. They recorded it. And in radar they also did a recording of the video of our screens as well as the audio from the radios. And those tapes were kept for two weeks. Unless there was an incident, unless somebody filed a complaint, then those tapes were pulled and kept until everyone had an opportunity to review them and decide what, you know, what was needed to be done and whatever. Anyways, two weeks later, I come in to work one day and the chief says, Petty Officer, come on. I said, Yes, Steve. He says here. And he handed me back my incident report. I said, When's the Wednesday hearing? He said, Nobody complained. He said, Those tapes are being pulled and will be recycled. He said, you know, nobody complained. And the only thing I can think of is because I didn't lie to the A6 pilot and tell him I didn't know the tunes were out there. I said affirmative to him. So evidently the three pilots just went, Oh, I guess she had this under control and knew what she was doing. Not so much. But like I said, I can I can remember the feelings I had now, 40 years later, 50 years later, almost 50 years later from that incident happening.

JONES: But overall, let me stop you right there. Wow. I I can understand why 40 years later, it's still.

COBB: Oh, yeah, because the A6 would have had two pilots in it. But the the e twos, they carried like six people in them. So I mean I basically could have destroyed that a dozen families lives.

JONES: Potentially three planes could have crashed. Yep. You know, it occurs to me that the people at this point have. Have you been at Virginia Beach for, say, four years?

COBB: Yeah, I'd been there probably like four, four and a half years, so. Well, maybe that because that was a departure. So I might have been a little earlier in the last three years.

JONES: Layman's terms, you were close to being a journeyman at that point in and I use the term journeyman is simply that with the generic term to apply to somebody who has.

COBB: I'm qualified, I'm qualified on the position. I've worked the position for a while. So yes, I wasn't a novice added that was a position I that I comfortably worked and what I should have done when the A6 took off was I should have only sent him to 18,000 feet. I should have stopped him at flight level 180 at the time he reported level at flight level 180. Look to see where my two issues were and once I had the separation, then climbed them to 23. That's what I should have done. That would have been the safer way to have done it. But like I said, under normal circumstances, I'd have been watching all three planes. They wouldn't have gotten I'd have told him to expedite his climb to 23, you know, if I saw him getting closer to one another. But I got distracted with the problem that I had with the four.

JONES: Wow.

COBB: Yep. Wow.

JONES: Um.

COBB: And that was. That was the closest call.

JONES: As you told me the story I was putting, thinking about where I was at the same time as you chronologically. And I'm making mistakes in my job.

COBB: But you can't kill anybody.

JONES: Bingo. That's the point I was about to make.

COBB: Is a mistake.

JONES: I made mistakes, but the ramifications of my mistakes were so much less than yours. And that's why I am in such awe of the work that you did.

COBB: Yeah. And at Oceana in the mid seventies, our traffic count there was comparable to O'Hare. Wow. And it was a busy time there in the, you know, that the Cold War era of the seventies. Right. And there were days. There were days we launched everything but the hangar doors. And if they could have found a way to put wings on them, they'd had them airborne, too. I mean, it was it was just some busy days. Start to finish work in there. One other afternoon of working departure, we had a tower controller that liked to just I don't know if he was so frustrated that he was a tower controller and not a radar controller, but he had a tendency to stick it to us and radar. So, I mean, I learned that early on working. And so what I would do is I would monitor the tower frequency whenever he was on a stand just so I'd have a heads up of what he was doing to us. Couple of things that he would do is, you know, he'd tell an aircraft to check the one on the roll cleared for takeoff. Well, the the one day he did that to an F four. And the the guy that was in front of them was the need to. And so he tells and there again e twos or turboprops they don't fly quite as fast as the jets do. And he tells the Air Force to check the two on the were all cleared for takeoff. Oh crap. So as soon as the air four pulled out you know he's coming to departure I'm working departure control soon as the are for pulls out on to the to the runway the E two was in the GCA pattern and he was doing approaches as soon as the officer gets out on the runway I know he switched frequencies because that was the procedures. They would switch frequencies as they so as they departed, they're on my frequency. So as soon as I heard him running up on the runway, I keyed up, even though he's still sitting on the runway telling them to fly, runway heading. So as he acknowledges that as he's taken off, that he'll fly runway heading. The normal turn out was a beam the tower to commence a right hand turn. But I'd send him right runway heading because I had that E to commencing that right hand turn. So I figured, you know, once I got the separation, then I turn my head for, well, he takes off and just after takeoff he commences his turn. So I keyed up and I told him to climb to 2500 feet. He Roger's going to 2500 feet. He climbs to 2500 feet. Now, him and the two are kind of on top. One of the two is that 1500 feet. He's at 2500 feet. The next thing I know, he's turning again. And then he descends back down into my E2 or into the E2. The E2 was that mine? E2 was working the arrival pattern. And at this point in time, the arrival controllers yell, And what are you doing? Because I, you know, basically running the A4 right into where the E2 is. I said, hey, he's out on runway heading at 2500 feet. Can't you tell? Well, runway heading, 2500 feet would be over here. And the airplane is like over here. Now, on top, you know where the E2 is. And about that point, he reports the auxiliary landing field that he was wanting to go to inside. So I cleared him into there. Well, that was VFR. So once he's in there, he's on his own for maintaining his own separation. And then I said, Get me an incident report. So I put him on report for what he was doing or didn't do, and they pulled the tapes.

JONES: Now, when you say him, who are you?

COBB: The pilot.

JONES: The pilot.

COBB: The pilot of that aircraft. And so we we pull the tapes. They get oh, they had their I don't know if they had the commanding officer, but they. Definitely had their safety officer and had their, you know, had his supervisor and the pilot and copilot were and my boss and the ops boss and the safety officer from us and myself were all in a room. And they, they pull up the the video and the, the voice recording and like I said, the two, the two comment, you know, the two things I, I said to the pilot, Well, actually there's three things I said to the pilot. I told him to fly runway heading. I told him to climb to 2500 feet and I cleared him in the Fentress. Well, runway heading to 2500 feet. He Fentress would have been behind him. So for him to have seen Fentress meant, you know, one, they could watch it on the radar scope, too. But anyways, the outcome of that incident was the pilot said I was in a hurry and I wasn't thinking. Yeah. Okay. You're flying a multimillion dollar aircraft. You're supposed to be thinking. But of course, I couldn't say that because I'm a lowly little enlisted. And they were officers, but.

JONES: Wow.

COBB: I was in a hurry and wasn't thinking.

JONES: Do you know what happened to the pilot?

COBB: No. He probably just got his wrist slapped and told to be paying more attention. Sure. But, you know, at least one other. One other time.

JONES: And it. Your job in these incidents sounds incredibly stressful to me.

COBB: And it can't. I mean, it can be. And I'm sure there were days when. Well, I know there were days. I mean, there were days when I walked out of work where the last thing I consciously remember is walking down the steps out of the air ops building. And the next thing I know, I'm sitting in my apartment and I have no clue how I got there. And I honest to God, there were a couple of times where actually got up and went to look to see if my car was sitting in the parking lot in the building. So and I only lived oh, I lived about three miles from the base, three and a half miles from the base. I have no conscious recollection of how I got to my car, drove to my apartment. It'd be a couple hours later after I had decompressed. I mean, that's how busy the days were. But the.

JONES: Point was, you had no recollection of driving from point A to point B.

COBB: Correct? I just did it on autopilot.

JONES: Analogous to what we hear of people who are saying, you know, driving under the influence of alcohol. You know.

COBB: It just, you know, just being so stressed, you know, being as busy a day as it was then just kind of, you know, shutting down when the day was over, when I didn't have to be on like it did at work. But for the most part, the busy days were the fun days were the ones that made made it interesting to to be, you know, and I enjoyed being an air traffic controller mainly because no two days were exactly alike. I liked the the differences. Prior to joining the Navy, the couple, the jobs I worked, I worked in a factory, a couple of different factories. I wouldn't have been able to have done that for 50 years. I mean, I give my brother a lot of credit that worked in a factory for that. You know, he started in high school and did his whole entire life at the same company. It would have bored the snot out of me. I just I would not I would have been you could have locked me up somewhere because I would have been crazy by the end of that time. I enjoyed the working in an environment where no two days were like where things were always different, really. And I really enjoyed doing that. Oceana. I thought Oceana was fun. I enjoyed being a controller. You know, another another interesting experience. I had those working of Midwich and Midwich is were traditionally pretty quiet. We didn't have a lot of stuff normally happening on the midwich, but we were open 24 hours a day. So, you know, you had to have controllers on duty in case we had an aircraft come in. And I had Washington Center call to hand off a P-3. Well, I question that because, like I said, Oceana was the tactical jet base. We had all the go fast, do nothings aircraft like P threes and E twos and C nines and C fives and whatever. We'd go to Norfolk. And so I, I questioned, I said he wants to come to Oceana, not Norfolk. They said yes, ask. And for Oceana it's like okay. So I gave him our frequency. He checks in and an initial check in. We you, we had a standard spiel. You tell him what the runway was, what the weather conditions were, what our altimeter setting was. I did all that. The pilot comes back and says, Do you have a runway that's closer? Okay, runway that's closer. I said, Affirmative. Are 150 miles straight into runway three two. He says, Roger will take it. Okay. You know, we normally I mean, normally you would land on the duty runway, but, hey, you know, if you want another runway, we're we're amenable to that. It's not a big deal. We just have to tell the crash crew that's where they're setting up and put the runway lights on for that runway. And so I called the tower to tell him he was he wanted to land on 32. And then the pilot comes up and says, and we'd like to stay along the coast as long as possible in case we have to ditch the airplane. That's the airplane. Oh. So I keyed up and I said, Roger, say nature of the emergency and the pilot's real cool and calm and collected. And he comes back and he says, Well, there isn't one yet. He says, But our fuel gauge is stopped registering a couple hundred miles ago. Oh, God. They ran out of fuel at midfield. They just barely put it down on the runway and were dead on the runway because they had no more gas. They had been in Bermuda. They've been up operational out of Bermuda looking for subs, you know, because this was the Cold War, late seventies, and they tried three times to land the airplane in Bermuda. And the crosswind was so bad they couldn't put it down in Bermuda. So the controllers in Bermuda sent them to Jacksonville, which was a primary divert for the P-3 because that was a P-3 base. And they got to figuring on their little onboard computer that they didn't stand a ghost of a chance of making it to Jacksonville with the amount of fuel they had left, that their only hope was to come toward us because they got a little bit of help from the wind coming in our direction. And that's why they came to Oceana and not Norfolk. And like I said, they ran out. They ran out of gas. We had to toll on off the runway because they didn't have any more power left. There was no more fuel left in the aircraft.

JONES: Oh, wow. Yep. As you were telling the anecdote, I couldn't help but think about the incident where Captain Sullenberger landed his plane down.

COBB: In in the bay.

JONES: In the Hudson, in the Hudson River, in New York City. I mean, that's that's what that pilot was going through mentally. But he got his plane down safely. Yep. At your airport.

COBB: So, yeah, that was. And then, you know, like you said, I put that pilot on report that tried to run into the E2 in the pattern. But one other time I had a pilot that he wanted a particular approach and I cleared him for the approach. And that approach. On the approach plate, you stayed at 23,000 feet until you hit the arc, and that's when you commenced your descent as you were going around on the arc and it was to fly. There was a warning area underneath it. And so to keep you up over the top of this warning area where there could be, you know, dogfights going on and ships out there doing gun firing at, you know, whatever, it was a range that they could, you know, play their war games and stuff in. And so to keep other aircraft safe from it, they would fly over the top and then come Commencer descent to come into Oceana. And as he came off of the approach point, he started descending. So by the time he got to the arc, he was already at 15,000 feet, whereas that's when he should have started his descent down to 15,000 feet. And there wasn't anything happening I had called to break. Cape's is the ones that controlled the warning area. I called over to them and the controller over there cleared me all the way to the surface. They said, Whoa, wait a minute, we don't want to go that far. I said, But we'll take it the minimum zero if you want. And he said, You know, the area was clear and it was all mine. So I just sat there and watched him and we'd had a problem. As he came up on the initial approach, fixed his tack and was off. And what my personal opinion is, is I think he had dialed in Norfolk's tack in which was 116 Irish was 113, because the difference between Oceana and Norfolk was about the difference. He was from the approach fix when the you know, but I mentioned it to him and he eventually that got fixed. So I think what he did is he realized he had the wrong tech and station dialed in. And when he dialed in the correct one, that it fixed the the problem. But anyways, when I was getting ready to hand him off to the tower, I said, When you get on the ground, could you please call? And I gave him the number for the radar room and like 30 minutes or so later the phone rings and I answer it and it's the pilot. And right away he's, you know, he's like, I don't know what was going on with, you know, the the tech. And he says, our equipment checks out just fine. And he said and so.

Speaker 3 I said.

COBB: Well, I said, I'm not sure. I didn't know what I thought happened, but I didn't call him on that. I just said, oh, I'm not sure what was going on there. I said, But that's not why I called. I said, I just wanted to know, did you have a copy of the Correll approach with you? And he's like, Oh, yes, ma'am, right there on my knee board. I said, Oh, that's interesting, because according to that approach, you're supposed to stay at flight level 230 until you hit the arc and then commence your descent down to 15,000. I said you commenced your descent as soon as you left the initial approach fix so you were already at 15,000 feet by the time you hit the arc. He's like, Well, you just should have said something. I said, Well, I checked with McCabe's and the warning area was clear. They gave me all the way to the surface. They said that was a little extreme. We didn't want to go that far, he said. But he said the airspace was mine. So I said, Well, it's no problem. I was watching you. If you'd have gotten close to minimums and said something, you're like, Oh, well, I just thought I would see if you had a copy of the approach. You have a good evening, sir. I know the phone.

JONES: As a layperson. I have a pecking order for pilots, and the pecking order for them is that they are supposed to be incredibly knowledgeable at their craft. Yep. And yet in this instance. You knew more than the pilot, and that's scary. Okay.

COBB: Yeah. Well, and and there again, you know, distracted are the other initial approach fix that we had the Apollo approach fix that one you did commence your descent as you came off the initial approach fixed but that was within my airspace whereas the suit one was out over the water. And so, you know, you had to get over the other airspace before you could come into your descent. So but like you said, there was nothing going on that night. And and that's why I didn't put him on report. I didn't write him up that it went to any official channels, but just, you know, also let him know that, hey, you know, I was paying attention even if you weren't out there. So but like I said, Oceana. Oceana was fun. And that was my, you know, really my first opportunity to be an air traffic controller. And I loved it.

JONES: So you had simply put, some very eventful slash close calls at couple.

COBB: Of them, you.

JONES: Know, in your five years at Oceana. Yeah.

COBB: Or a couple of them. A couple. A couple of interesting. Like I said, I was I was reading a book that night. The P three came in. I was reading a book. We didn't have any traffic until Washington Center called to bring the P three in and then definitely got my attention and I was paying attention to what he was doing in the event that they did ditch their plane, that they know exactly where to send search and rescue to. So, yeah, it was a little bit like, okay, that's your run of the mill ordinary night here. So.

JONES: So but did you have any instances where you felt that some of your fellow controllers were impaired when they were working?

COBB: You know, the I can't say that I ever did. The you know, I worked with a great group, very professional individuals, both the men and women, even the men that didn't think women should be air traffic controllers as controllers themselves took their you know, we all took it very seriously that that we had lives in our hands, that, you know, in our job, mistakes could cost somebody their life. But so that was that was kind of my tour.

JONES: That's very good to hear that we.

COBB: Oh, yeah, I, I agree. I mean.

JONES: Maybe highly of the professionalism of everyone, you know, that you were serving with Google's kudos to them.

COBB: Yep. And our technicians, too. You know, I worked with some great technicians that would, you know, go out of their way to to help, you know, to maintaining the equipment and keeping it in in great working order. Because there again, they understood the critical nature of the use of that equipment, what it meant in terms of pilots lives on air crews and things. So all the way through my career, not only Oceana, but any of the duty stations that I worked with, some really very competent professional individuals. So so but that we've we've been at this a while and we've only we've only five years there, so there's a bunch more to go.

JONES: Okay. I know. And you need a break now. I'm fine. Okay. I am too. But you're right. I'm going to have to.

COBB: We need to move on. But, um.

Speaker 3 So I left.

COBB: I left. I really you know, I left Oceana in the.

Speaker 3 Fall of.

COBB: 81, like October of 81. And I went to I went back to Memphis for C school and advanced school. It was called facility management slash Terps. And Terps is where you learn how to put together an approach to an airfield. And it's a lot of math involved and angles and stuff to draw out. So it's an interesting school. I did that and then I was home on leave over the Christmas of 81 and then I transferred to Rota, Spain then. So I finally got my overseas duty station that I had joined the Navy to see. And there again enjoyed my tours in Rota. I spent not quite three years there in Rota, had worked both Radar and Tower there, had the opportunity to live out in town and experience some of the culture. The apartment that I lived in was just off the base was only a couple of miles from the front gate of the base and it was a quite triplex. There were two apartments downstairs and two apartments upstairs, and the building was owned by the same family. So it was two sisters and a brother that owned the building. And it was the brother's apartment that I was renting. Yeah, his family had gotten a little big for the apartment, and so he actually had bought a store, which was a block down the street. And him, his family lived in the apartment above the store. And then he rented out this other apartment and his one sister lived above me. The other sister lived across the hall from her. And then the sister's daughter lived in the apartment across the hall from mine. And the the lady that lived above me, her and her family, they had two little boys that were learning English in school, so they always wanted to practice their English with me. And I said, Well, that was a good chain, a fair exchange. They can learn English and I could learn Spanish. So then after that I would come home from work and slid under my door would be little sheets of paper that would have like a horse drawn on it. And then the word cambio or a fish and the word Pez. So they would give me flashcards to help me learn Spanish and enjoyed oh, I got a couple of other things from them. They'd come home and find them sitting by my door where they had left me little, little gifts and stuff, but that it was an interesting. I enjoyed living in Spain, actually living and being a part of the culture and and actually living in the community as opposed to just visiting. I've taken trips and visited countries and it's an entirely different atmosphere experience to actually live there as opposed to just visiting on a short term to a particular. A place. So and as an air traffic controller there, again, one of my one of my more memorable nights of working air traffic control was I was a tower controller. I was working a stand in the tower and we had a three that were that would go out and operate. The squadron was stationed there in Rota, but when the ships were in the Mediterranean, the carriers were in the Mediterranean, The atheists would go out and support the carrier ops in the Mediterranean and would work aboard of well before the A380 pilot could fly out and actually make a landing on board the carrier. They had to do so many carrier landing practices on Shore and Rota before they you know, and they would be out there with the LSO landing signal officer that would monitor their approach and their landing and take off to make sure that they were within, you know, that they would have made a safe landing on board the carrier if they were on a carrier rather than on a shore station that had a 12,000 foot runway. And so we had the A3 that was practicing. And, you know, in anticipation of going of deploying and going out to sea, they took priority when they were doing their carrier landing practices. They had priority at the airfield over the other aircraft. So that particular night I had the A3 wanting to do carrier landings. And that was a very unique pattern that they had laid out. And they actually had the runway marked off of where they needed to land. And I had a P-3, which an A3 and a P-3. They're not real. You know, they're they're kind of compatible. But you got to pay attention because they don't fly it. They three is a little faster than the P-3. And then I had a Cessna in the pattern, which is definitely out of the wheelhouse of the A3 especially, but even the P-3. And so when the A3 got into the pattern, I told the A3, I said, fly your your regular sail pattern carrier landing pattern. I said, I will work my traffic around you. They will not be a factor or they'll be told to depart the pattern. The Ellen show was late. He was supposed to have been there already and he was late showing up the landing signal. Officer And so we'd been working in the pattern for probably almost a half hour before the L.A. So showed up. So when the show got there and they'd been working, the A3 got to approaches to one of the other two aircraft and it we you know, it had been working just fine. So the also shows up. I told the Ellen show the same thing. I said your plane will fly his standard of sail pattern. I will work my traffic around you. Okay. So I turned the A3 over to the LSO and the A3 comes around On his approach as he's coming up off of his approach. I tell the three the A3 is going to be turning inside of him. At the same time, they also tells the A3 to go upwind. So instead of coming off and turning the SOS, telling them to go straight ahead, it's like I move. So I get on the radio to the show and I said, Don't do that. Just fly your standard pattern. I will work my traffic around you. So they three wasn't happy because, I mean, we've been doing this for a half hour and it been working great. Now he's having to fly extra. So the P-3 in the Cessna get their approach to a three comes around first approach as he's coming up off the deck. I'm telling the P-3 is going to be turning inside of them and they also tells them to go upwind. What part of fly your regular pattern don't you understand? So the next time around, as you know, I had switched the A3 over to the LSO, but then I was listening, you know, on our on our console for our frequencies. We had three positions. There was off was, was down all the way down the middle position was a monitor position where you can listen to what was being said, but that was it. And then if you pushed it all the way up, then it was in transmit mode. So when you keyed your microphone, you, you captured that frequency and could then talk on that frequency. And until you. Let go of the mic. No one else could talk on that frequency. Well, I had it in the monitor position because that's how I knew the SO was telling them to go up when I was monitoring because he was in my you know, he's in my pattern. He's in my area. So I was listening to him even though I wasn't actually talking to him. So the third time around, as he's getting ready to come off of the deck, I flipped his frequency up into the transmit position, keyed my microphone, didn't say a word to the A three called traffic, told the P three the A3 would be turning inside of him, which allowed the three enough time to start his turn before I keyed the microphone and let the lso have it back. And I think I did that about three times before the guy got the message that, Hey, this will work if you just fly your patter. But but there again, that was a fun night because I had three different airplanes in the pattern that I had to actually think about what I was doing to keep them separated so that they could all get the approaches they wanted to do. And I'm almost positive. I don't know that for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet money that the Cessna pilot was one of our station pilots, was one of the pilots there, and was just flying the Cessna because he could, if it had been, you know, just a run of the mill guy that had a pilot private pilot's license, I don't know that they would have been as good at keeping the separation and and doing what they were supposed to.

JONES: I can tell that, like in that particular instance, you really enjoyed the intellectual challenge of doing your work. Yep. It also struck me how incredibly precise your use of language is to your coworkers and to pilots.

COBB: Oh, yeah.

JONES: And simply put, I'm in awe of that.

COBB: Because we had we had very specific language. And and the other thing, they were officers. We were enlisted. So, you know, there was always that. I mean, I might say things In fact, back in Oceana one afternoon, we were really busy and somebody had come up to stand behind me. And that happened all the time. People were fascinated watching the amount of traffic and stuff going on on our radars and, you know, listening to us talk and the coordination between our positions and things like that. And after, you know, when I finally got a lull, they could break my attention away from my radar scope. I turned and looked over my shoulder, and it was my commanding officer that was standing behind me that had been standing behind me for like 20 minutes watching all this going on. And after he left, I looked at the guys on either side of me and it was like, why didn't you tell me? It was like, did I say anything bad about one of his pilots? And they're like, No, you were good. Because, you know, there again, we couldn't say things over the air, but occasionally when somebody did something, you then key the mic and is like, Who taught you to fly? Did you get your license out of Cracker Jacks or or make some other, you know, quick quip over, you know, whatever it was they had done or not done, you know? But he they said I did okay, that I didn't really mess things up. The skipper was standing by me, was like, okay, good. But but yes, we had we had very specific and and that's true of air traffic control across the board. I mean, there's very specific things you tell pilots at different times. There's a very specific language that you use and it helps to keep the confusion down. And especially if you have pilots that English is their second language because most of air traffic control is done in English.

JONES: I'm familiar with that.

COBB: And and so, you know, at least in the Navy, I didn't encounter that. But in the civilian world, they would encounter people that by by having it be a very precise language, then, you know, those pilots understand what that means, what they're telling them when.

JONES: Let me ask you, I'm going to pivot to a different topic. You left Oceana about 1981, and then while you were in Rota, Spain, or about the same time back here in the States, we had the PAT crew strike in late 81 and all the air traffic controllers got fired. And at that point. The federal government is looking for air traffic controllers. Strikes me that you would have been an obvious candidate. Did you give any thought?

COBB: Well, and I was in the middle of my enlistment. So, you know, it wasn't it wasn't like, you know, because the Navy needed controllers, too. So they they weren't I mean, ones that were at the end of their enlistment. I had several of the people I had worked with and been stationed with that did get out of the Navy and go to work for the FAA at that point because their enlistments were were coming up and were running out. But I you know, I was I was still in the middle of my enlistment. And to be quite honest, the first time I re-enlisted, which would have been in 1980, I actually thought about it of getting, you know, just letting my enlistment run out, which would it would have happened in 81 or did I want to stay in the Navy? And I chose to stay in the Navy. I like the camaraderie that I had. I enjoyed serving in the Navy. And the the civilian sector was a little bit more cutthroat than the Navy in the Navy. But we did we took rating exams and that at least until, you know, up through E-6, was how you got advanced. You if you got a good enough score on your rating exam and they had openings for controllers, you were advanced and you made you know, you got a higher pay grade in the civilian sector. A lot of it was dependent upon your performance on the job. So you would be evaluated on your performance. And they had in that timeframe had just gotten into where they had started having computers, keep track of aircraft and what sectors they fell under. And so who would be controlling them. And so a part of their evaluations were how many airplanes they handled. And one incident we had the Norfolk, the civilian Norfolk controllers operating out of our building in the in the late seventies there while they were doing some upgrades with their system on their equipment and their building. And one afternoon I was working in approach control and as the approach controller, I was also the facility watch supervisor. So that meant the whole the whole facility was my responsibility. So I was responsible not only for what I was doing on approach control, but I was responsible for whatever departure was doing clearance, delivery, arrival, the tower, flight clearance. The whole facility fell under my responsibility. And Norfolk, like I said, they were working in our building and done a scope on the other side of our room. And he called to hand off a Cessna that was just trucking through our airspace, was headed down to North Carolina someplace, I think, anyways, handed him off to us. Normally the departure controller would be the one to handle that aircraft because would be traversing basically through the same airspace that departure would be having airplanes go through. Well, that was right in the middle of one of our launches with the departure controller. So he was really busy. So I gave the Norfolk controller my frequency to put him on my frequency instead of the departure controllers. And he questioned it. He said under and I said, affirmative. And, you know, and when the pilot checked in with me, I gave him the spiel, told him what was happening, you know, and stuff that and where he was going through our airspace. No big deal. He got down to the bottom of our airspace and I handed him off to the next sector.

Speaker 3 And later on.

COBB: I.

Speaker 3 Was in.

COBB: Getting a cup of coffee. And the controller that had made that handoff wanted to know why I took that airplane. And initially I didn't understand. I said he was coming in our airspace. Why wouldn't I take him? He said, No, no, I don't mean that. Yeah, it was coming in your airspace. He said, But the guy sitting next to you should have been the one to handle him. I said, Yeah, but he was a lot busier than I was. And he said, Oh, we'd never do that. It's like, what if, if it was different sector work, the aircraft, it wouldn't matter because all they kept track of was what sector that plane went through. So if if that sector was supposed to be this guy over here, that's who would get credit for work in the airplane, whether he actually talked to them or not. And so when it came time for promotion, he'd have one more airplane or four more airplanes or whatever on his tally instead of you. And so he might get the promotion instead of you, even though you'd actually work those four planes instead of him. And so he said, we wouldn't do that. You know, if it's supposed to go to his sector, it goes to his sector. If he can't handle it, then somebody will come in and take his place. And then, of course, that goes on his record that, you know, he had to be given assistance, that he couldn't handle the position. So then again, make somebody else is like, is that really the environment I want to live in is like, no, I would I liked we worked as a team. There again goes back to boot camp where we all learn to fold our underwear the same way we work as a team. We work together, we helped one another out.

Speaker 3 And and that had.

COBB: No bearing on whether I was a first class or a second class or a third class. We we just we work together as a team to take care of the aircraft we had coming in and out of our airfield. And I like that environment much more than that. You're on your own.

JONES: Yeah.

COBB: Kind of mentality that the the feds, the FAA had. So I had chosen not to go with the FAA. But at the time of the strike, which I personally think President Reagan was entirely justified in doing, he'd had.

Speaker 3 Every.

COBB: Union in the country holding him hostage if he had let the FAA get away with it. And the guy that was in charge of the FAA at the time, he was an idiot because he actually could have gotten everything he had wanted. He just figured that he could do what he wanted and nobody could stop him, that, you know, he could grandstand and put his controllers on strike and he'd hold the country hostage. Well, Reagan showed him No, he wouldn't, but they could have done it as an air traffic controller. They made me learn the 71 10.65, which is the kind of the air traffic control bible. It's the air traffic control manual that the FAA publishes every year and that lays out the rules and regulations of how you how you do air traffic control and maintain separation and stuff. The better, you know, the book, the better you're able to bend those rules to the breaking point. You don't break them because then you're you can end up in trouble by not being in compliance with the 7110. But well, we did it all the time at Oceana. Like you said, the tower controller would say, check the FAA on the roll, cleared for takeoff. Technically, you can't have two aircraft on the runway at the same time by clearing that second guy for takeoff. You've now essentially put two planes on the runway at the same time. However, comma, he's not crossed the threshold to actually enter the runway. You're anticipating that the guy that's on the runway is going to have his wheels up and will be technically off the runway by the time the one crosses the threshold. So you don't have to.

Speaker 3 On the runway.

COBB: At the same time, planes don't go backwards. So the one that's going this way is not going to be a conflict to the guy over here. But but that's that's called push and metal. And in my world, we're in that world. You do that because that expedites if you wait until that plane takes off and then clear this guy for takeoff, he's got a little bit of run up and stuff that he has to do before he actually moves, starts moving forward and under the runway, you know.

Speaker 3 And those seconds.

COBB: Exponentially add up. And so all he would have had to have done, the president of the union, Ali, would have had to have done was told his controllers to go by the legal letter of the 71 10.65. He would have slowed traffic down across the country so badly within a matter of hours that the airlines would have been screaming, give them what they want, get them back to a full.

JONES: You know.

COBB: Full capacity. But like I said, he figured he you know, he could just do what he wanted. And like I said, I think he was an idiot. But that's just my opinion.

JONES: Pivoting back to Roda after three years. There you move on. I knew about that.

COBB: And coming up, you know, my last minute or my time in Rhoda, my planned rotation day party was coming up. I talked to my career counselor and there again, get to put a dream sheet in of where you'd like to go. So I told my date in my career, counselor, that I wanted to go to naval support for Antarctica. And he said, okay, put that down as my first choice. He said, What do you want as your second choice? I said, I don't have one. He said, What do you mean you don't have one? I said, Well, I want to go to Antarctica. If they don't send me to Antarctica, I don't care where they send me. He couldn't wrap his head around that. He said, Well, you have to choose a second and a third choice. I said, Why? He said, Because if they don't send you to Antarctica, they'll just pick a place to send you. I went, Okay. Like I said, he just was not understanding that I didn't have a second or third choice. So he he submitted my dream sheet saying they wanted naval support for Antarctica for first choice, naval support for Antarctica, for his second choice, sports for Antarctica, for a third choice. So I was like, whatever. And they let me have naval support for Antarctica. They actually sent me where I asked to go, and I had several people tell me that I wouldn't get that because they wouldn't send me halfway around the world because NSF was homeported out of Port Hueneme, California. And so to go from Roda to California was they said, you're going to go to the East Coast, and they let me have Antarctica. And what I learned after I got to that command was that as we we worked for, we were a support force. We supported the National Science Foundation down in Antarctica. And so as sailors were being transferred into the command, the National Science Foundation budget picked up the tab for the transfer of people. So the Navy didn't care where they came from because they weren't paying that going out of NASA offered to your next duty station is when it was on the Navy's dollar instead of the National Science Foundation. So that's why I got the transfer across country, because the Navy didn't care. They just they had somebody that wanted to go and there was an open position or was an open billet that I was allowed to have. And I just I thought, you know, like I said, I joined the Navy to see the world. And I figured going to Antarctica would be a place that not a lot of people would get an opportunity to go and see, and that it would be an interesting experience. And it was it was an incredibly interesting experience. So long flight to fly from California, all, you know, basically right outside Los Angeles all the way. We went to Christchurch, New Zealand, and then from Christchurch, New Zealand, down to Antarctica. So it makes for really even just to Christchurch, New Zealand was a long flight, but we would fly down to Christchurch and you'd spend a day or two in Christchurch because that's where they issued our extreme cold weather gear. I got a C bag with, I had a parka, snow pants, I had they there were a white rubber boot. They called them bunny boots because they were white. We had the balaclava. I had another hat that had flaps on the side that, you know, fur flaps that you know, you could wear. I had insert a wool insert and then a leather.

