VMFP-3 80s Flashback

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Final Thoughts On My Experience With VMFP-3
By Marc "Devil Dog Of The Web" Iseli / Updated Dec. 2025
So that wraps up my tour with VMFP-3, 1980 to 1983: three years that feel like they happened back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. My memory banks are still jammed with questionable tales and the smell of JP-5. Right before I got the boot, I watched the F-4 Phantoms get swapped out for the shiny new F-18s. The rumor mill says VMFA-323 got theirs in September '82, but my brain says that's a fairy tale, maybe January '83 for VMFA-314, and VMFA-531 finally got theirs at the end of May. Either way, I got a front-row seat to see the crusty old birds sent off. The same as everyone else who served, don't let the jet wash hit you in the can, and off to the boneyard.

Every so often, some local business would try to buy our love with free swag, probably hoping one of us wouldn't go "Full Metal Jacket" in town. This time, the brass tossed us a bone: tickets to see the Rams and the Jets at Anaheim Stadium. I got picked, along with a random Sergeant from another shop who looked like he’d rather be cleaning the head. The place was packed, fifty thousand civilians pretending they knew what a football was. The crowd was rowdier than a Friday night at the E-club, and the guy behind us kept baptizing the Sergeant’s civies with his Budweiser. I thought it was hilarious. The game? Total massacre. Rams 38, Jets 13. Semper Fi, and pass the peanuts.

How many tools did we juggle on those ancient flying bricks? As a plane captain, I had my personal favorite that would make MacGyver weep. Safety wire pliers? Check. We safety-wired everything that didn’t move, and a few things that did. Nose landing gear jack point, a boots shoe to the line shack floor? Used it so much I could find it blindfolded, which is good because I was usually bleeding from stabbing myself with safety wire. The legendary Dzus Key, guaranteed to work on every panel except the one you actually needed open. At that point, you just wanted to Hulk out and rip the door off. The trusty MX-991/U angle-head flashlight, standard issue for all midnight adventures under the bird. And let’s not forget its distant cousin, the Marshaling Wands, perfect for guiding jets or pretending you’re directing traffic in the movie airplane. All in a night’s work.

Flight suits: the closest thing we had to a superhero cape, except with more questionable stains and less chance of saving anyone. We treated those things like they were the last cold beer in the squadron fridge. Rolling into Iwa, get your name stitched on with the EGA, and suddenly you’re strutting around like Chesty Puller at a Marine Corps ball. Semper fi, or at least semper looking sharp. And let’s not forget the Silencio Flightdeck headphones, 'ears' to those of us who thought we were too cool for hearing loss. We’d slap on some yellow paint with brown stripes so you could spot us from orbit, or at least from the chow line. I still have mine, by the way. Pretty sure that’s a felony, but what’s one more? Dog tags went straight into the boots, because apparently that’s what all the cool airwingers did. Do they even hand those out anymore, or is it all QR codes now? Velcro patches were our version of bling, and if you didn’t have at least three, you were probably a boot. Grease pens and acrylic boards were our high-tech solution for tracking birds, both those in the sky and those DOA on the ground, usually because one of our pilots did a max climb pulling 10 G's.

Remember those mythical backseat rides? Some guys got 'em, the rest of us just got to watch and wonder if we missed the secret handshake or just didn't brown-nose hard enough. To even sniff the cockpit, you needed a stack of official paperwork, start up, cockpit qualification card, that looked like it was forged by a sugar-rushed kindergartner with an Etch A Sketch. Military ID? Check. Driver's license? Check. If you had the audacity to ride a motorcycle, you got to sit through a safety class and earn a card that was about as useful as a condum on a three month cruise. Speaking of cruise, if you were lucky enough to be stationed on the mud duck, you needed a liberty card for everytime you escaped the ship, and an item ID card for every personal item you dragged aboard. Bureaucracy: Welcome to the Suck!

Before we shut this rodeo down and hit the E-club, let’s pour a toast for the brave aviators who strapped themselves into the RF-4B Phantom. You needed a little insanity to climb into that elderly beast, knowing she was held together by hope, duct tape, and the occasional prayer to Chesty Puller. No guns, no missiles, just a camera and a set of balls of steel. Guys like Capt. Chuck "Overstress" Strong, he flamed out both engines, punched out, and the Phantom landed itself. The jet made history and had more sense than most of us. Capt. Mike Healey? Lost hydraulics, nailed a barricade trap on the Midway like he was parking a Buick at the PX. Capt. Huey D. Moser Jr.? Photo flash cartridge turned into a fireball, both crew punched out, the bird went swimming. And let’s not forget, these pilots put their lives in the hands of a bunch of 20-something knuckle-draggers with zero sleep, hopped up on caffeine and a hope and a prayer. We kept those recce pigs grunting, and nobody got left behind, reaching 50,000 accident-free hours. Serving with these rat f*kers was an honor, or at least a wild ride. Semper Gumby, Jarheads.

Alright, you glorious Rat Phixers and Phlyers, if we ever survived a TAD, a Det, or a BOHICA, who haven't, and you didn’t think I was the biggest gaff off in the squadron. Got a sea story, or some grainy photos your ex didn’t set on fire, and they’re only slightly illegal? Send ‘em by email, snail mail, or safety wire it to a carrier pigeon. I collect ‘em all, just nothing that would incriminate me.
80svmfp3@gmail.com

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