November at Sea

So here I sit on Christmas Morning. . . writing to everyone about some more adventures onboard the Essex! It's not as bad as it sounds though, I'm in my PJ's at 1130 and I got to sleep as long as I wanted. Merry Christmas, right?

Ok, so our November at sea was a long one, and we had only one port call to speak of (Okinawa barely counts), but the highlights were the events at sea that we got to participate in. I'll start with some Pictures of our transit, and then I'll share the big highlights of the month.

Before sunrise from the boat - Yep, that's the moon

Another early morning - - Love those sunrises

The flight deck on USS Stetham was a little smaller than the Essex

Watching some Japanese H-60's land on our deck

Another day in the "D"

Sunset this time

Our bird on an amazing evening

Good looking helo, eh?

First up was KITP. Standing for something along the lines of Korean Incremental Training Program, it's an opportunity for our Marines to conduct trainging and demonstrations with the South Korean Marine Corps and year by year, hand over control of the event and the Korean military forces to the Koreans themselves. It was a pretty high profile event for both countries' militaries, and it gives us a chance to interact with other ships and the Korean forces. We didn't have much of a role for the actual events and demonstrations, but we got to fly into Pohang Airport to transport the Commander US Seventh Fleet around to different ships in the area so he can observe the events from different platforms. We're pretty good taxi drivers, let me tell ya.

The Admiral arriving in style to Korea

Waiting for our passengers at Pohang Airport

Sunset landings by an H-53

Landing operations with the Harriers

Korea's turn to land on LHD-2

The other big event of November (before Hong Kong, of course) was Annual Exercise with the Japanese Navy and the USS George Washington battle group. Most of the event was pretty transparent to us because it involved mostly ship maneuvering and not aviation, but we still we still did plenty of flying since the Marines' helicopters still needed their SAR support. The end of the exercise provided most of the excitement. All of the ships involved formed up for a photo opportunity, Combine that with the Japanese and American aircraft that flew over the top, it made for a pretty awesome scene. We could look right outside at two Japanese subs on one side and the USS Washington on the other. I tried taking a couple of pictures, but they didn't look nearly as good as the "official" ones, so I've borrowed a few of those for the blog.

Japanese Amphibious ship, the GW, the Essex, and a ship I don't recognize

HSL-51's helo's patroling the area. Oh, and a sub.

2 Nations, over 20 ships, one formation - Pretty Cool

The Mighty Duece

VERTREP day - awesome flying

The last stop on the way to our big liberty port (Hong Kong entry next) was Okinawa one more time to drop off the jets and some of the ground Marines. We were only there for a couple of days, but it still gave us just enough time to get off the boat, enjoy some sushi, and get ready for the trip. Not much of a story, but I've got a couple of pictures anyway.

The chef (Yoshi) from our usual Okinawa Sushi Stop (Yoshihachi Sushi)

I love the cone holders!

Det 6 out to dinner