Back in '81 I was with VS-33, We were assigned to CVW-11 aboard the USS America CV-66. We had a west coast airwing and an east coast ship. Back then the east coast and west coast navy did not operate the same. Very similar but not the same.
VS-33 was homeported at NAS North Island in San Diego. Our cruise(deployment) actually lasted from January the 14th..I think..until November the 11th. Actually the first part of our cruise was about 6 weeks of carrier quals ref-tra(refersher training) and ORE(Operational readiness inspection). We did get to go home to san diego for two weeks after this pain.
We left NASNI to fly to Norfolk Via USN C-9 on a nice January day. When we arrived at Norfolk we were promptly placed on buses and driven to CV-66. My first impression of CV-66 was that it was very dirty. Filthy in fact. We found out how much a little later. So we wound or way to the berthing and then proceeded to the mess decks for a "special meal" for the air wing..Those fine, fine cooks on the America had prepared in their haste some chili mac, soup hot dogs and such.
Anywho myself and two other shipmates from VS-33 sat down to eat all the while discussing if we had liberty that evening. As we were eating a cockroach fell out of the overhead on to AO2 JC tray of food. He was hungry mind you..he just flicked the cockroach out of the way and continued to grub down..yikes and gadzooks!
Turned out the ship had cockroaches everywhere. Why? Because those lazy messcranks use to store garbage in an empty berthing compartment instead of depositing the garbage in the dumpsters on the pier when the ship was in the Portsmouth shipyard. Disgusting.
