Dear Folks, I received a late night email a few minutes ago and at this time of night emails tend to be junk mail. Nonetheless the subject line caught my attention. It said, "Old Oakland NAS VP872 Sailor." Whoa, wait a minute, he was talking my language!! I opened up the email and he said, " I was an AO 1956 to the move to Alameda. You still around ? Stan Alsing." Now what that means in civilian language is that he was an Aviation Ordnance Mate attached to the squadron VP872 and that he was stationed at NAS Oakland up until it was disestablished in 1960. The reserve contingent was then moved to NAS Alameda. In spite of my eyes being almost "blunked" out because of my intense work on my book, I immediately responded to him, "Oh my goodness, an AO who actually went through that move to Alameda! I can't say that I remember you but I sure do remember being stationed at NAS Oakland from 1955 to 1960. Yes, I'm still around at the age of 73 (gasp!) but let me get back with you tomorrow so that we can swap sea stories. Oh yes, VP 872. Have I got a couple of stories about the P2Vs when I was stationed there. Shipmates forever! What caused him to contact me was that a number of years ago I was surfing the net hoping to find someone who might remember me from my Navy days. I found a Navy VP squadron site and left a message regarding my having served at NAS Oakland and remembering the VP squadrons that were based there. Tonight I received Stan's email tonight, the first one I had ever received from that site. The stories I want to tell him about the P2Vs that his squadron flew was the one about my sitting in the nose cone of one upon landing at night and the other one about realizing that a P2V had crashed on take off on our runway. Yes, Stan, we have a lot of sea stories to swap! vee