The beginning of the end

One of the longest-lived military airplanes in Hawaii — the P-3 Orion turboprop — is starting to fade away, with the Navy deciding its sub-hunting jet replacements could be more economically based in Washington state.

Six to eight of the P-3Cs are assigned to each of three patrol squadrons — VP-4, VP-9 and VP-47 — at Kaneohe Bay.

But when the VP-4 “Skinny Dragons,” with up to 340 personnel, deploy in the spring, the squadron that first flew P-3As out of Barbers Point Naval Air Station in 1966 won’t be coming back, the Navy said.

They’ll head to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state for transformation to the P-8A Poseidon, a jet based on the Boeing 737 that can fly faster and longer on the maritime surveillance and sub-hunting missions that are still so important to the Navy, officials said.

When the Navy wants to take a look at the controversial island-building that China’s been up to in the South China Sea, for example, it’s sent a P-8 to do it. Two of the jets were dispatched to search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 last year.

The versatility of maritime surveillance planes, coupled with a desire to keep an eye on long coastlines, has a number of Asian nations lining up to obtain them.

The two other Hawaii-based squadrons — VP-47 and VP-9 — will deploy at different times throughout fiscal 2017, leaving Hawaii for good and making a similar return trip to Whidbey for upgrade to the Poseidon, officials said.

At the end of it all, Kaneohe Bay will be the operating point for a permanent detachment of two P-8s that will perform a Hawaii homeland defense mission.

It will be another end of an era for Hawaii’s military, and the retirement in March of VP-9’s Aircraft 916 after 42 years of service brought out some wistfulness from the crew that ferried the plane to the giant aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz.

“It was an honor to be part of 916’s last voyage,” Lt. Emily Cordle, a pilot on the “reposition” flight, said in a Navy-produced news story. “The entire crew couldn’t help but reflect on the countless missions she has flown, the numerous crew members she has carried, and the endless maintainers that have kept her flying for 42 years.”

Lockheed Martin said the all-terrain hunter entered Navy service in 1962. The turboprops, with a distinctive Magnetic Anomaly Detection tail stinger, can carry Harpoon, Standoff Land Attack and Maverick missiles, as well as Mk 46/50/54 lightweight torpedoes, according to the Navy.

Changing missions coupled with operations out of forward locations such as Greece, Italy, Bahrain, Japan and Djibouti in East Africa, meanwhile, have made the Hawaii basing less essential.

Capt. Steve Newlund, the commodore of Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing Two at Kaneohe Bay, said he sees no strategic detriment to reducing the maritime surveillance and sub-hunting capabilities in Hawaii, because that same capability will be coming out of Whidbey Island.

“I’m a firm believer that we have to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ money,” Newlund said. Instead of three P-8 squadrons in Hawaii and three at Whidbey Island, all six will be co-located in Washington state.

The U.S. military increasingly is seeking to use rotational forces, and Hawaii — with its submarines, ships and expanses of deep blue sea — provides a great opportunity for P-8 training, Newlund said.

“When we do exercises and there are opportunities here, you will see more than two (P-8s) on the ramp,” he said. “We will flow this place up just like we would for (Rim of the Pacific war games) or any other exercise.”

Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing Two is the evolution of Fleet Air Wing Two established at Pearl Harbor in 1937 and with later service at Kaneohe Bay, Barbers Point and Kaneohe Bay again.

Since the 1950s, Barbers Point was most famous for its “Rainbow Fleet” — the patrol squadrons that routinely deployed with P-2 and later P-3 aircraft to the northern and western Pacific, Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf, according to the Navy.

The squadrons tracked Soviet subs patrolling off the western coast of the mainland and supported operations in the Vietnam and Gulf wars. Developed as a Cold War sub hunter, the P-3 turned out to be just as useful over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The planes have powerful radars and an electro-optical surveillance system. At sea, they hunt submarines with sonobuoys and torpedoes.

Newlund, a P-3 pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours, said an average mission can include nine to 10 hours of flying. Early in the Afghanistan war, VP-9 flew combat missions day and night, pinpointing targets for fighters and bombers.

The “Golden Swordsmen” of VP-47 last month returned from a seven-month deployment and missions that spanned an area north of the Arctic Circle to south of the equator and stretching across the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea. The squadron operated from sites in Iceland, Norway, Poland, Italy, Greece and Djibouti.

The Navy said the planes hunted submarines while flying 200 feet above the North Sea and provided real-time counterterrorism intelligence to special operations forces on the ground in Africa.

In 2012, the Navy said it was reconsidering a plan to put 18 P-8A Poseidons at Kaneohe Bay, and instead was looking at consolidating them at Whidbey to save $300 million. That plan was approved in 2014.

“What I think is the most important thing about the P-3 is she’s flexible,” Newlund said. The plane has “tremendous endurance, and we’ve been able to modify and adjust and keep the airplane relevant,” he said. “It costs money, but that airplane today is just as relevant and revolutionary as it was in the ’60s.”

But the new P-8 “is a game-changer for maritime patrol,” he said.

“As sad as I am (to see the P-3s go),” he said, “I am just as equally energized that maritime patrol and reconnaissance is something that we’re still going to leverage as a Navy (with P-8s), and I think that’s the value added. It is fun being in an airplane that has new-car smell.”

A fourth P-3 squadron exists at Kaneohe Bay, “special projects” VPU-2, which has secretive missions that the Navy does not talk about.