Speaker 3 Glove over.

COBB: The top. And then I actually had what they called bare paws mitten like things to wear. And the scarf, that was my extreme cold weather gear. And that was issued to us in Christchurch, New Zealand. They had a warehouse where they kept that equipment. They would issue it out to us and the C bag to put it in. And then we went through pre-deployment briefings there in Christchurch as well. And I remember that first year the the guy going through all of the items that we would be issued in our extreme cold weather gear, and he said that we any time we left the the containment area of McMurdo, we had to have that sea bag with all that stuff in it. And he said, I remember him standing there saying to us that the. First time we needed one item that was in that C bag. He said, You may do nothing more. All season long, the six months we were on the ice. I'll carry it around and build your upper body strength, he said. But the first time you need one piece of that equipment and you don't have it, he said, Don't worry, because you'll never need anything ever again. Oh, okay. This is serious.

JONES: Yeah, it is serious.

COBB: And he was right, for the most part, because, you know, I operated was there in McMurdo and didn't really get well. Would get out to Willie Field where the runway was, but, you know, would. And traversing back and forth to Willey, we'd have our extreme cold weather gear. But when I was in McMurdo, walking from my barracks over to the chow hall and stuff like that, I mean, you didn't need to put all that stuff on and stuff. So most of the time I just carried it around in my C bag. Most of it, you know, would use oh oh, I would use the balaclava and the parka and the bunny boots and the gloves and scarf is what I use mainly. But I had the you know, I had that other gear in the event that it was, that it was needed. And Antarctica is a very unforgiving environment. Was that my second my second or third year down on? I made three deployments down there during the time I was a part of an SFA and the I think it was the third season. Well, it might have been the second, but anyways, we actually lost a couple of civilians. They had gone. Keen and the Mountaineers had marked out and actually put up trails for people that wanted to go hiking and things to do. And they attested that, you know, that it was solid ground to support walking on and stuff like that. And they had gone out following the trail out, but then they got tired and they could see Scott Bass as they were coming back. And so they took a short cut back, figured they'd take a shortcut back to Scott base. And there were three of them and they're walking along and the guy on the right just disappears. He stepped on a crevasse and broke the snow bridge and down he went and the guy in the middle turns to the guy at the left and said, Did you see that Joe or whatever his name was? And just like that, the guy on the left disappears. Now he's standing between the two, doesn't know whether to go forward or go back because the guy on either side of him have gone in jerk grass. Well, he did go back, retrace that. But that could have been dangerous, too, because he may have only weakened the snow bridge the first time he stepped on it and would have gone through it the second time. But he got lucky. He managed to make it back to the path and then back to back to back to the base to get help for his buddies. But they weren't able to get him out alive. So he lost the two then. But like I said, very unforgiving of that. You know, they and there again, there were civilians, but they're still told I mean, I was ordered.

Speaker 3 I mean, I was ordered.

COBB: That would stay on the marked trails, you know, whatever. Like you said, the Mountaineers had had checked those areas out to make sure they would support. But what people were doing, you know, the road when they built the roads through or cut the paths that the vehicles would use the same thing. They made sure that it would support that happening.

Speaker 3 Your red lights.

COBB: Blinking. Does that mean anything?

JONES: Um, I've never had that happen before. Which red light is that?

COBB: Right on the front of the camera there?

JONES: Well, we're going to continue. Okay.

COBB: It's been I mean, the lights been on, but now all of a sudden, it's blinking.

JONES: Okay.

COBB: So I don't I don't know what that means.

JONES: I don't either.

COBB: But anyway, so, you know, we were told and the same thing. We were ordered to carry our extreme cold weather gear with us. So that was a direct order. So not only could it have been dangerous, but if I'd have been caught without it, you know, that could have been reasons to go to Captain's mast two for violating a direct order. Mm hmm. So. But it was an interesting experience. My first year down on the ice. The first couple weeks that I was down in Antarctica, I didn't do anything but remove snow off the roof of the buildings we lived in.

JONES: So how long were you in Antarctica?

COBB: Well, 18 months total. Three different times for six months. I was a part of summer support, so I was only there during the summer season down in Antarctica, which.

JONES: Is saying 18 months.

COBB: Over the three years.

JONES: Or over three over a three year period.

COBB: Correct.

JONES: And then where where were you when you were not in Antarctica? Where were you?

COBB: Portway Niemi, California.

JONES: Three. Yeah.

COBB: Port, Who needs me?

JONES: So when you were working in Antarctica, you were in California?

COBB: Correct.

JONES: Go ahead.

COBB: That's where that's where our our main building once was there on the Seabee base.

JONES: Is that just the normal rotation or was your rotation different from other people?

Speaker 3 No.

COBB: Like I said, I was a part of summer support. They had two different components. They had the folks that were there for summer support, and we were generally in the command for three years and we'd make three separate deployments to Antarctica for six months at a time. And then the other component were the folks that wintered over, and they normally did a one year stint in the command, and that was entirely in Antarctica. They would spend that year in Antarctica. And then once they were done, then they would be transferred to another duty station.

JONES: Okay. So did you spend six months in Antarctica?

COBB: I spent six months in Antarctica, six months in California, six months in Antarctica, six months in California, six months in Antarctica, back to California. And then I transferred out of that command. But so summer support ran from like the end of September, beginning of October through the end of March.

JONES: Okay. So what other than shoveling snow, what were your duties.

COBB: As an air traffic controller down there? So I did air traffic control. Like I said, the first couple of weeks I was down there, we did we had to get the snow off our building. It was collapsing the roofs of our building we'd had. And there's not a lot of snow fall. It's the world's coldest desert, but the snow that's fallen over the last 10,000 years is still there. It just blows around. So it would accumulate on top of the buildings. And we had the buildings all had flat roof, so we had to get the snow off of them so they didn't collapse. And all we had to do is get the snow off of the buildings. And then we had those bulldozers. They would run through and push it out of the way. But that's the first two weeks. That's all I did was shovel the snow off the top of the roof of the building. But my duties, you know, I was we had a tower and radar, so we would work. In fact, one day I was working in the tower with one of the other controllers. And and Rick was the one that was actually on a stand that day. I was I was actually the radar controller that that morning out there. And we had a C-130. We were on the Skyway. So they were ski equipped aircraft. And the C-130, we had a 12,000 foot skyway. The C-130 started at the end of the runway, on our duty runway and tried to take off and he couldn't get enough power. And I'm going to be able to break free of the snow.

Speaker 3 It was later.

COBB: In the season and the snow was was sticky and was sticking to the bottom of a skis. So he turned around and tried it in the other direction. He got down, down the runway, slowed down, stopped, just turned around and asked to try it. Going in the other direction. Rick cleared him, you know, cleared him for takeoff. He tried going in the other direction and still couldn't get enough power and traction to to pop free of the surface. So he slowed down and stopped and turned around again. And he said, well, maybe, you know, we packed it down enough, will be able to get it off and get it airborne. And so cleared him for takeoff. He's as he's going by the tower. He's not slowing down, but he's not getting airborne. He gets down to the end of the skyway. He's not slowing down, but he's not airborne. He took about another thousand feet. We had a 12,000 foot skyway. He took probably a little over 13,000 feet that day to get together enough power and, you know, going to actually be able to pop free of the snow and get airborne. And so then he had to come around. The departure was around, pass the tower and out through the channel to head toward New Zealand. And as he came back around, he keyed up and said, I'm sorry about that. Tower took a little extra this morning.

Speaker 3 And Rick.

COBB: Keyed up and said, No problem, sir, you had 900 miles of overrun because he was up under the permanent ice shelf. But like I said, it was it was interesting to control airplanes down there initially in the early part of the season, when we first got down there, we were on the ice runway and then they could bring in wheeled aircraft. We would have 141 and see five come in and land on the ice runway. But. Eventually, then they would measure it. They kept track of the thickness of the ice and the temperature of the ice. And what would happen is when it got to a certain temperature, it would start melting from both directions at the same time. So one day you could have like four feet of ice, and the next day you could have a foot. It would melt that fast once it got to a certain temperature. So they would keep track and once it got to a certain temperature, then they pulled of all the buildings and everything off the ice runway. And then we went to the ski way. And then you had to have ski equipped aircraft to get in there and it reduced the payload that that could bring in The stuff that could bring in on one of the ski equipped airplanes was not as high as what they could bring in when they brought in a 141 or ac5. So they liked operating on the ice runway as long as possible because that gave them more flexibility for hauling stuff in and out down there. But so they got to work aircraft on a nice runway. And and what they would do is they would scrape it down to the ice, smooth it off, and then they would go back and blow a layer of snow over the top to give the plane's traction on top of the ice. That's how they how they groomed the ice runway. But the the first season I was down there, the tower complex was like a quarter of a mile from the rest of the Vxi six squadron guys and and stuff. We were kind of isolated, but then the ice shelf moves and so we actually had to move the complex up to what they called Willie three Williams Field three. So it was the.

Speaker 3 Third evolution of.

COBB: Williams field that as the ice shelf moved, then they kept moving it back because eventually the ice shelf would fall into the annual sea ice. It would just fall off. But anyways, when we moved to to Willy three, then they put us all together. They put.

Speaker 3 Our buildings right in.

COBB: Line with the six buildings and we were all air together. But when I first my first season on the ice, we were in our own separate little. It was just the controllers and the technicians and the crash crew. We shared the space and then the Vecsey six guys were like a quarter of a mile away. But so that was out at the runway. And then the other part, the other facility that as air traffic controllers we manage and we manned was what they called Mack Center. And there we had the radios for any of the teams, the scientific teams or researchers or explorers or even workers maintenance, whatever they were doing that were out on the ice shelf, had to keep in communications with Max Center and our outlying camps. We had there, we had Sciple Station and Bird were outlying camps that and South Pole station that had people at them and the same thing that they maintain contact with McMurdo. And we were in charge of keeping track of where they were and that they were okay and if they needed anything or whatever. And I remember I was the night supervisor the one season down on the well, actually, I think I did that for more than one season. But anyways, I was the night supervisor and Bird Station called in their regular, you know, their regular check in time with us. And the message I got, they called in with their weather. Tell me what the weather was down there and bird. And then he said, we're having trouble with the freeway and it's cold down here. And that was essentially the message that I got from them. And it was passed through South Pole Station. I wasn't talking to them directly that night for.

Speaker 3 Whatever atmospheric.

COBB: Reasons we weren't getting through. So it was being passed by a South Pole station. So I took the message, Thank Paul for it. And I'm sitting there looking at it and I don't know, there was just something niggling in the back of my brain. Like, what? What's what's wrong with this picture? You know? And I'm and I'm looking at it and he's telling me, you know, knowledge the weather said. And the other thing he said is our camp move is complete. We're having trouble with the freeway and it's cold down here. I'm thinking we're in Antarctica. It's cold down here. I mean, you're in Antarctica. Hello? So I came I went back to Pole and I said, You still talking to Bird? And he said, I think so. I said, Can you ask them what their temperature is? So he did. He comes back and he gives me the outside temperature that they'd given in their weather report. So I went back to burn or to pull, and I said, Can you ask them what their inside air temperature is? So he did. And it comes back and tells me. And the inside air temperature wasn't much warmer than what their outside air temperature was. And I learned later so that, you know, created a little like, oh, my God, let's get some help for Bird. So I got a hold of the duty officer and organized and still took them. It took them like four or 5 hours before they could get a plane off the ground to go out the bird. And then it was like another two hour, two and a half hour flight out there. And, you know, I saw on the continent to go to Bird. And luckily one of their technicians, jerry rigged, they tore the I don't know, they tore something apart to get electrical wiring. And they were able to run it to a little space heater. And they all gathered into one little room. But what the freeway was, was their heater. So they had moved the camp there. Again, it was getting covered by snow. So they kind of pulled it up on top of the snow and they had moved the camp. And then after they got the camp moved, they were having trouble with their heater. They would they would start it up, light it off. And as soon as it got hot, it would shut itself off. And then they'd have to wait until it cooled off and then they can turn it back on again. You know, I don't know that anything would have happened to them, you know, and if if we hadn't been able to get a hold of them all that was that midnight was when they had checked in with me. And at six in the morning, if we hadn't heard from them, we would have sent people down there. But then again, they would have, you know, would have taken them a good 3 hours, you know, probably 4 hours by the time they got aircrew briefed and out to the airfield and then take off and out the bird. So, you know, it probably would have been closer to noon by the time anybody was down there, you know, 10 to 12 in the morning. So, you know, a good ten, 12 hours later, then we got somebody out to them at like four in the morning. But like you said, that was they didn't say they needed help. They just gave me this kind of it's cold down here. And I'm thinking, yeah, it's cold everywhere down here. We're in Antarctica. Yeah. You know, and it just like you said, there was just something that was like, there's something not right here. I don't know what it is, but to. To investigate further and, and, and get them. And we did. We sent them. We took them a whole brand new heater out there. That was part of the reason it delayed them getting airborne is because they put a heater once once once they once somebody in in the know got the message and understood what the freeway was that I didn't it didn't mean anything to me. Got the assistance they needed down there. But there again I enjoyed working nights or enjoyed working in Mack Center because that was kind of the the hub of things We were we were kind of the duty officer worked out of our out of our space after hours and we were in the operations building. So the ops officer was around during the day and, and stuff in that same building. And I remember in the later years of when we'd had those pre-deployment briefings and I was one of the presenters as a supervisor from Mack Center. So everybody, everybody that would come along and they talk about, I work at Public Works, I work, you know, here, I work there, and everyone would say, you know, if you have any problems, if there's anything that you don't, you know, that you need or you can't get or you're in trouble or whatever, comic center, that was the way they all of them in their briefings were, were saying that because Max Center was Max center, that was you know, we were in McMurdo and this was the.

Speaker 3 Center hub.

COBB: Of all of the activity that goes on, that it gets to be my turn. And I got up there and I said, Good afternoon. I'm Petty Officer Cobb. I work at Max Center. Don't call me. And I said, No, that's okay. You might so call me that. Everybody else does. And then everybody laughed and stuff. But we really were we were the ones we kept track of who was out on the ice shelf, where they were at, what was going on. One of the teams we had out on the ice shelf, they they got on set up with their tents for whatever project they were doing something with the satellite and they got all set up and stuff. And then they came on to to say they were taking a break. So yeah, okay. And what it was, is they had a bunch of Adelie penguins come check them out because they were out on the ice. And so they they took a break, got their cameras and were taking pictures of the bellies. And the Adelie are cute little penguins.

Speaker 3 They they stand.

COBB: They only stand about, oh, about 18 inches tall and cute little devils. And they're like little kids. You we always saw the Adelies in groups of like six, eight, ten of them. You never saw one or two by themselves. They were always in a group of them. And like I said, they're like little kids. They would go running across the snow until they get enough speed and they'd fall over on their belly and then they go sliding across the snow until they run out of steam. And then they'd stand up and go running until they flap over on their belly and they would just be playing around and having a good time and the Adelie would come to check them out. After that, they tried to go back to work and it worked that afternoon. But then the next day they're working and they're busy and now they've taken pictures of the penguins. They don't need to take pictures of the penguins again. Well, the penguins took exception to that. They wanted to play. And and these humans, you know, needed to be part of it. So they were a. That they're tense and stuff like. Hello? Hello?

JONES: We're here. I'm here.

