Jeff Loehr was born and raised in Devils Lake and graduated from Devils Lake High School in 1988. Just three days after graduation, he left for Recruit Training Command Great Lakes in Chicago. He had signed up to serve in the Navy when he was just 17 years old.
He had the blessing of his parents, the late Caryl and Vern Loehr. His father Vern served four years in the Navy and his tour of duty was during the Korean War. Older brother Craig served ten years, so it really would come as no surprise that he would choose to serve as well.
Jeff spent 10-12 weeks at basic training. “The summer of 1988 was hot!” From there he would spend four months in Tennessee training as a jet mechanic, just as his father, Vern had done.
When Jeff finished school in Tennessee, he went to work as an Aviation Machinist Mate at Oak Harbor Washington NAS Whidbey Island, the premier naval aviation installation in the Pacific Northwest and home of all Navy tactical electronic attack squadrons. There he went on with a normal life working on A6E Intruders, which was a bomber plane that has since been replaced by the F18 fighter jet. Every other month he would travel to various locations “to jump on an aircraft carrier for two weeks.” He was part of the V8 128 training squadron. The squadron was assigned the mission of training combat ready flight crews and replacement maintenance personnel for the A-6 Intruder.
During Desert Storm the V8 155 Squadron nicknamed the “Silver Foxes”, which was an attack squadron, needed assistance. Jeff volunteered to go. “Flew out of Seattle heading east through Europe, ended up in Bahrain, took a shuttle cod to the carrier, left in January of 1991 around the 10th I believe.” A shuttle cod is The Grumman C-2 Greyhound is a twin-engine, high-wing cargo aircraft designed to carry supplies, mail, and passengers to and from aircraft carriers.
He would spend almost five months calling the aircraft carrier, The USS Ranger, home.
A typical day for Jeff “12 hours on 12 hours off” in the off time “eat, shower, sleep, there are no bowling alleys on an aircraft carrier.” He did that for 109 days straight. Sometimes he would see land or other vessels, the ship was constantly moving, never anchored. There are two reasons for this, the jets needed the wind of the ships movement to take off from the flight deck and being on the move made it difficult for the enemy to track our location. “If you could feel the motion of the waves in the ship you were in some pretty freaking rough seas!”
“There were four aircraft carriers positioned in the Persian Gulf alternating flight operations, continuously dropping bombs on the Iraqi’s destroying their equipment when they were fleeing Bagdad.”
As a member of the crew, Jeff would help load the bombs, which were Rock Eye Cluster Bombs, which are air launched free fall bombs used to target armored vehicles and disable tanks and “anything around.” Each bomb weighed 490 pounds and “each plane could carry up to 30, but usually carried 24 plus an external fuel cell.” “We went through 1 million pounds of ordinance” (bombs) “We signed our names and the names of people we knew,” Jeff said of the bombs as they were being loaded, and other forms of “graffiti.”
After the war was over, for a break they went to Abu Dhabi for four days. From there they visited Pattaya Beach, Thailand where they spent eight nights and seven days. “Went scuba diving there – that was pretty neat. Went parasailing, and that was back before it was really a thing, like it is now everywhere. One day we rented motorcycles and decided we wanted to live, they’re crazy” Jeff said of the drivers there. “It was very relaxing, the motels were beautiful, and the food was delicious, lobster was something like fifty cents or something. We saw a couple of American restaurants, an A & W and Godfathers Pizza.” “Then from there we went to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Hawaii, then finally to San Diego where the ship was greeted with a homecoming, there were thousands of people there. Unbeknownst to me, Aunt Kay was there and a couple of cousins, I didn’t know it at the time, but Mom told me later when I was home.”
After the homecoming the ship returned to Whidbey Island, Jeff wouldn’t return home to see family until Christmas.
When I asked Jeff if he had experienced any PTSD, “I suppose so, I drank my way through it. Sober now eight years.”
Thank you for your service, Jeff. Thanks also to Jeff’s father, Vern Loehr who passed away in 2019, and brother, Craig Loehr who passed away in a boating/drowning accident in 1992.
