CHERRY POINT � More than 40 years ago, Jack Metrock took his last ride in an EA-6A Intruder as he headed back from Vietnam.
The 69-year-old retired Marine got another flight, of sorts, recently when he took a ride in an EA-6B Prowler simulator at his old home base at Cherry Point air station.
Metrock was an electronic countermeasures officer with Marine Composite Reconnaissance Squadron 1 and had been trained at Cherry Point at VMCJ-2. His training then and the training today�s pilots receive is worlds apart, he said.
Metrock said technicians would remove units from the cockpit and teach pilots the operations.
�They would take the boxes out and put them on a workbench and teach you how to use it,� he said.
Part of the job of an ECMO was to detect and identify the unique sound of a particular type of radar.
While today�s simulators create the various radar signatures for the ECMO, in the 1960s Metrock�s training included listening for the real thing.
The EA-6A had a pilot and an ECMO, but the EA-6B has a pilot and three ECMOs.
Metrock had a chance to sit in the back seat where the 3 and 4 positions are in the EA-6B training simulator but wasn�t able to see the unit turned on because it is classified.
�I wish I could see what the ECMOs are seeing, but I understand,� he said.
He was able to �fly� the EA-6B in the simulator though, taking off from Cherry Point, heading out over the Atlantic and experiencing conditions of a thunderstorm. He then returned to the base and was able to land the jet on his third approach.
Ricky Johnson, a former EA-6B pilot who is now a CUBIC Corp. contractor who instructs Marine pilots on the EA-6B, said the simulator can create the environment for airfields around the world.
�You name it, we can take them there,� Johnson said.
He said any type of emergency can be created in the simulator, with the pilots and ECMOs benefitting from the pressure they receive in training.
�They come out sweating like you wouldn�t believe. It�s just like the real thing,� Johnson said.
All of it impressed Metrock.
Metrock is a member of the Marine Corps Aviation Reconnaissance Association, an organization of active-duty and retired Marines from the electronic warfare community.
For more information on the Marine Corps Aviation Reconnaissance Association, go online to the organization website at www.mcara.us.