In March of 2006, a person named Steve reached out to me with the following story:
First I’ll tell you the story of how it was that aircraft 007 was chosen to perform at the airshow at Soesterberg (pronounced Soo-sterberg) AB in the Netherlands. Your aircraft was almost brand new to Bitburg AB. It had arrived from the McDonnell-Douglas factory in St. Louis and had minimal hours on the airframe (about 10) when one of the pilots took it on a cross-country mission to Scandinavia.
(I’m not sure of your background, so I’ll take a minute to explain cross-country: A cross-country is where they give you an aircraft for the weekend and allow you to fly it wherever you want in order to get training and flying hours for the wing. Generally you are committed to six sorties – two each Friday and Monday and normally two on Saturday or Sunday, giving you one day off in a country. In Europe, cross-country’s were critical to maintaining wing flying hours because of the typical lousy weather over there.)
Anyway, it was summer and the squadron was going to have a big party, so on Sunday the pilot bought a whole bunch of Norwegian shrimp, which was packed in its own frozen brine and ice. He stored the boxes of shrimp in the large area behind the ejection seat Sunday evening. Well, given the temperatures and the two additional sorties he flew on Monday, there was naturally some melting and leaking from the boxes behind the seat. When he landed at Bitburg the pilot spot cleaned the area behind the seat, but unbeknownst to him the now-liquid brine had made it’s way into lots of areas of the aircraft.
Also, little did anyone know the corrosive effect brine had on aircraft aluminum. After about a week of flying a crew chief noted lots of rust behind the pilot seat(*). A closer inspection revealed sheet metal damage, and some corrosion on wiring and tubing. It was determined that the damage was so extensive that the regular Wing Level sheet-metal repair shop and maintenance could not handle the job, so the aircraft had to be sent to F-15 PDM (Programmed Depot Maintenance).
(*) When the initial rust was discovered and the story of how this happened came out, and even though the maintenance folks didn’t find it amusing, pilots being who they are could not help but see the humor in the story and so the aircraft was given a name: “Shrimp Boat”. Just so you know, very few AF aircraft are/were named anymore…so it had to be something special to actually have an aircraft name all the pilots would recognize. Most times when you called maintenance after a flight you just called in the tail number….but 007 was now Shrimp Boat.
As an aside (maybe this is why I remember Shrimp Boat) my squadron had an aircraft (364) that departed the runway on landing and from then on was known forever as “Mud Slide”. It was the only “named” aircraft in our squadron. About a year later the aircraft departed the runway again and the Chief of Maintenance claimed it wasn’t a maintenance problem, but rather pilot sub-conscious because everybody called the aircraft Mud Slide.
Anyway, after about a month, the refurbished and newly repainted aircraft returned to Bitburg. The Soesterberg Air Show was coming up. (Note: Even though Soesterberg was also an F-15 base, the USAFE F-15 Demo pilot was stationed at Bitburg, so that’s why a Bitburg F-15 was performing at Soesterberg). When they choose an aircraft for an airshow, they try to find the nicest looking aircraft, because in addition to flying, it is also used as a static display. Well, aircraft 007, aka Shrimp Boat, having just returned from Depot, had a brand new paint job and it was determined that the Bitburg F-15 Demo Pilot
would fly Shrimp Boat at the Soesterberg Air Show.
THAT, is how your cockpit got to the Soesterberg Air Show….
A few days ago, a photo of ‘007, mid-crash was posted to a Facebook group called “The McDonnell Douglas(Boeing) F-15 Eagle”. (It’s a private group – join it! A great bunch of folks hang out there!)
One of the comments on that post lamented, “There goes the shrimp boat”. This triggered a fun “correction to the record” by Georg Saare, a former maintainer with the 22nd TFS out of Bitburg.
Georg wrote, “80-007 was NOT the ORIGINAL Shrimp Boat. The hull of Balls 7 replaced 76-035 as the ABDR trainer at Bitburg and the name stuck. Aircraft 76-035 was the airplane that was contaminated by thawed frozen shrimp from Bodo, Norway. Balls 7 was brand new from McAir to Bitburg. The CNA airshow was actually it’s first assigned mission after arrival at BT. And it’s LAST LOL“
Georg would know, as he’s among the folks that stripped parts off of ‘007 to keep other aircraft in the air!
I always had suspicions about the Shrimp Boat moniker and ‘007, so it’s nice to finally know for sure what the real story is. Thanks to Georg Saare for cluing us in! 🙂
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