COBB: Come on out. And so then they had to get on the get on the radio and they said, we're taking a penguin break. And the whole time they were out on the on the ice, you know, probably at least once a day or once every other day, the penguins would show up and they would just have to take a break and go watch the penguins play. And they they'd be just playing around their campsite for 20 or 30 minutes, and then they would just wander off and the scientists could go back to whatever it was they were doing. But the the.

Speaker 3 Antarctic Treaty.

COBB: Protected the penguins and somebody told them they knew they were protected, that you couldn't harm them because they had no fear of us. So but it was it was a fun it was an interesting experience. The sun went around the horizon. You could tell what time of day it was by, you know, whether it was AM or PM by whether the sun was here or over here, because I was there during summer support when it was.

Speaker 3 24.

COBB: Hours of sunlight. The guys that wintered over, the people that wintered over, I should say, not just guys. There were women that did it all. So they ended up the sun would set the end of March, beginning of April, and then didn't come back until like September. So then they'd have 24 hours of darkness.

JONES: So your time eventually comes to an end in Antarctica? Yeah. And then do you go back to Millington, Tennessee?

Speaker 3 I do.

COBB: Because there again, I joined the Navy to see the world. So when I talked to my detailer, I was still looking for overseas duty stations. But because I'd had two back to back Rota and Antarctic both counted as overseas duty stations and at the time women weren't allowed aboard as air traffic controllers. We were not allowed aboard ship because the only ships we could go to were combatants, and women were not allowed on combatants at that point in time. They were starting to allow them on support vessels, but not on combatants. So my duty stations were either stateside or overseas. And because I'd had two back to back overseas ones, the detailer said I had to go stateside.

JONES: So he went back to Millington and then. Did you teach air traffic?

COBB: And I did. I went back as an instructor teaching air traffic control. So the first thing I did is I went through an instructor training class that the Navy put on there in Millington and then reported in to my duty station to be an instructor and spent the majority of my time as an instructor. Teaching in the radar block was just the one I got assigned to. And to be quite honest, I really did enjoy radar. It was one of those one of the events just that reminds me of while I was still attached to naval support for, say, Antarctica. The National Science Foundation wanted to do some work.

Speaker 3 During the summer.

COBB: When we were back in Port White Navy with the satellite and they went to Tully, Greenland, because that could simulate the same conditions they would have in Antarctica to be in Tully with interfacing with the satellite. And this would have been in, you know, the late the mid eighties, and they wanted Tully to stay open. TULLY Graham Flynn was an Air Force base and they wanted the Air Force folks to stay open until they came back in at like two or 3:00 in the morning. And Tully told them they couldn't do that, that their airfield closed at midnight or whatever, and that they didn't have the controllers to stay open. Beyond that, in under the FAA regulations, you have you have to have so many controllers on position at any one time. They're only allowed to work for X amount of hours before they get so much time off. And so depending on your your complement, it limits what you can and can't do. And so Tully had said that in order for them to accommodate the National Science Foundation, they needed two journeyman level controllers. And so two of us were sent from NSF up to Tully for a month to work with the Air Force, and I was one of them. And then a chief that we had that worked, that was a part of our command was the other one that went up there. Well, I was a first class and he was achieved. So when we got up there, he's the senior to me. So the first thing that the Air Force controller asked us, which one of us was Tower and which one was radar, And we both said Yes. Because we're both dual world. And then I looked at the chief and I said, Chief, you're senior. Which one do you want? Do you want Tower? You want radar? He said, Well, I prefer tower. I said, okay. And not a problem. I said, You go to the tower, I'll go to radar. And the Air Force controller was just kind of shaking his head because they were at that point in time. I don't know how it is today, but at that point in time, they were compartmentalized. If you became a tower controller, you were a tower controller. If you became a radar controller, you were a radar controller, and they didn't do a lot of cross training. And so, you know, he he went to the tower and I went to the radar room. And so I did prefer radar and that when I got to the schoolhouse, I got to teach radar. So that was I, in my opinion, much more enjoyable than to work in the tower. One of the things that I did do as an instructor, we were part of a test. I was part of a test team where we were testing voice activated computers to be used in our labs, both our radar and our Tower labs, and that in the mid eighties that was leading edge technology. We went we actually had a team that went to San Diego to the plant where they were building the equipment for the Navy and worked with their programmers to make sure that it was going to do what the Navy wanted it to do in their labs. And that was that was an interesting experience. The voice activated was at its infancy. We actually had to build templates of our voice so the computer would recognize us.

COBB: Talking to it.

COBB: We had a list of words that we repeated. I mean, I was so sick of repeating those words over and over again for the computer to build that template.

COBB: And then.

COBB: Depending on which position you were going to be working as a part of the test team you had, we had a certain vocabulary list that you had, you know, that we had to load into the computer and then we could only use.

COBB: Those words.

COBB: It wouldn't recognize anything else. It just recognized I mean, when when I think about voice activated computer systems today compared to what it was.

COBB: At.

COBB: When we did that testing back in the eighties, I mean, it's like going from a horse and buggy to a jet plane. Then just it's a huge difference. But I remember one afternoon there was an anomaly in the system that occasionally you'd you'd.

COBB: Tell an.

COBB: Aircraft something when your plane that was in your group or something and they would come back normally they would come back with their call sign and whatever you told them to do, if they came back and didn't say their callsign first, this was an anomaly of the A system, not what happens in the real world, but if they came back without the callsign and just acknowledged the transmission of turn left, turn right to send claim whatever it wasn't to the airplane you had told it to. Well, it could be, but not necessarily. It was to the last aircraft that you had talked to before you talked to them. So I know one day I went to switch an aircraft to the the final controllers frequency, and the response I got was minus the call sign. So then I had to think who I had talked to before. And it was somebody, you know, in the pattern that I had given a turn to, and that's who had taken the switching to the final controller. Well, the final controller didn't have phraseology in their template to tell an aircraft to switch frequencies, because once it got to them, it was on them until they landed there. So I'm sitting there thinking about it because now he's talking to the wrong airplane out there and that plane's in my pattern that he was going to really screw things up. So I said, Give me the frequency. So he came down off the frequency. I flipped it up because I had in my template I could tell him to change frequency. So I told that guy to change frequency back to my frequency and then changed the guy that was supposed to have gone to the final controller and then gave the final controllers frequency back and the master chief that was kind of overseeing us, our team be in there. He's just kind of standing there shaking his head as we're as we're figuring this out and doing this so that we can finish the scenario. And when we went back in the debriefing room, he said, You guys are going to make this work in spite of them, aren't you? I was like, Well, you know, I thought that's what we were here to do, you know, to run these scenarios and then provide. The import back to the the folks, the programmers as to how it.

COBB: Was working and what you know.

COBB: And what the anomalies and stuff were. But that just happened to be and I don't I don't know if they ever got that fixed or not, but I mean that probably they probably went in and figured out how to fix that. But it was, it was interesting to be a part of that. And just to see some of the new technology coming in that would take away having students sit at the bug terminals, flying the airplanes or walking around a table with a plane on a stick where they could do it with with scrims, know, screens. And and so the the controller standing in the tower is looking at a screen that that simulated an airport and they could actually see an airplane coming in and stuff. So just, you know, the technology that's there today and the simulators and things that they have, it's it's incredible that technology that they have compared to what it was when I was when I was going through this. But being an instructor was interesting. The other thing that I found with being an instructor is just that it was the incredible power that I had.

COBB: As a as.

COBB: An instructor. There I was so first class. I made chief while I was there in Memphis as an instructor. And I don't know if I was the chief at this point in time. Yeah, I think I probably was. By the time I was standing CTO, I would have been a chief as a first class. I wouldn't have stood chief or CTO duties. I would have had other watches that I would have stood. So I was the command duty officer. So at night when the ops officer or the, you.

COBB: Know, went to.

COBB: The the officer in charge of the school, went home for the night, then you would have a command duty officer take over and be responsible overnight until the next morning. And I was the my office.

COBB: And.

COBB: A bunk room was.

COBB: In the building.

COBB: A little building between two of the big student barracks. And there was there were probably four or five on either side. And then down at the end was this little building in the center. And that's where my office was. And I'd gotten word that there was something happening at one of the barracks down at the other end of the complex. So I had I had gone down to see well, by the time I got down, there was nothing happening. But as I walked back up to where my building was, the barracks right outside my building, there was a whole gaggle of students or people congregating right outside the barracks, and people inside the barracks are screaming at the one standing outside and one standing outside are screaming at the ones in the barracks. And I'm standing there thinking, Oh God, this could get ugly. And it's like, now what? You know? And I and I Oliver, you know, and I just decided, well, we've got to try something here. So I just as loud as I could. I yelled, Och, break it up, knock it off. If you live in that barracks. Yes. Get in the barracks and you stay there. If you don't live in that barracks you go back to whichever one you came from and you stay there and somebody turned to see who was talking. Because like you said, I yelled it as loud as I could and you're all decked out. I mean, I had the sacraments.

COBB: Of CDs.

COBB: On me.

COBB: So everyone looking.

COBB: At you knows you're the CDF. And that's exactly what.

COBB: Went rippling through this crowd of.

COBB: People. Yes, it's the CDO. And the next thing I know, they're like rats leaving a sinking ship. They're just all dispersing and going, you know, wherever. And I'm thinking. Holy moly.

COBB: I don't know what I'd have done if any one of them had turned and said, What are you going to do about it? Because it was just me. But it was just, you know, that that authority of.

JONES: We've just lost all power.

COBB: Oh, well, but. I mean, the lights still work. And so it's not power in the building.

JONES: But when you say the light.

COBB: This one here. You know that. Lights on. Well, that lights on.

JONES: So that's all that's on a battery.

COBB: Oh, well. But my light over there is on to so. So it's it's got to be something.

JONES: I'm going to unplug it over here. Okay. Plug it in somewhere else.

COBB: Well, there's a plug in right behind your chair over here. And like I said, the the printer is still got a light on it, so the printer is still on. Okay. Yeah, we.

COBB: Probably needed a break and.

JONES: Have a good break. Okay, we still have juice and we are recording. Okay, So I where we left off is essentially where you're still back in Millington as an instructor. As an instructor. So take it up.

COBB: Okay. So like, it like I was saying to just the, you know, the the the power and authority you had, you know, that that command structure and command hierarchy of. Being the command duty officer. You know, it just it was it was incredible that and there again, it's part of, you know, that indoctrination you get from boot camp on about, you know, taking orders and people in positions of authority and set not working. Yeah. Okay. And so so you know, not to abuse it or anything, but it was just it just it kind of blew me away that once they realized I was the CEO, that they just listened to me and did what they told them to do. And we diverted having any kind of, you know, fistfight or any kind of an altercation and stuff. So but so I enjoyed my time as an instructor. I enjoyed teaching air traffic control when I had gone to college that I my major was education in college. So being a teacher, just.

JONES: How long were you there.

COBB: In Memphis? Three years. Well, a little over three years when you considered the instructor training course. But I was in the command for three years and then I called the nineties, my island hopping decade and 91. I left Memphis as an instructor and went to Bermuda, was stationed out there. And like you said, I had made chief in Memphis when I was there as an instructor and I picked up Chief in 89 and then.

COBB: In 91 I transferred to.

COBB: Bermuda and so I went out to.

JONES: Market. How long were you in the year?

COBB: Two years.

JONES: Tell me a little bit about your in this there.

COBB: I was I was the radar chief and leading chief after bit when after the turnover happened. So I did both things there so I worked in the in the facility itself as an air traffic controller. But then I was also kind of the person in charge of doing emails and managing work schedules and things like that for some of the other folks that were there and also were stood duty as a command duty officer there. The things that I remember from being in Bermuda, it was interesting air traffic control wise because we ran the airport for both the military and the civilian side of the house. So all of the airplanes that came in for Bermuda, for anyone wanting to come to Bermuda United, whatever flew out, Delta flew out and through our air, we controlled the airport as the plane landed. If it was a civilian air carrier, we'd send them off to the left and over to the commercial terminal. And if they were military, they'd come off to the right and into where our hangar and spaces were. But we we managed the air traffic control for the whole island. And so that was interesting to get a chance to talk to air carriers coming in as well as the the planes that were flying in and out of Bermuda for the military. The other thing working radar in the evening, this was generally overnight, more so than during the day, but Bermuda had a radar environment. So we had a you know, a radar antenna and could actually see get a target of the aircraft on our radar scopes and know where they were at. And so New York Oceanic, which controlled the airspace around us, would hand their planes off to us, coming through our airspace so that we could make altitude adjustments for them and then hand them back on the other side of our airspace to a map, whatever altitude they wanted to be at, because New York Oceanic worked in a non radar environment, which a non radar environment is a lot. More in cumbersome than in a radar environment. In a radar environment, because the aircraft were more than, Oh, what was that? The 150, 150? I guess.

COBB: We had to.

COBB: Have five miles or. 5000 feet separation between aircraft, That's a lot different than a non radar environment where in a non radar environment, if somebody wants to make an altitude change, you not only have to protect the altitude they're at, but the altitude they're going to plus all the altitudes in between them and all the way around them because you can't actually see the plane. So you don't know exactly where they're at. You just know what they've reported to you. So you have to you have to have that buffer in case they're not exactly where they said they were, that you don't run another airplane into them. And so in a non radar environment, for an aircraft to make an altitude change in a non radar environment, you're giving away a ton of your airspace until they report level at the new altitude. And then you can go back to just protecting, you know, around them as opposed to protecting three dimensionally around them. And so they would hand them off to do that altitude change with us. And one night I was looking and I figured I had about.

COBB: 3000 lives in my hands.

COBB: But with the air carriers, they were handed off to me to make altitude changes that just, you know, was like, wow, you know.

JONES: It's this is a much, much bigger traffic than the other places.

COBB: Yeah. Well, just more people when you talk about jumbo jets that carry a couple hundred to 300 people aboard them, you know, But there again, it was just we were there, just little blips there, just little dots on my radar screen that I'm just keeping separated and changing altitudes and stuff on them. But that was still interesting to do to where, you know, to to to work that kind of mixture between the military aircraft and the.

JONES: You know, when you mentioned this mix. Okay. And particularly the commercial airliners. This happened prior to you being in Bermuda. But I remember in the late seventies, where then there was the big crash between the two jets in the Internet ferry.

COBB: Oh, yep, Yep. I remember when that happened.

COBB: Yeah.

JONES: Of course. That was an air traffic controller school. Yeah, but that's what I think of when I think when I when you mentioned, you know, in essence being in Bermuda and I think of all these tourists who were coming in those planes carrying 300 people.

COBB: Yeah. So. So but air carriers, I mean, the aircraft, the the big commercial airliners, they're they're pretty much like bus drivers. I mean, they they don't want to do, you know, your little especially working with tactical jets. The tactical jets are the ones that'll do all kinds of the funky, you know, turns and climbs and ascents and stuff. Air carriers, they don't want to do any of that stuff. They don't want to be just nice and, you know, because they don't want to they don't want to have everybody dumping their cookies in the back of the airplane. So they want, you know, nice, smooth turns and nothing and nothing real abrupt changes of any kind, you know. So for the most part, they pretty much get into line and come, you know, come straight in the land. So, yeah, that part wasn't hard, but.

JONES: So in that sense, what you're saying is it's. Easier to direct a commercial airliner to land. They had a military.

COBB: I don't know if I'd say it's easier. It's different. I mean, you know, the a lot of times the jets, they would come into the break and then they would break and, you know, do their fancy little maneuver and come around. F-14s were especially fun to watch coming into the break because when they would come into the break, they'd come in with the swept wing. And then as they would this, they would flip up and start to break. Then they would spread their wings and use them to help slow them down as they came around. So they were just they were just fun to watch. I loved watching F-14s fly. Air Force were awesome to the power on those things. They would actually have flames coming out of the tailpipe on an EF four when they when they climbed out. So it's just it's just different that that one's better or worse than the other, but it's just different. But I bet they enjoyed being able to do that in Bermuda. It was just it was something different to do.

JONES: Enjoyed the challenge of it.

