Tag Archives: mad foxes

Mad Fox Buzzing Moscow

Posted on by Leave a comment

A Cold War classic!

Official caption: “4 March 1970. U.S. Navy anti-submarine warfare aircraft P-3A Orion, from the “Mad Foxes” of Patrol Squadron FIVE (VP-5), she flies in the vicinity of the Soviet helicopter carrier ship Moskva (841). The number designation roughly fits with the date of this photograph. She was primarily an anti-submarine warfare ship.”

Photographed by PHC Daniels S. Dodd, National Archives photograph: USN 1143794. NHHC Photograph Collection, L-File, Aviation, P-3.

Dubbed a helicopter cruiser (kreyser-vertolotonosets) in Russian service, Moskova, Soviet designation Project 1123 Kondor, was the country’s first operational aircraft carrier. Commissioned Christmas Day 1967, the 15,000-ton flattop could carry as many as 18 helicopters in addition to a pretty significant battery of ASW and air defense weapons. She outlived her only completed sister (Leningrad) and was kept in service until 1996. Following the end of the Cold War, she was quietly retired and scrapped without ceremony.

Meanwhile, VP-5, founded in 1937, is still around, now flying the P-8A Poseidon. Their motto is “No Fox Like a Mad Fox!”

Real world castaways found by the Mad Foxes

Posted on by Leave a comment

News From 7th Fleet:

Two men wave life jackets and look on as a U.S. Navy P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft

That’s pretty good resolution from a P-8…(U.S. Navy photo by Ensign John Knight/Released)

Two men wave life jackets and look on as a U.S. Navy P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft, Madfox 807, discovers them on the uninhabited island of Fanadik. Three days earlier, the three’s 19-foot skiff capsized after setting out to sea from Pulap, FSM. The P-8A, attached to Patrol Squadron (VP) 5, and operating from Misawa, Japan, responded to a call for assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard and located the men as they waved life jackets and stood next to a large “help” sign made of palm leaves.

The men reported their vessel was capsized by a large wave a few hours after their departure on April 4, and spent the night swimming until they arrived at Fanadik Island, approximately four nautical miles from Pulap. A small boat from Pulap recovered the men from the island with no reported injuries.

(U.S. Navy photo by Ensign John Knight/Released)

(U.S. Navy photo by Ensign John Knight/Released)

It’s far from VP-5s first far-off rescue. The Navy’s second oldest VP squadron, the Mad Foxes were stood up in 1937 and made fame in the “Kiska Blitz” during which their aviators nursed PM-1s through thick Alaskan fog to plaster the Japanese in the Aleutians while keeping an eye peeled for lost P-40 and B-17 crews.

Switching to PV-2 Harpoons the PV-2 Neptunes after the war, they helped pluck one of America’s first astronauts, Commander Alan Shepard, Jr, from the drink, then helped quarantine Cuba. Switching to the P-3 Orion they provided night radar coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin in defense of USN aircraft carriers and went back to the Atlantic to finish the Cold War, even babysitting a stricken Soviet Yankee class sub in 1986.

They switched to the P-8A Poseidon in 2013.

VP-5-photo_logo