Navy Gallery

USS Saratoga "Super Sara"

One of my favorite things to do was hop a helo for a couple hours, and have a chance to do some aerial photos.  It was as close to being away from the ship as you can get, without being in port.  I flew missions to do aerial recon photos of Soviet warships whenever they were in the neighborhood; the color photos I took supplemented the black & white images taken by the recon aircraft, and were useful in assessing the maintenance condition of the target.  Soviet ships tended to go quite awhile between paint jobs, and it really showed on some of them.  The Soviets didn't get the port visits that we did, and they had places where they would anchor together in open sea and do what maintenance they could there.  In this photo, aircraft are spotted at all four catapults, waiting for the signal to begin flight ops.  At least, thats what it's supposed to look like, as this is a 'posed' pic, with the flight deck set up neat and pretty for the official ship's portraits I was taking that day.  Usually, there would be people all over the bow, and the little yellow tow trucks would be scattered about. 

Camera: Bronica ETRsi, 135mm lens, VPS film

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