COBB: Yep. Enjoyed the challenge of it. And enjoyed my time. There. There again, to. To live in a foreign country and to experience the culture as a resident there as opposed to just going to Bermuda for a couple of week vacation or a week's vacation. It's different when you're actually living there and interacting with the folks. It was a moment I lived on base when I when I lived there, it was pretty expensive to live off base. And I had a room to myself as a chief petty officer. So living on base was not a big deal. Lived in the barracks with other chiefs. They were a good group to hang around with. In fact, one of the guys that I was stationed there with, he got there just right after I did. We checked in to the station at about the same time, so we went through the indoctrination that the base gave at the same time. And right after he had gotten to Bermuda, he got sent back to D.C. to get a medal. And I can't. To this day, I can't remember which one. I don't know if I looked at the order of precedence chart, if I could figure out which one it was he got. It wasn't the Congressional Medal of Honor, but it was one of them right up near the top of the list. And I saw the citation when he came back to Bermuda with this citation. And basically the citation said, You've done good, kid. Here's your medal. I mean, it didn't go into any specifics or anything, you know. And so he had been a part of some covert ops somewhere. And we went we go to this indoctrination training, and the first thing the skipper did was had us go around telling who we were and where we were attached, you know, where we were going to be working on base and what our job was going to be and gets to Jim. And and Jim is, you know, tell us who he is and he's going to work at Public Works. Well, the skipper evidently recognized his name that he had, you know, had gone back to D.C. right after he had showed up in Bermuda. So he started asking him about going back to D.C. And and Jim is getting more and more uncomfortable as he's sitting there, as he's trying to answer the skipper, but not answer the skipper, because he had flat out told us in the barracks he couldn't talk about where he was and what he had done. And so, you know, he's sitting there getting more and more uncomfortable. Finally, I looked at the skipper and I said, Well, sir, he could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you. And the skipper looked down at German. Jim just kind of shrugged his shoulders, like, Yes, he's kind of got a boy. And I have to give our captain. I mean, no dummy there just like that. I mean, he just stopped, right? Midsentence went right on to the next guy and around and we get out walking back to the barracks and Jim is like, I can't believe you said that to the skipper. Like what? It's the truth. Oh, yeah. But, you know, so that was that was funny. And maybe it was because I dealt with pilots all the time. I mean, I interacted with officers my whole naval career. You know, others in an enlisted ranking might not necessarily have a whole lot of interaction with an officer. They might have, you know, just had a petty officer, chief Petty officer that would. And so maybe they just didn't feel as comfortable. Saying what they thought or whatever. But I, I interacted with pilots all the time. So I was like, you know, I'll set up, tell it like it is, no problem. But. But that was funny. So that was one instance we had there was another time I was the CTO and we had we had aircraft that had come in.

COBB: Off of one of the ships.

COBB: They needed to come in and get fuel. They they were the ship was on its way.

COBB: Had left the United States and.

COBB: Was on its way to the Mediterranean. And the the planes were doing that. They have to do their again, they have to do carrier practices at a shore station before they can actually attempt it on the ship at sea, an aircraft carrier. And then they have to have so many daytime approaches on the ship at sea before they can attempt a nighttime approach. There's, you know, for safety reasons, you know, that the profession that what they're doing. And so they they they had taken off and were doing their their approaches and practice and stuff around the ship as they were, you know, headed out to the Mediterranean. And then they had something happen on the deck of the ship. So they were holding initially, but then they needed gas, so they diverted them in to Bermuda to get gas. And so they were there in Bermuda. And we had I think we had four or five planes on the ground from the ship, and they were in communications with the ship as to what the status was of the flight deck for them to be able to come back. Well, what was happening is it was getting closer and closer to sunset. And once it hit Sunset, I don't know if all of them fell into that category, but at least several of them in the group that was there in Bermuda didn't have enough daytime traps in order to make a nighttime trip. So once Sunset hit, they were done until they break the next day. And so they ended up having to spend the night in Bermuda. Well, they hadn't intended to be any place but the ship. So they had their dog tags, but they didn't have their wallets. Their wallets were all locked up in their safes on board the ship. So they have no money. They've got no ID to be in a foreign country, and they're stuck. And so I knew the planes were there to get fuel and stuff initially, and I was doing other stuff as the CEO. So weekend it was a Saturday and so I hadn't gone over. I also knew who was on duty that day and they trusted the individual that was on duty at the terminal, that if she needed anything, she would get a hold of me as the CDF. And so, you know, finally, after I had taken care of all the other stuff I was doing as my part of my regular duties, I thought, well, you know, I wander over to the terminal and see what's going on. It's like I'm walking into the terminal and they're getting all decked out. I mean, anyone that sees, you know, should the CDR, because you got your badge.

COBB: And all this junk.

COBB: On and so like, I'm walking inches. Oh, I was wondering who the CDR was that they weren't bucking the daylights out of me over here. So they I knew you had it. If you needed anything, you'd give me a call. And so I stuck. And there was a lieutenant commander there, and he was the senior guy. The rest of them were lieutenants or jags that were in the contingent that was stuck in Bermuda. And they'd been on the phone talking to the barracks and getting the runaround at the barracks of them, not having any spaces in the officers barracks for them to spend the night. And they were going to have to go out in town. And this lieutenant commander standing there going, We can't go out down. We don't have any ID, We can't end up in a foreign country. Hello, We don't have any money. We get into a foreign country. So I looked at the commander, like I said to him, I said, No problem, sir. I said, I can't guarantee where you'll sleep. I said, But I do guarantee you will all have a bed to sleep. I said, You may end up in an enlisted barracks. They said, You will have a bed. I just can't tell you where it'll be. And he says, Hey, we don't care. They need to get some sleep because they have to take off as soon as daybreak hits. So that or actually they took off before daybreak so that they would be at the ship after daybreak till, you know, make a daytime trap. And the ship actually had to sail. It could only hold its position off the coast of Bermuda until, I mean, they sailed. So not only were they having to go to the ship and land after getting some sleep, but they were also having to fly to catch the ship because in order to meet its scaling in its deployment schedule, it had to sailor. It wouldn't have been in the Med when it was supposed to have been. So. And I said that I will get you guys something to eat, too, because there again, they were they were packed. They were digging through the bottoms of their pockets in their flight suits to see if they could come up with enough change that they could split a soda out of the soda machine there in the terminal. So I called the galley and one of the guys that worked in the galley lived in the barracks with me. And I said, you know, we've got these guys here. We need to feed them. He said, Well, you know, I we don't have a lot available. He said, I can get I can do, you know, eggs and bacon and stuff. I said, That'll be fine. I said, They'll be over in a little bit to get something to eat. So we'll work that out. I told the commander, I said, Come with me. We'll go to the barracks, get you guys set up. I said, You can have my duty bunk room. I live.

COBB: On base so you can have the CDR bunk room in the old and the.

COBB: Old barracks being the senior guy. I said, the rest of them. I'm not sure where we'll put them, but we'll find a place. So we actually put them in. They actually did get officers berthing. I think we put them in the berthing for the P-3 guys because so we didn't have a P-3 squadron on board at that particular moment. So we gave them the I gave them their spaces, but I was still getting the runaround from the second class over there. And I said, Well, you call your chief and ask him. I said, And if that doesn't work, I'll call the XO. Yes, that's who I worked for. And then he was he was like, Well, okay, So we got we got rooms for them to spend the night and got them something to eat so they could take off and catch their ship the next day. But that was and then when I was debriefing the XO the next morning I was telling him, I said, they said, Sir, I said, we put them up in the the transient barracks. I said, that was the best we could do. I said it was that or enlisted barracks. And he said, No, that's fine, Chief, you did good. And I said, the the commander, the lieutenant commander was the senior guy. And they said, and he he got the co bunk room in the back room. So that's I live on base and he's like, Good job. Yeah. So but that was interesting. One of the other things that Bermuda that I encountered was Bermuda. You know, they talk about the Bermuda Triangle. I know where the Bermuda Triangle exists. It was called Bermuda. They lost everything I sent down to them at least once. I got to the point where honest to God, too, to keep track of what I sent down there to study is personnel support, detachment. I would make copies of the paperwork that I was sending down there to them. And then when we take it down, we would hand take it down rather than interdepartmental it, because then they could claim they never received it. We'd take it down there in person and then I'd make them sign my copy that they had received that paperwork so that at least when they claim they lost it, I can say, Well, I gave it to Petty Officer So-and-so. And one of the things is I had one of my individuals was re-enlisting and he was getting a re-enlistment bonus and he wanted to re-enlist. His request for the skipper is he wanted to re-enlist aboard the SS T That was while the Concorde was still flying, and we had one that flew through that often, but like once a month or so, it would come through Bermuda and had coordinated it that he could do his re-enlistment.

COBB: Aboard the Concorde.

COBB: And it was going to be on a Saturday. It was when they were coming through. Well, he was getting a re-enlistment bonus. So I called. I had been doing and following up on the paperwork all along. But then the week of the re-enlistment, I called on Monday to see when I could come pick up his his check, when they'd have it ready so that we'd have it on Saturday when he re-enlisted. Well, then they.

COBB: Denied all knowledge of the paperwork.

COBB: So I made I called the lieutenant that was in charge of PTSD to complain. Well, right away she starts back in her people about, you know, that we needed to do this stuff in advance. And I pulled the folder out of the paperwork that I had in my my phone line because I kept track of whoever I talked to and what we talked about and stuff. And so I'm I'm reading through this stuff. And I said, well, on such and such a day, I talked to so-and-so and we and they told me this. And then on such and such a day, I talked to so-and-so and they told me this. And then, you know, and about the fourth or fifth one that I'm reading off of my sheet. She's like, Chief, how do you remember that? I said, Ma'am, I don't remember that. I write it down. I said, I have trouble with the folks down there. If you lose and everything, I send down there to them. I said, So now I've started taking notes and keeping track, I said, And and the paperwork was given to Petty Officer So-and-so, and they signed my copy and she says, Can I see that? I said, Sure, no problem. I'll bring you copies of all this. So I made copies of everything I had in my folder for the evolution. I took it down there and then I made her sign for it just because I could. And we had the check on Friday for the reenlistment on Saturday. And I wonder, I doubt seriously whether that would have happened if I hadn't kept track. But I learned I learned early on, you know, just keep a record. And that has I used that in my post military career of telling people, you know, keep keep track of, you know, keep a written record of stuff because it's really hard for somebody to argue when you can give them dates, times and names of who you talk to and what was said after the fact. So. But Bermuda. Bermuda was an interesting duty station. I enjoyed my time in Bermuda, and then I left Bermuda and went to Diego Garcia, which is an island in the Indian Ocean. And if you want to find Diego, where India comes to a point down at the bottom of the country, lay a ruler right through the center of that point at the bottom of India and down across the equator. And as soon as you cross the equator, start looking for a little island group called the Chagos Archipelagos.

JONES: And I have done that in anticipation of today.

COBB: And Diego Garcia is one of the islands in the Chagos Archipelago. It's owned by it's a part of the British Indian Ocean Territories bio. So it's a British controlled island and the Navy is just there, you know, running the airfield there. Again, we ran the air traffic control facility that was there on the island. It's an interesting place to be station, because it's pretty temperate. I mean, we're just south of the equator, so it's pretty mild temperatures. It rains just about every day somewhere because you're not far off the equator, pretty warm. So we spend a lot of time at the beach or doing outside type, you know, fun activities. The department head has several things. Morale, Welfare and Recreation Department.

COBB: Has.

COBB: Plenty of. They've got a gymnasium, they've got a pool. They they show movies. They they do. There's a little miniature golf course that you can play. They have boats where they'll take people out in deep sea fishing and that, you know, do that. There's opportunities to do some hiking to the other side of the island. That's the island is about 26 miles long. And the containment areas are all down probably in about the first seven or eight miles. And then beyond that is just kind of open. There's like an antenna and maybe some public works stuff over on that island, on that side of the island. But not a lot of the the majority of the activity is down at the one end of the island where the buildings and stuff are. But so, you know, you do that. You kind of make your own fun because you're you're kind of a captive audience on this island where you can't go anywhere. You're there for a year. And for the most part, you.

JONES: Know how long you were there.

COBB: Yeah, let's say your tours of duty, unaccompanied tour of duty. I did actually have the opportunity while I was stationed aboard her to go to make a trip off the island I went to I attended an air traffic control conference. It was an Indian Ocean air traffic control conference that I attended in Perth, Australia. The that conference, they alternate where it's been. Hosted. Of the different entities that are a part of the Indian Ocean air traffic control community. So it will alternate what country is hosting the conference. But the year I was on the island, we happened to be in Perth, Australia, and the American delegation to that conference. We had an individual out of FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C., was the lead delegate in our contingent, and then we had the individual that was the Pacific Fleet that kind of oversaw in the Pacific fleet. The military was a military liaison in the Pacific fleet out of Hawaii. He was stationed in there, lived in Hawaii and worked out of Hawaii, and then me as.

JONES: Quite the network opportunity for you.

COBB: Yeah. And then me as the user, the primary user of the, you know, the American services in the Indian Ocean. And when I got back, my skipper, because it cost I mean, it cost a bunch of money to send me to Perth, Australia for a week that the Navy had to foot the bill for. And he asked if it was worthwhile. And I said, Oh, yes, sir. Because one of the things that they tried to do and and there again, I haven't kept up on politics to know where things stand out there because, you know, I'm not out there anymore. But at the time I was there, Mauritius was trying to claim Diego is as a part of their territory, as a part of their airspace and their control. And to do that, to establish that right or sovereignty. They wanted every airplane that took off or landed in Diego that we would call Mauritius and let them know. Well, the telecom system that was out there, it was like $4 a minute. For those four phone calls from through the telecom system, the number of airplanes that we had landing and taking off out of Diego over the course of a month, it would have been somewheres. I think at the time I figured it out that it would have been somewhere between 30 and $40,000 a month for us to have called Mauritius because it was a private company that ran the phone service out there to make those phone calls. And so when this came up in the meeting, the lady out of DC, you know, she was kind of the neutral didn't know the guy out of Hawaii. He not only sat on the Indian Ocean Conference, but he also sat on the Pacific Ocean one and he sat on the Northeast. This or the Southwest does. So he was on parts of several different contingents there. And he was looking at making a concession here where he could get something over here. And so he was you know, he was because it was no skin off his nose. If the Navy has to pay out all this money. And so he's you know, he's thinking this is a. He's like, well, yeah, we could you know, we could. And I'm just, like, shaking my head because I know what it's going to cost to do that. And so we took a break and got the three of us together, and she's looking at me and she's like, Why is this not a good idea? And I said, I said, I'm here to tell you the Navy's not going to do it. I said, First of all, it's uncontrolled airspace. We don't have to do it according to any federal rules or international IKO, the International Civil Aeronautics Organization rules. We don't have to do that. I said the concession that I will make that I don't have to, but I will make. I said, Perth is a controlled airspace and we notify by teletype when we have an airplane taking off that's going to be entering their airspace. I said, I will give Mauritius the same consideration that when we have an aircraft taking off, I will notify them by teletype. She said, We can live with that. We went back into the delegation. She said, this is what the US would would do. And there again, I mean, the guys from Mauritius, they weren't stupid. I mean, they went for they went for the gold. But when they had somebody push it back saying it happened, then they knew that they didn't have a leg to stand on, that it wasn't so. So I went back and I told the skipper, I said, Well, yeah, I saved you about a half million dollars this year. Was it worth my trip to Perth?

JONES: Say so.

COBB: So, but that was an interesting experience to spend the week with that delegation in Perth. The work ethic of the folks, you know, predominantly Orientals, being that we were in the Indian Ocean and you know, we had Thailand and Korea and China and you know, Australia was Mauritius or who else was there? Singapore, Hong Kong. But we started we started at 730 in the morning and they would break for a morning break at about 10:00. People maybe went to the bathroom, got something to eat and a cup of tea and came back to the table and went right back to whatever they were talking about or discussing. When we brought, you know, in the United States, we'd have a 15 or 20 minute break and people would be talking about, you know, who won the football game on Sunday, as you know. Oh, no. We we went back to discussing whatever airspace issue we were talking about before we broke. Same thing at lunch. They brought lunch into the room we were in. Everyone would get their sandwich, get what they were going to have for lunch, go back to the table and write back into the discussions. In the afternoon we had afternoon tea and the same thing. They'd get their tea and we'd go back to the table and back in the discussions and we went to like 630 or 7:00 at night. So essentially like 12 hours of nonstop. And we did this all five days of the conference. And the whole time I was sitting there doing this, I mean, our delegation from the United States, we were a part of that. And if you wanted if you wanted to not be blindsided by them saying, well, you're going to do X, Y, and Z, you know, we had to be a part of those discussions. You had to be there. You couldn't just take a break and leave the room and go for a walk for a half hour at lunchtime or whatever. But I was just thinking there had been a mutiny in the United States. If you'd had tried to have done this in a meeting in the United States, there is no way that you would have had people captive audiences for 12 hours. That was incredible to to have just seen and and not not a one of the people at that conference. Even better than I like. That was anything but normal business, you know, standard operating business for them. And so it it was really interesting. Another thing about Diego Garcia. That. Was of interest to me when I was was there is the fact that we had Super Bowl Monday.

JONES: Day.

COBB: Because of the time difference between the island being in the Indian Ocean and here the Super Bowl game happens at like 5:00 in the morning, four or 5:00 in the morning on Monday. So the M-W, our department printed up t shirts that said Super Bowl Monday on them that we could get, and the skipper gave us the day off so we could watch the Super Bowl. And they actually that was one of the few things that with the satellite and stuff that they actually piped in to Bermuda that we could watch it. So that was that was, you know, a little bit of keep in contact with the United States. 1f1 morning I went to breakfast and I'm standing in line and in breakfast and the XO comes up to me and she says, How's the C-5 that ran off the runway last night? It was like, What? I didn't know anything about it because I met breakfast in bed to work yet. So I said, I'm not sure, ma'am. I will find out. So I left. I left the middle of the line for having breakfast and out to, you know, get to a phone. And I call the tower and I, like somebody. Want to tell me about the C five? And they're like, How do you know about that, chief? It's like, Never mind how I know. Just tell me what's going on. Well, you know, I had visions of ac5 in the Drake, you know, because the water is right around. I mean, we're on an island, but it wasn't that serious. Well, it was serious, but it wasn't an airplane off into the water. What had happened is the C-5.

COBB: Has.

COBB: Several. Series of wheels and one set of the wheels went off the runway on the one side. It still was enough to make them a static display for a couple of weeks there in Bermuda while they got a replacement section of that wheel assembly from the United States out there to them and then got it installed so that they could actually take off again, because once that had been over and gotten grass into the mechanism and stuff, they couldn't they couldn't risk not having it go up or down without taking it apart and refurbishing it. So it got stuck in Diego until they could get that done. But I did tell the guys on my my section because I in Diego Garcia, I was actually the air traffic control facility officer. I was actually responsible for the the air traffic control facility out there around the airport. And so I did tell them that they needed to call me and that, well, we didn't want to bother you. I was like, Yeah, bother me. And so after that, you know, occasionally they would call with stuff that they could have waited until the next day to call me. But I never once after that said anything about them calling me in the middle of the night because I figured it was better to hear something. They didn't need to hear the not hear something that I should have heard because, you know, it was kind of embarrassing to be standing there with Dick. So asking about a plane that I knew nothing about. But anyways, we it wasn't I mean, it wasn't totally traumatic to just have one set of its wheels run off on the dirt, even though it did Strand of Mean Diego for a couple of weeks. But and then like I said, I was the facility officer in charge of the airport. We were painting our runway during the year I was out there and that was a civilian contractor. Oh man, what an evolution That was one of the more interesting stories I had. I couldn't tell the people that were actually working on my runway to do or not do anything because that could impact the contract and actually cost the Navy more money. If, you know, if somebody told them to do something that wasn't in the scope of the contract, they could amend the contract. So if I had any issues with the people that were actually out working and operating on my runway, working on my runway, I had to get a hold of my liaison with the Public Works Department who was overseeing that section of the contract, who would then get a hold of his counterpart on the civilian side of the house of the company that had been contracted to do the work, who would then get in touch with the people that were actually on my runway doing the work? And it was an operational runway while.

COBB: All this was happening.

COBB: So the first issue we had with them is I got a call from the tower. They've got people on the runway and they've got a plane inbound and they can't get a hold of the people on the runway. They're not answering the radio. So I get in my vehicle and go out on the runway to where they're at. Well, the reason they're not communicating, saying they have the radio with them out on the runway. They're out on the runway, but they don't have any means of communicating with the control tower. So that was the first thing I had to get a hold of my CB body and say they have to have a radio. Well, the next time we have a problem with them, the same thing. We are not we're not they're not answering us when they're trying to call them and get a hold of them on the runway. Or they did they didn't answer them. But then the guys were coming off the runway and so get sent back out there again. Well, the guy that had the radio wasn't actually out on the runway with them. He was standing he was over by the building. And so when he talked to the tower and they'd want him off the runway, then he was doing one of these kind of numbers to try and get the attention of the guys that were actually out on the runway because they're not in any radio contact. So back with my CB body and say, no, no, they have to be out. And, you know, this is an operational, active runway. We have planes that come in to land on this runway. They have to have somebody with the radio out on the runway so we can talk to them. So we get that. Well, then the next day I'm out there and they're painting the white stripe down the center of my runway. And I'm watching them do this. And I'm thinking, Oh, my God. First thing I had to measured the stripes because they were certain width and length they had to be and they had to go back and fix them several times because they weren't the width and length they were supposed to be. But that day I called my CB buddy up and I said, I'm not even going to try to explain this. I said, Get your butt to the terminal. I'll pick you up in 10 minutes. They said, You got to see this for yourself. So I did it because I had the radio controlled vehicle to get out on the runway. So I went over to the terminal and picked him up, all him out to the runway. And what we're doing is we're watching the guys with the paint machine, running the paint machine down the center of the runway. And there's a guy walking along behind the paint machine and he's throwing something on the top of the paint as he's walking down the the road. We're walking down the runway. And my my CB liaison says, what is he doing? I said, Yeah, that's what I said. He's making my runway retro reflective. Wait. He had a little bag of pearl dust. He had like ten grand worth of pearl dust in this little sack, and he's literally throwing it on to the runway. When they tried mixing it with the paint, their nozzle was too small. It was gumming up the nozzles. So instead of mixing it in the paint, they.

COBB: Were just.

COBB: Throwing it on the top. And so not only was it not adhering to make it really retro reflective white like it was supposed to be, but there was also little sparkles all over the runway from where this pearl dust was landing, you know, being blown around by the the wind. So he could shut them down. That was about the only thing he could do is make them stop. So he just said, you have to stop. You can't do this anymore today. You need to go paint someplace else. So then they they went and painted yellow stripes on the taxiway while he got a hold of the liaison, who then, you know, they had to get a bigger nozzle from the states out there so that they could actually mix the pearl dust into the paint. But they're like, Oh, my God. Yeah. And it was it was one thing after another with the with the contract. I mean, I probably was as familiar with that section of the contract as I was with the 71 10.65, because I was forever reading the contract to see exactly what it said they would do or not do, and then check it to make sure that's exactly what they were doing or not doing out on my runway. And that was I'm sure by the time I left the island, my my liaison with the Public Works department was probably like he probably was so glad when he left the island, but somebody else had that as a headache instead of him because they had him out there on numerous occasions for different things that happened. But that was that was one of the more interesting ones, was when they were making my runway retro reflective light by throwing purple dust on the top of the paint. So but that was that was my experience. Diego Garcia.

JONES: Okay. Then you went to Alaska.

COBB: Then I went to attack Alaska about that. So I went from where? It's tropical rain. We were right off the equator to an island in the Aleutian chain. And I learned a new term when I got to ADX. So now I've been in the Navy. I went to attack in 94, and I joined the Navy in 76. So I've been in the Navy now, what, 16 years? 17 years. And I learned a new term, Sunshine, liberty, justice. I had never heard that before. I got to attack Alaska. And the the chief that I was relieving came to pick me up that morning to go to breakfast and said, well, we've got you know, what we had planned out, the things we were going to do for the turnover so that they could leave the island when they were scheduled to and said, well, we'll go take care of whatever X and Y, and then we have Sunshine Liberty. And I looked and I said, Sunshine, Liberty. What? Sunshine, Liberty. And she said, The sunshine. And we have the day off. I said, You're kidding, right? And she said, No. So seriously, the skipper is giving everybody the day off because the sunshine. She says, Wait until you've been here a while. She said, This doesn't happen very often, like almost never. So take advantage of it. And she was absolutely right. I think that may have been the only day where it was actually a clear blue, sunny day that it wasn't at least partially cloudy. Most of the time it was totally overcast. During the time I was out on it. But so, yeah, we had the day off because the sun was shining.

JONES: How long were you on the island?

COBB: A year was a year. It was an unaccompanied. By the time I got there in the early nineties, mid nineties when I went up there, they were in the process of closing it down and so they had removed all the dependents off the island. It was an unaccompanied tour at that point in time. So it was, it was only a year, a year tour of duty unaccompanied for anybody up there. We didn't have any, I mean, all of all of the stuff that had been around when the dependents were there. Schools, McDonald's.

JONES: Yeah, I know this stuff. Without searching it that it closed in 97.

COBB: Yeah, officially closed completely in 97. So they were in the process of doing that when I was up there. And so they had removed all the dependents off the island and, and. But anyways, that was an interesting tour of duty because they had taken the dependents off as.

COBB: A chief Petty officer.

COBB: I actually lived in base housing. So rather than living in a barracks room, I actually got to live in a townhouse with another chief. She was a career counselor on the island, and her and I shared a townhouse together there. So that that was nice to have our own, you know, to have our own home and kitchen and living room and and stuff as opposed to sharing a barracks like I did. Well, Diego, I was in the chief's barracks and in Bermuda was in the chief's barracks. So, you know, we had a lounge and a kitchen area. But you shared it with everyone else that lived in the barracks with you. So it was nice to go to just two of us sharing a space. And because we were there by ourselves, we kind of made our own fun. You could do some hiking hike to the other side of the island, which was just absolutely beautiful over there. Get to see some caribou that were on the island along with we had tons of eagles out there on the island, but there was another, you know, battle. It's not like you could go downtown shopping or to a museum or concert or anything. It wasn't. And so we made our own our own fun. So I remember somebody had all of the Star Wars movies. So we did a Star Wars marathon where we all where we all got together at somebody's house and made up a bowl of chili or, you know, and then we sat and watched all the Star Trek movies or all the Star Wars movies from, you know, the first one to the last one. Another time we did a Disney marathon where, you know, somebody had a bunch of Disney. Tapes and we watched different Disney movies, one right after the other, and just and we'd get together and play cards or things like that stuff to entertain ourselves. That was that was interesting. One of the things that I'm really proud of my time in tech is the year that I was there. Never once did we have to turn an airplane back to Anchorage because our runway wasn't ready for it to come in and land. And I was responsible for there again, I was the air traffic control facility officer. So I ran the airport of making sure that the runway was cleared after a snowstorm for our airplanes coming in and out. We turned airplanes back because the weather didn't cooperate. And they get to coming up on a point of safe return and the weather wouldn't be good enough for them to continue that. They would turn around and go back to Anchorage. But we never turned them around because we didn't have a runway they could land on. I remember one time it wasn't very pretty. We had the plane coming in from Anchorage and it had snowed overnight. And so the next day they were clearing the runway and I went out. The Seabees were the ones that actually ran the big equipment, the equipment operators, and cleared the runway. And they went out and I told them, I said, I want you to clear here first and then over here and then over here. And they're like, No, we're going to start over here because the wind's blowing. And they said, No, you're going to start here. We need to have the runway open. You're going to clear this stretch right here. And then if you get that, when they get done with that, then we'll clear over here and and whatever. We got the runway cleared off enough that the plane could land, but the the taxiway hadn't been cleared to the terminal. So we actually made a path so we could get a bus out to the airplane and could take the people off the airplane on the runway, brought the fuel truck out to fuel up the plane on the runway rather than on the tarmac in front of the terminal. And then they just turned around and taxied back down the runway and turned around and took off again when they were all done. And we'd loaded up and traded people. But, I mean, the runway the runway was open that we could land the plane. There wasn't much else that was ready to go, but they could at least land a plane on the runway. And like you said, I was I was pretty I was pretty proud of of my accomplishment for the year that we could was able to say that we never turned a plane back because our runway wasn't ready to take off when they got there. And those were just some of the things that we had to deal with. And then just like happened that I ended up in Tulley, Greenland, we had and I think it was I think it was a P-3 squadron that wanted to come up and do some operational stuff up, you know, outside of EC and the same thing. They wanted us to stay open later so that when they got done with whatever they were doing, they could come back in and land at a deck. And so the ops officer calls me into his office and said he'd gotten this message, They're coming up to do this. And, you know, and for us, I said, we can't. And he said, What do you mean you can't? I said, I don't have enough controllers. We can't do that. He said, Well, you know, what do you need to do in order to make it happen? I said, Sir, we don't have enough controllers. We, according to FAA regulations, we can't stay open that late. We won't give people enough time off between watch sections and enough. You know, they have to work too many hours in a row without a break. I said that's violation of FAA rules and regulations. And they took them. I took up the fires and showed them in black and white, where it's a he says, well, you know, chief, what do you need in you know, what do we need to do in order to support this? I said, I need two journeyman level controllers. So I got to journeyman level controllers off of a ship out of San Diego that was in homeport in San Diego. They sent them up to me for that three weeks for whatever it was. So basically the same thing I had done going to Tulley, Greenland. We had guys out of air pack come up and spend the month with us.

JONES: When How long were you in Greenland?

COBB: Just a month. Okay, that was. We didn't talk about that, did we? Didn't mention that. That was when I was stationed. And they all support for Antarctica. The same thing. The National Science Foundation wanted to work with the. Well, I did talk about being in Greenland because I talked about the Air Force being compartmentalized with their controllers. So but that was why I was. Up there was the National Science Foundation wanted to do work out on the ice shelf, and they wanted to lead a stay open beyond their normal hours. And Tulley said they couldn't do it for the same reason I said we couldn't do it. And that is because it would have violated FAA rules and regulations for the amount of time off, the amount of time somebody can work in a single period without time off, and then the amount of time off they needed to have between times of working, we would have violated that to have stayed open beyond our normal hours. We didn't have the personnel to have the required number of people on position and then to stay open beyond those hours. And so by getting two extra controllers, then we could supplement our crews and be able to do that. Okay. And that happened in 80, too.

JONES: So then after Alaska, did you go from that to the Nimitz?

COBB: Yep. But I first went back to Memphis for an advanced school. C school. They called it Cat C carrier air traffic control course. And so I went back to see a little bit about carrier air traffic control operations. And then that school was only so I think that was only like three or four weeks long if that. Yeah, I think it was probably about three or four weeks long. Then I went, then I went to the Nimitz. Checked aboard the Nimitz, and I got there. Oh, like probably the end of July. August timeframe.

JONES: And you're.

COBB: 95.

JONES: Okay.

