A while back there was a discussion about Diego Garcia in another thread, which got me to dig out some old photos that I took when I was there for 2 weeks in 1988. Our air wing would 'det' (detach) 2 S-3's at a time down to 'Dodge' to make room for 2 more A-6's while the carrier was in the North Arabian Sea. It was basically a 2 week vacation, which was spent sailing, windsurfing, drinking beer and basically enjoying tropical paradise on Uncle Sam's dime. The F-14 guys may have had a cooler airplane to fly, but they and the rest of the air wing were mighty jealous of us that got to go down to DG. Here are a few shots...approaching the airfield after the 5+ hour flight - you can see the 'prepositioning ships' in the lagoon to the left. They were staged with armor, ammo, and other weapons in the event of conflict in the Persian Gulf:
The obligatory welcome sign (BIOT stands for British Indian Ocean Territory):
The entrance to the O Club...geez our shorts were SHORT back then...:
And the BOQ - it was less than 50 yards from my door to the beach:
