成人X站

He鈥檚 been a big friend to U.S. Navy aviators in the Northwest for more than 50 years, offering a friendly greeting to weary pilots headed for home after everything from short training missions to months-long deployments. Meet 鈥淲hidbey Island Man.鈥�

This is an aviation story about an unusual geographic feature, most readily seen via radar, and a nickname that likely dates to military pilots of the 1950s or 1960s. The setting for this story is, not surprisingly, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

Richard Hart grew up in the Seattle area. He went to Mount Rainier High School and the University of Washington. He鈥檚 74 now and lives in Island County. Hart retired after serving in the Navy and then working for many years as a commercial airline pilot.

As a young aviator who鈥檇 trained in Pensacola, he was assigned to Whidbey Island in 1971. He was already a qualified naval aviator before he arrived, but since he was a new guy at the base near Oak Harbor, Hart had to do some training flights in the area in the Grumman A-6 Intruder he already knew how to fly.

鈥淚 had an instructor bombardier/navigator in the right seat, I was flying in the left seat,鈥� Hart told 成人X站 Newsradio earlier this week. 鈥淎nd he said, 鈥極K, I got Whidbey Island Man.鈥� And I kind of went, 鈥榃hat?鈥� and he said, 鈥楲ook at the radar here.鈥欌��

On the radar screen that was standard equipment in the instrument panel of an Intruder in 1971, Hart says, land masses, including islands, showed up as light, and water read as dark.

鈥淲e were about 130, 140 miles out [from the Naval Air Station], and he showed it to me, and I said, 鈥榃ell, I’ll be darned. It really is. It looks like a man down there,鈥欌�� Hart said.

What the radar showed between Whidbey Island and Camano Island was the dark silhouette of a giant man 鈥� perhaps 40 miles in length, oriented north to south, with the head at the top, with 15-mile arms and 20-mile legs. Seeing that silhouette of 鈥淲hidbey Island Man鈥� on the warplane鈥檚 radar screen, Hart learned on that first flight, meant the aircraft was about 30 minutes from home.

成人X站 Newsradio provided Hart with a detail from an old aeronautical chart centered over Whidbey and Camano. Hart marked it up, drawing the silhouette and filling it in with light blue, and adding a smart-looking label that matched the font and style of other labels on the chart. Hart鈥檚 enhancements show that Oak Harbor and Crescent Harbor form Whidbey Island Man鈥檚 head; Penn Cove on Whidbey Island is an arm; Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island is a leg; and the waters of Saratoga Passage 鈥� and the west coast of Camano Island 鈥� form the other leg, the torso, and the other arm, too.

鈥淗e actually kind of looks like a Sasquatch a little bit without filling in all the internal parts, but just the outline,鈥� Hart said.

With Whidbey Island Man signaling that the aviators would soon be returning to base, the giant silhouette served another practical function 鈥� which might remind some 成人X站 Newsradio listeners of a certain Auburn railroad engineer聽who tooted his steam whistle to let his wife know he was almost home. Sighting 鈥淲hidbey Island Man鈥� inspired a similar scheme for Richard Hart and other pilots.

鈥淚f we had a good guy on the phone in the Duty Office鈥� at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Hart said, 鈥渨e鈥檇 radio into him and say, 鈥楬ey, can you call the wife,鈥� or some guys [would say] 鈥楥all the girlfriend 鈥� and have them come pick me up? We’re going to be there in about a half hour.鈥欌��

Hart doesn鈥檛 believe the 鈥淲hidbey Island Man鈥� nickname or the geographic feature鈥檚 helpful arrival alert or ride-hailing functions have ever been adopted by civil or commercial pilots. It seems like this phenomenon is, or was, restricted only to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island 鈥� so it’s possible that it has only been known and spoken of by a few thousand Navy aviators since the 1950s.

After serving as one of those aviators and then retiring from the Navy, Hart was a pilot for Northwest Airlines for many years, including a decade flying 747s on the Seattle-Honolulu route and on international trips between Asia and North America. He says timing of flights 鈥� at night 鈥� and cloudy weather, as well as the specific path of the jetliner, meant only occasional glimpses of Whidbey Island Man as a commercial pilot.

鈥淥n the HNL-SEA flights, it was usually zero-dark thirty local time on the Seattle arrival, so there wasn’t much to see,鈥� Hart wrote in an email. 鈥淗eading into SEATAC from HNL we would usually coast in over Hoquiam, so most of the time it was dark below, with only the lights of the cities and highways as visual references.鈥�

Whidbey Island Man can likely be seen without radar, Hart says, but you鈥檇 have to be at about 10,000 feet, maybe 30-50 miles south of Whidbey Island, and have clear weather.

鈥淭he Whidbey Island Man聽鈥榩ops鈥� on radar, as there’s not too much other clutter to confuse one’s perceptions of what is/is not聽the Whidbey Island Man,” Hart wrote.

鈥淲hen flying from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Osaka, etc. to points farther east (Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, NYC, Detroit, etc.),鈥� Hart continued, 鈥渨e’d usually pass Whidbey Island in the early morning hours and if it wasn’t 鈥榳inter dark days鈥� 鈥� and it was clear 鈥� we’d be treated to the entire Puget Sound basin and a vista that spanned from Garibaldi in Canada to Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, and occasionally Hood聽to the south.聽Quite a show.鈥�

One other thing Hart might see looking down on Whidbey Island from that left seat of the Northwest Airlines 747? His own house, of course.

After all, like the arcane silhouette that鈥檚 been beckoning aviators for decades, Richard Hart is something of a Whidbey Island Man himself.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle鈥檚 Morning News, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea, please email Feliks鈥�here.