COBB: Ad break. We stop and think about that. 1995. Okay. And in September, one of our first classes made chief, we were authorized to seventh in my division, and I was the second E7 when I checked a board there, the end of July or August timeframe. And then Mike made chief in September select Amos three And in the air traffic control rating, we have individuals that are senior militarily, but then we also have professional calls. And within the air traffic control facility, the professional calls Trump the military calls. When I was stationed at Oceana as a first class, I was a facility watch supervisor and in charge of the whole air traffic control facility. And I had a chief that worked for me that was he was actually our tower supe, but he hadn't trained down in radar, so he was on a facility watch to prepare the better facility, watch soup. As the senior of the two of us, he'd been the facility, watch supe, and I'd have been just the approach controller. But because he hadn't trained in radar yet, I don't know if it was because he hadn't been there that long. Or maybe he just didn't like radar. I don't know. But all I know is that he worked for me professionally, that militarily he could go, you know, as a first class. He could tell me to go clean a toilet someplace, and I'd have to do that militarily. But professionally, he had you know, I was in charge of the airfield and the same thing happened on board the ship. I was actually the senior of the three sevens we had on board. I was the senior one. Tom was in the middle and then Mike was the junior, having just been advanced to chief there in September. But professionally it was just exactly the opposite. Mike was the senior one. Professionally, he held the most quals, Tom held the second most, and I held the least amount because I had just checked the board the ship. So and that was that was something that I dealt with my entire military career. The difference between the professional class and the military hierarchy of the, you know, of the rating. So there were certain times when one trumped the other and when it was came to working on a position, the professional calls always trumped the military ones. So I was in the training pipeline to be to be trained and working on my quals. I've gotten trained in the bass up section of it, Pride flag in the prime, they call it over there. But anyways, I was qualified in the one section and was working on quals. I had been working departure and final in in the other room and we did a practice course and our is an operational readiness. Safety evaluation. Oh. RC And we did a practice one and the ship failed mainly with material condition because she was we had one deployment, we had the deployment we were on and then one more and then she was going into the yards for core overhaul there in the mid to late nineties, she went in to Newport News for Corps overhaul and so they had let some of the stuff slide knowing that it was going into the yards to be reworked completely. So we had this practice course and they failed it and the skipper got his department heads together and said, Read my lips, I will not have that on my record. You'll do whatever you need to do to get us up to compliance so that we pass this evaluation when we get the the honest to God real one. So their answer to that was they put together a Tiger team and they pulled individuals out of all of the ship's company departments to man the to to comprise this team and people being what they are. You know they sent their four sailors out of every division to that team. And if you believe that, I'll sell you grassland in Antarctica. I got everybody nobody wanted and then they needed a chief to be in charge of this team. Well, of all the departments on board the ship, my department was the one that had one too many chiefs. We were authorized two. We now had three because Mike had made chief onboard the ship. So that so said to my division officer, you're going to have to give up one of your chiefs. Well, and everyone, when I, when I got assigned to the Tiger team, everyone said, Oh, who would you take off? I said, I didn't take anybody off. I said I had done exactly the same thing the lieutenant did. I said, I my last two commands, I was the facility officer. I said I would have done exactly the same thing he did when he looked at us. I was the senior one militarily, but I was the junior one professionally. The professional Qualls top the military calls and my rating. So he kept his two senior controllers and gave up the one with the least amount of calls. So he sent me to be the I actually had to go to the reactor department to be in charge of this Tiger team. I had I think there was probably 20 some people on this team. They divided them into a couple of different groups and we'd send one down into main machinery, room one and the other ones went to Main Machinery Room two. And mainly what they were doing was scraping rust, cleaning and painting surfaces to, like I said, material condition repairs. They had other folks doing some other maintenance and stuff that needed to be done that had, you know, were discrepancies on the orders. But my team was predominantly doing material condition issues and that was, you know, at the end of my career. So, you know, like that my 20 year mark of my time in the Navy, and that's the first time in my entire career I ever put a sailor on report. I mean, I wrote up pilots when they did something they should know, but I had never put a one of my work teammates on a report until onboard the Nimitz. I had a young man because, like I said, I got all the four sailors from all the divisions, that he was never where he was supposed to be. I was always having to look for him. He was never doing what he was supposed to be doing. If he was supposed to be painting or cleaning, he'd be screwing, messing around with somebody, just talking to somebody or, you know, wandering around looking at stuff, whatever. And the final straw was I came down to the machinery room, the main machine room that he was in. And like I said, we were there doing material condition repairs, were cleaning and painting and repairing, you know, stuff, and found him scraping obscenities into the side of a locker in one of the spaces. That was kind of the last straw. It's like you're down here to get rid of stuff like that, not make more of it. So. So I put him on report and I was like, you said, it was we were attached to the reactor department. So as one of the reactor officers that had to investigate before it went to the skipper and. So he calls me up and says he wants to talk to this airman. And I said, Well, I'm sorry, sir, I just sent them to lunch. He said, Well, that's okay. What time are they coming back? I said, Well, you know, must come back at 1:00. He said, So I'll send them down to see you at 1:00. He said, That'll be fine, Chief, That'll work. So go to lunch. Come back from lunch. Everybody's back from lunch except Airman So-and-so. Anybody seen No Chief? No chief, No chief, said somebody to the BR. They were on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Hello? I mean, now I granted the air traffic and the aircraft carrier Nimitz is a fairly good sized ship, but it's still a ship in the middle of the ocean. It's not like you can take off and go to Tennessee or New York or wherever. So he checked the galley area, the chow hall, and check the berthing compartment, looked around me and other places that he might have gone to the ship store or the post office. You couldn't find him. So I called the lieutenant back and I said, I'm sorry, sir. I know I was supposed to send Airman so-and-so down to see you, sir, but he didn't come back after lunch. And he's like, Chief, isn't that one of the things you put him on report for? Was it you? I said, Yes, sir. He goes, Well, this is going to be a slam dunk, Desolate. Yes, sir.

JONES: At the time, how many women were on the Nimitz?

COBB: Well, actually, there were a few by that point in time, because they.

JONES: Think this is a ship that. 4000 people.

COBB: Yeah. When we're underway, we have almost 6000 people on board. And so in in the grand scheme of things, we probably only had, you know, three or 4% maybe of, you know, the components of the entire ship were female, four chiefs, four E sevens. And above there were, there were 17 of us. We had an 18 person. This was ship's company. This didn't count the squadrons. The squadrons had some too, but. But in ship's company, no one's permanently attached to the Nimitz. We had 17 chiefs. Female chiefs, as opposed to. I think for my male counterparts, there was probably close to 100 male chiefs, maybe even a little more. I think their berthing compartments were like 50 or 60 people. Whereas the 17 of us were in senior enlisted, we were actually and master chief quarters for us as females and our compartment held 18, there was one, but that we didn't have anybody. And so there were 17 of us that shared that that space. And it was probably about the size of this area right here, my living room, because the bunks were stacked. There was one against each wall and then in the center they were back to back to one another. And then, you know, and for the junior enlisted, the same thing. There was probably, you know, two or 300. But like I said, you know, in the when you think about 6000 people on board, the you.

JONES: Know, it was just.

COBB: They were.

COBB: Just.

COBB: Starting to do that because they had just opened combatants up to women, um, probably like 90 to 93. I mean, they'd had women on ships before and they even had women on combatants, but they weren't permanently assigned to the ship. So they were aircrew folks or technicians or people that came out for a short span of time to operate a piece of equipment or whatever. And then they would. But they weren't permanently assigned to those ships. They didn't start doing that until the early nineties. And I was there in 95. I went on board, so I was there in the mid nineties. So it was, you know, that was kind of the first opportunity that I had to be stationed aboard a ship was in about that time that I came up for those orders.

JONES: So it was kind of interesting in the sense that you've been in the Navy for 19 years at this point or close to it, and then it's only at the tail end that you actually spend time on the.

COBB: Ships, can spend time on a ship just because of their again, mainly because of the nature of migrating and what it entailed being an air traffic controller of the ships that you could go to. And to be quite honest. Our c c shore rotation for for both men and women. Now for me, my C rotation was an overseas duty and it was a more isolated overseas duty station than, say, going to Rota, Spain. That would been considered overseas. Diego Garcia would have been considered C duty for me as a because I couldn't go to a ship in the early years for guys that would have been considered an overseas duty, whereas C would have been one of the carriers or one of the ships. But even given that as an air traffic controller, our sea shore rotation was like a three by five. So they did five years of a shore duty station to three years of a a seashore C duty or overseas rotation. That that was just so for me going from Rota to Antarctica, doing, you know, almost three years in Rota and then doing three years. So to have six years of, of quote, sea shore or overseas duty back to back like that was really kind of unheard of in my rating that the norm would have been to have sent me back to ashore stationed in the United States somewhere.

JONES: And then was that literal? It was the limits. Your last station? Yes.

COBB: Yes. By retired on board the Nimitz or retired from the Nimitz. And there again, it was really funny because when I had been in Memphis. Katz High School. I had run into a friend of mine that I had known years ago when I was stationed in naval support for Antarctica, and actually he was talking about getting out or retiring and I was telling him that he shouldn't do it. And then, you know, like a year and a half later I'm doing it. So it's like, you know, what's good for the goose should have been good for the gander. But yeah, I had talked to Grandma, my grandparents, after my mom died when I was 15. My grandparents kind of stepped in and helped my dad with everything because like I said, my little brother was only four at the time. And in talking, my grandfather passed away. My grandfather passed away when I was stationed in Russia. I went to run in January and he passed away in March of 82 and my grandmother lived until she passed away in January of 2000. But in 97 I could tell talking to her that. Her health, she would, you know, was failing. And our ship, we had come off deployment. We were in the yards for four or five months, and then we would be doing one more deployment. And then they were they were going in for a corps overhaul at Newport News and looking at it with the situation at home and us being in the yards. I just put my paper in and everyone's everyone there again, everyone like they told me I couldn't get an SFA out of Rota because it was too far for the Navy to send me. Everyone was telling me they're not going to let you retire. You have to have a minimum of two years on board the ship and I only had like a year and a half, a little over a year, probably like year and eight months, seven months anyways, I thought, well, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. What's worse, they're going to do say no. And I put my papers in to retire. I had, you know, at the time of my retirement, I'd have 21 years of the military. And there again, part of the reason our division had one too many chiefs because Mike had made chief in September. So now here we are, you know, the following summer, and he still had another year to go on his time aboard. I had, you know, couple of years to go in mine. Tom had, you know, like a year and a half to go on his time on board the ship just by the skipper approving my retirement. Our ship was in the arts. You don't need an air traffic controller when the ship is sitting in the arts. I mean, anybody can chip paint. And as a chief, I wouldn't have been shipping pain. I'd have been in charge of a team chipping paint. They don't need my expertise as an air traffic controller sitting in the art by him letting me go when he did and then not due to pull out of the yards until, you know, five months down the road, four months down the road. That gave enough time for the paperwork to make its through way through the system. And when that billet opened up, then on the Nimitz to be replaced with another controller, it opened up to come in as a controller in an E-6 and below billet rather than because then they still had the two chiefs on board with me gone and then it opened up as a Ne6 slot.

JONES: What was your rank at retirement?

COBB: E7 Chief Petty Officer. And so that it was in the the command's best interests to get that additional controller in the lower ranks and not be top heavy. So they approved my retirement and the bureau the bureau was looking at numbers, they were crunching numbers get rid of. And that was one of the reasons that was one of the reasons I put my paper in to retire that last exam cycle for E8. I was I was bored, eligible for E8. And I think I think at that particular exam cycle we had 197 chief.

COBB: Petty officers.

COBB: That were eligible for E8 and out of the 197 they selected six. So I pretty much figured I was in my terminal pay grade anyhow. They would have only let me stay until 24. I would have been mandatorily retired at 24 as an E7, and if I had stayed to 24, I would have missed the last couple of years with my grandmother because she passed in 2000.

JONES: So before we talk about what happened after the military, is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that.

COBB: Can I look at. Can I look at my notes real quick to see if.

JONES: I think we've covered.

COBB: I think we've covered.

JONES: Everything, but I just wanted to give you the chance.

COBB: I'm pretty much. I think I think, you know, all the stuff I was kind of writing down of the different duty stations I was asked at and things that might be of interest. Yeah, I think.

JONES: Okay.

COBB: I think it pretty much covered her a couple of other things I wrote down, but.

COBB: I don't know that the really.

JONES: So the next section is life after the military's.

COBB: Life after the dead. You do? Well, I. I came home and I actually lived with my grandmother for the rest of her life. So I got home I got home before Christmas in 96. And like I said, she passed away in January of 2000. So so I got to spend, you know, three years at home with my grandmother and she needed more and more assistance. So I actually ended up being a caregiver for her. By the by the end of her life, she was pretty much wheelchair bound and needing assistance. But she she was at her in her own house, in her own home that she had lived in pretty much most of her life. The house that and it was the house that my parents lived in when they were first married. And when I was born, my grandmother still lived there. Her her parents had bought the house and moved into it. And I think like 1912, Grandma was about ten years old when they bought the house. And so she lived there and her, you know, her teenage years at the house. And then when she married her, my grandfather, they actually just moved around the corner. They lived in a house around the corner from my grandmother's. And when my great grandfather died and my great grandmother remarried, she sold the house to my grandparents. And so they would have in the thirties would have moved back in there. And then they lived there. She lived there for the rest of her life. The last week of her life, she was in the hospital. She had pneumonia. But other than that, she got to stay at home, which was something she really wanted to do. So by my being there, I was a full time caregiver for her, or I actually shared that duty with my dad and my brother because I worked. I did end up getting a job and working during the day. When I first came home for the first few months, I didn't work. I, I actually volunteered that first summer that I was home from the Navy. So the summer of 97, I volunteered at Old World Wisconsin for the summer. Um. And that was that was fun. I love history. So it was fun to to be there. I was actually there in the spring and again in the fall when the school trips were coming through. And I would be. I wasn't one of the costumed interpreters. They had those on the sites of the different houses and villages that they had there. But when the busses came into the parking lot, I would I would kind of corralled the kids off the bus and then we would put them down on site at the different houses in groups so that it didn't overwhelm the properties. They were going to see that they'd get an opportunity to to see what they could. And so, you know, somebody had to. So I would talk to them. And having done it for a while, I learned some of the things that costumed interpreters would say and talk about. So I would talk about some of that stuff before they actually got down on site and did that. And that was a lot of fun. So I did that for that first summer, but then the end of summer, beginning of fall, I was with my dad and we had gone to the County Veterans Service office over in Elkhorn. He had some business he wanted to take care of over there. He was like I said, he was wounded in France, and so he had a disability rating from the VA and he had paperwork he needed to get over and talked to the CBS so about. And I just went along for the day. I was I along with him. And so while he was in talking with the service officer, I was just sitting in the waiting room. And one of the advertisements that they had on the wall was they were looking for people to work in the DMV. So I thought I could do that. So I put in an application to the state for the DMV, and I got hired to be a worker, counter worker in Port Washington and Hartford. So I still lived with my grandmother in Delaware, and I just drove. I worked. I was permanent part time. So I work Tuesdays and Thursdays in Port Washington and on Wednesdays in Hartford. So I would just drive back and forth every, you know, those three days. And then we would be in Dublin on the weekends. And when I got hired, my brother Marlin, he says, Oh, so you're going to be the grouch behind the counter now? I'm like, Well, I don't think so, but, you know, whatever. And I worked like I said, I worked in Port Washington on Tuesdays and Thursdays and in Hartford on Wednesdays, and I was the only one assigned to those three to those two stations. And then the other people, the examiner and the other counter person would come out of West Bend and they would alternate from the staff they had in West Bend as to who came to work with me in Port Washington or Hartford. And then occasionally when like in the summertime when they were busy or then they were in the winter, then occasionally they would have me pick up extra hours and I'd work Monday and Friday in West Bend. Sometimes both of them, sometimes one or the other, depending on what there were. You know, people want to be on vacation versus road test. They had scheduled whatever that they needed people to work. And one afternoon I was working in West Bend and that was back in the day before they had the number system where you just got a number when you went in and you could sit down until your numbers called. They had the the snake, you know, where they had the counters laid out, where you want your way back and forth, you know, to get to the front of the line. And I was working the counter in West Bend and the guy that came to my counter, I can't remember now what it was he wanted to do, but whatever it was, he he didn't have all the paperwork he needed or his time limit was an update of his suspension or whatever it was. And I was explaining to him what he needed to do and he was calling me everything but a little white girl. He was really upset and angry and yelling and stuff, and he finally snatches up all his paperwork and slams out of the building. And so I took a notepad and I wrote down, you know, because I figured he's going to call and complain. So my supervisor would know what I had done so that I learned that early on, being in Bermuda, you know, you make notes, you keep track of all this stuff, you know, and write it down while it's still fresh in your mind. So I wrote it all down and put it up in the basket to go to my supervisor. And then I called the next person in line up and the guy comes walking up going, Man, nobody wanted to come see, you know, come be the next person you called up. Yeah. And I said, Why do you know that guy? And he says, No. But he says, you know, well, first of all, when he walked up, I said, Good afternoon. How are you doing? And he's like, You can be nice to me after that. And I said, Why do you know that guy? He says, No. But he said, Well, nobody wanted to come up here and talk to you next because we just knew you'd be, you know, it's like whatever. And so, you know, helped him with whatever he needed. But the same I liked working for the DMV, just like I like being an air traffic controller because the days were never the same. You dealt with different issues and different things that were going on. And I always tried, you know, I was always looking for whatever I could do to help them, you know, get from point A to point B, So just like I did as an air traffic controller, you know, what? What things do you need? What steps do you need to do? What can we do to get you to where you want to be? So I was tried to do that, so I enjoyed it. I enjoyed, you know, the time I spent working the DMV was.

JONES: Work for.

COBB: 11 years.

JONES: Okay?

COBB: And I and I ended up going from being a counter person to actually going back through training and becoming an examiner. So I actually did road tests. I actually took people out on the road to do a road test and see whether they were competent to have a driver's license. And in C see, I started in 97 and in 98 I think it was 98 or 99. I transferred a position, opened up in Elkhorn. So I actually ended up moving from port in Hartford down to Alcorn, ended up working in Alcorn, which was, you know, more convenient to write where I live, you know, living in Delavan. So didn't have as long a commute. And then in 2004, I, I got selected as a team leader. And in becoming a team leader, the position that was open was in Sheboygan. So then I ended up going to Sheboygan to work. And moving up there. I was at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention knowing that I was moving to Sheboygan and one of the ladies that was a member of the organization, I knew she lived over there along the lake. And so I said some of that. I said, You live near Sheboygan, don't you? And she says, Well, not exactly. I live in Port Washington. It's about a half hour south of Sheboygan. I said, Well, that's closer than Delavan. I said, you know, where where would be a good place to, you know, an inexpensive hotel or motel that I could get get? Well, I find a place to live up there and being transferred to Sheboygan in July. She says, oh, you're not going to find a place within a hundred miles. I said, Well, a hundred miles and Molly just over 100 miles from Sheboygan to my house. And she said the PGA is happening at Whistling Straits was the first year they did the PGA at Whistling Straits. She said the hotel rooms are all booked solid through the time of the PGA. It was like, oh, rats. And I said, Well, I said, I'll just be driving home. I said, That gets too much of a pitch, a tent, your living room. She said, Well, I don't know about that. And we're standing there where we're at the convention and waiting for stuff to happen, stuff that was going on at the convention. And we're standing there, she says. You know, she says, My dad just passed away in February and my mom's got this big old farmhouse that she lives in. Maybe she'd let you come and stay with her for a couple of weeks. I said, You think she might? She says, I don't know. I can ask her. I said, Okay. So she went home and she asked, you know, talk to her mom. And her mom says, What do you know about her? Well, that much I know her from the VFW. She's, you know, she's our state chaplain. How bad can she be? Thanks to. Thanks, Sue. I like you, too. And so Lorraine was at least willing to meet me. So I went. I went up and met Sue, and we went over to her mom's and met her mom and talked, you know, talk to one another, get a feel for who we are and everything. And her mom says, Well, I'm game if you are. I said, I'm game. You know, I got to see the farmhouse. And it was it was an old farmhouse. But I mean, it wasn't like it was falling down on its ear or anything. It was in good shape and stuff. Nice, nice out nice home that she had there. And so I went to stay with her. And then at lunch time and after work and stuff, I was looking for what apartments and things were available in the Sheboygan area and I hadn't found anything. And then, like Sue had said, her husband had just passed away in February. So that first winter she had always wanted she hated snow, so she would have been a snow bird for years, but she couldn't prior husband out of Wisconsin. So now that he's gone, her and a friend of hers went to Texas for the winter. So they went down and spent three months in Texas. So she asked. She said, You haven't found a place to live yet. She said, Wouldn't you be willing to just put off moving and spend the winter here so the house doesn't sit empty while I'm gone for the winter? So I did that. And I don't know one thing. She came back in the spring and we started going to dinner together and shopping and started, you know, being more than just might be in a tenant or a roommate living there. We actually got to know one another and become friends and companions. And 17 and a half years later, I was her caregiver at the end of her life. So I never did find another place to live in Sheboygan. And I continued to live with Lorraine until she passed away. And that happened in October of 2021. So. But so from 2004 to 2012. And there again, you know, the the evolution. I was talking with my sister one day and something got said about it and she said, well, you went from being a tenant to being an acquaintance to being a friend, to being a companion to being a caregiver. And I was like, Yeah, that is really how that evolution all transpired. And had some good times with Lorraine. She was a she was a very smart lady and she played basketball on a a league. Kind of like the League of Our Own. That movie she was she played basketball like that back. I mean, that was baseball, obviously. But I mean, she played basketball in a league similar to that in the forties and traveled as a as a lady in the forties, a young lady in the forties. She traveled to like Indiana and Ohio and stuff, playing basketball. So really kind of adventuresome and forward for, you know, that timeframe of what was expected of women to do. And then in the fifties, she was a policewoman in Milwaukee.

JONES: Wow.

COBB: So a very interesting lady to that. I got to get to know and spend time with. So I really enjoyed that. But I worked at the DMV until 2008, so from 97 to 2008 and actually, oh, it would have probably been in like 2001 or 2002, I had applied for the job as the Rock County Veteran Service officer and it got down. There were two of us and they chose the other. They chose the other person to be the queen. So. And then in 2008, Sheboygan County, CBS, so retired. And so that position came open. So I applied for the position as the county veteran Service officer in 2008, and then I was the one that was hired. So I spent the next 11 years as a CBS. So for Sheboygan County, and that's probably one of the best jobs I've ever held in my entire life there.

JONES: Is that Sheboygan County Veteran service?

COBB: Yep, Sheboygan County Veteran Service officer. And it is such a rewarding job to help individuals get the benefits they're entitled to from the United States government.

JONES: And you held that job till when?

COBB: Until I retired from them in. 2019. So 11 years, 2000, 8 to 2019.

JONES: Interesting.

COBB: And I mean, it was though I probably worked harder at that job than I did at any other job I held in my entire working career. Bar none. And just so rewarding and loved it more to just to be able to you know, I just I just felt like. Like I should be doing more. But I wish there were more hours in the day or more days in the week to be able to help more people and get what they needed. But it was just a very, very rewarding time frame. And I think I would say that the majority of my fellow CBS shows around the state, the ones that are still working that I worked with and the new ones that have come aboard and the ones that retired while I was working. We probably all pretty much feel the same way. Somebody that goes into the job is thinking it's going to be just another job. They they don't last more than a few months and they go find something else because it is a very it's it's a very emotional job. I understand when you're dealing with livelihoods of people, you know, making making huge differences in their life. One of the stories that I have there was a lady my secretary called, you know, said to pick up the phone, that phone call coming in. And I answered the phone. And this lady on the other end of the phone was literally sobbing on the phone. And when I finally got who it was, you know, I was talking to, I thought she was calling to tell me her husband had died. He was he was a veteran. We had been working, you know, on filing paperwork for disability claim. And he was he had some serious health issues. Had some serious, serious health issues. So I figured he had passed away and I was and I was kind of bummed about that, that, you know, we'd done all this paperwork and stuff and now he's passed away. Oh, no. What she was calling to tell me was they hadn't been it he hadn't been able to work for several months because of his of what was going on with his health. And they had needed assistance and their son was helping them with some of their bills and stuff to help him keep current. He got laid off in the fall, and so he wasn't able to help any longer with mom and dad. They were going to lose their house. This was December. They had to be out of their house by Christmas. And so they they were losing their house because of that bill paid for it. And the reason she was calling that day. I may need a Kleenex.

JONES: Are you.

COBB: Yep, that's right next to me. They had gotten they got two letters from the VA in the mail. One of them was a letter that said their claim had been approved. The second one was the retro check. Their retro check for the disability claim was enough to not only bring their house current so they didn't lose their house at Christmas, but they could pay their son back. So he had money to live on with his family while he was looking for another job. And that's why she was sobbing on the phone because what had. Started out to be the absolute worst Christmas their family was going to have to deal with, with them losing their house and their son out of work turned out to be the best Christmas because and she was just calling to say thank you for the help I had given them and and getting all the paperwork together and filing that claim.

JONES: I could see why. That would be just incredibly gratifying.

COBB: It just and some of the people I mean I one of the individuals that I met, he was a prisoner of war in World War Two. Every time he came into my office, he apologized for bothering me. Yeah. It's like. Jill, you're not a bother.

JONES: Yeah.

COBB: This is not a bother. This is why I'm here. He was just the sweetest little old man. And there again, had some serious health issues from his time incarcerated, because the food they got to eat and stuff. It really did a number on his bone density and other, you know, gastrointestinal issues and stuff that he dealt with. And in later years, because of the deprivation that he suffered in a prisoner of war camp. And so but I mean, just the sweetest little old man. And then they had another another Vietnam vet that had Parkinson's. And he got to the point where he was bedridden. And so I had his folder. I actually had to put that to do a home visit because it just took so much out of him to have to come to my office to see me, that I would go see him and I would just schedule it. Going into work in the morning or going home from work in the afternoon, and that would be me, either my first or my last stop. And then, you know, then we'd go to work, you know, between times. And every time I would go to see him, he'd, you know, he's like, Hey, what's cookin? You want to go dancing? I mean, and he's bedridden, but he just and honest to God, the only reason he was doing any of the paperwork was he wanted to take care of his wife. He knew you know, he knew that he didn't have that much longer, that, you know, he was at the end of his life, that his illness and stuff. But he just wanted to make sure that his wife was taken care of. And initially, he had one doctor that said he had Parkinson's and another that said he had multiple systems. Atrophy was Parkinsonian is say that three times fast. And so the VA denied his claim. But just recently, the last couple of years with the Pact Act that went into effect, they they kind of expanded the definition of, you know, with Agent Orange exposure and Parkinson's and Parkinsonian ism. So I was talking to the the people that in the office there in Sheboygan after I left was I had called about something else. And and Craig says, Oh, I just wanted to tell you, we got the paperwork back. My veteran that had Parkinson's, he's gone, but his wife is still around. And she got she got a substantial check of back payment for because they went back and approved his condition from back when he filed it. So and I, I, I said, oh, he's got to be just dancin in heaven because, like you said, that was the only reason he put himself through the the process, the toll on his body to to to do that work and that paperwork because even just to sit up in bed while he signed paperwork and stuff wore him out because of his health. But he did it to take care of his wife. It just. But like I said, probably one of the best jobs I've ever held. And Wisconsin comes by our motto of being forward as our motto. Honestly, the very first county veteran's service officer in the entire country was Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in the early 1930s.

JONES: I knew that. And, uh.

COBB: It it's, it's incredible, is incredible.

JONES: And we're very proactive in that respect.

COBB: And it's thanks to the American Legion. The American Legion had service officers after World War One, and with the Depression is when they were having a hard time fulfilling their duties to the to the duty they felt they owed their veterans with the resources they had themselves with the depression going on. And so one of the first ones was Leo Pearlman. He went to the county board in Fond du Lac and said, I'm with the Legion. This is what we've been doing. This is what still needs to be done, but we can't afford to do it anymore. Y'all need to come and help alongside and help us. And Father, like I said, you're absolutely right. Well and but anyway, so that that's kind of what I did. And I retired in 2019 and became from 2019 to 2021, I was a full time caregiver for Lorraine until she passed away. And then I my house during all that time. I bought my house in 2001, and so from 2001 to 2021, it was kind of an expensive storage shed for my furniture. I got to visit it on occasion because I lived with Lorraine and and then, like I said, took care of her at the end of her life. I did. After retiring from the Navy, one of the first things I did, I was already a member of the American Legion. I had been a member of the Legion since like 95. I joined that, I think right after I got aboard the Nimitz, somebody hit me up.

COBB: To join the.

COBB: Legion. And then in 97, when I retired and came home, I joined the VFW. One of the one of the nice clubs to go to on a dark island, because, I mean, most everything was closed down. There wasn't a lot available there. But one of the nice places to go was the VFW club that was still open and they still had their presence there on the island. And I wasn't eligible to join. Little did I know. Somebody should have said something. I could have joined the auxiliary, the VFW Auxiliary at the time because my dad was a World War two. Well, Dad and Grandpa both were World War Two vets. But nobody nobody mentioned that. Nobody said that. And I wasn't eligible for the VFW until after I had been aboard the Nimitz while I was on board the Nimitz, we were in the Gulf. We spent actually didn't talk about that. Talk about the on the Nimitz. I didn't write it down on my little piece of paper, but I did a Westpac and we were in the Gulf and they actually pulled us out of the Gulf early to go sit off the coast of Taiwan in 96 so Taiwan could hold our elections without China shooting out of China was doing an. Exercise. Until the Nimitz pulled up on one side of Taiwan and the independents pulled up on the other. And lo and behold, China's exercise was all done. So. But anyways, while while I sat in the Gulf, we were a part of Operation Southern Watch and I earned an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal and that made me eligible for membership in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. So because that had been a good bunch of people to be around and hanging with, when I had been an aide act, I went looking for the VFW and I retired and came back here and there is a Delavan dairy and post for the VFW, which I became a member of. And my dad is a member. My dad was a member of it also. And in that was in 97, they joined the VFW. And in 2003 I became the state chaplain for the VFW. And in 2006 I became the national chaplain for the VFW for the first time. And that is is a tremendous honor to be able to serve the million members of the VFW year.

JONES: Did you become national chairman?

COBB: Chaplain 2006 for the first time, I've been national chaplain three times, three different times. But the first.

COBB: Time I was national.

COBB: Chaplain was 2006 2007.

JONES: And it's national champions for the best.

COBB: Yep. Yep. Nationwide, our national officers. They rotate the the the VFW is divided into what they call a conference system. We have four conferences across the the world because. We have a country, you know, we have European posts over in Europe and the Caribbean and the Philippines. Anyways, we've got four separate conferences that the country, you know, is divided into and our national officers rotate through those conferences. And so every four years, Wisconsin is a part of what they call the Big Ten. There's ten states that are pretty much here in the Midwest that are part of the Big Ten. And every four years, it's our turn to have a chaplain as our national chaplain. It comes out of our comp, you know, out of the Big Ten conference and. I had the opportunity to to serve three different times as our national chaplain. But the first time was 2006. And it was just I mean, it was it was such an incredible honor to be selected. As the individual to represent the the Veterans of Foreign Wars in that capacity. So that's kind of the stuff I've been doing or.

JONES: Anything that we haven't mentioned that you'd like to cover. Hmm.

COBB: I'm sure there'll be a dozen things I'll think of as soon as you pack up and leave. But. For a kid other than anyone that's watching this. If you've ever thought about having doing some military service, regardless of what branch of service or National Guard or Reserves or whatever, I would definitely encourage people to do it. I mean, it's been an incredible experience. The the places I've got to go and see the different people that I've gotten to share their lives and spend time with and get to know it. I wouldn't have done that. I would not have had that opportunity in that experience without the military, without being a part of the military. And I'm sure there are the avenues that you could find that, you know, give you an opportunity to live overseas and stuff like that. So I encourage that because it's it's entirely different to visit a place or to live there.

JONES: Well, sure, sure. I'd like to thank you for your service to our country in the Navy. I'd also like to thank you for saying yes to and agreeing to this interview. And finally, I want to just also talk about the the service, you know, to the VFW and the national office that you hold and commend you for your service to that organization.

COBB: Well, thank you. And the same thing I encourage any any veterans watching this to be a member of whatever organization you're eligible to be a member of. I personally think, you know, we all chose to serve our country when we joined the military. And I really think we still have a place to serve. Getting out of the active duty military by being part of these different veterans organization to help take care of those veterans that maybe aren't in a position. You know, my little veteran that was bedridden with Parkinson's, you know, he wasn't in a position to advocate for himself. He needed somebody to step into that breach and be able to do it for them. And that's what our veterans service organizations do. They step into that breach and help to take care of and provide those services and make sure that our country understands the needs that our veterans have.

JONES: This interview is concluded.

COBB: You cut the tape.

[Interview Ends]