HORNET BAY
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The Hawkeye gets her tail back, and K-MAN gets his gunner: meet Clarry G 3e5442b

FEATUREAIRCRAFT The Hornet Bay AH-64 Apache from the front quarter — tandem glass, sensor turret, chin gun, stub wings

Two small but satisfying fixes this push. First, a structural one: a sharp-eyed pilot noticed the E-2C’s aft fuselage section was simply not there — the quad tail hung four metres behind the hull with nothing in between. Her tail cone is riveted on now, and the printable STL, the single-model zip and the Complete Fleet all got the corrected geometry. Second, a personnel matter: we finally know who’s riding in K-MAN’s front seat. Meet the gunner:

  1. Clarry G is Alameda born and raised — close enough to the old Naval Air Station to fall asleep to the sound of Hornets trapping on the Enterprise. He decided at age nine he was going to fly. The Navy, in its wisdom, said no: one eye a half-line short on the chart.
  2. So he went Army. Re-mustered as an aerial observer, then front-seat gunner on the AH-64 — the seat where the shooting actually happens. The chain gun under the Apache’s chin slaved to his helmet: where Clarry looks, thirty millimetres of attention follows.
  3. The name: Clarence, formally — but only his mother and the pay office use it. What the G stands for is a matter of unit policy, which is to say he won’t tell you. The crew answer to it anyway. K-MAN, the callsign, comes from his grandfather’s old ham-radio handle, and Clarry wears it like a borrowed jacket: proudly, and slightly too big.
  4. He knows the city by roof. A thousand feet up on the twelve-point wheel he calls “the paper route,” Clarry can name every helipad, crane and water tower downtown — and claims he can read license plates on the Bay Bridge. Nobody’s verified it. Nobody’s disproven it either.
  5. He’s winning the bet. Standing wager with the cruiser’s Seahawk crew, NAVY 701: first to spot the P-3 coming off its inspection pass calls it on the radio. Clarry is up forty dollars and insufferable about it.
  6. And he keeps a mascot. Zip-tied to the sensor turret: a rubber chicken, name of Clarence Jr., officially listed in the aircraft’s log as “ballast.” If you zoom in on the gallery model — well. Some details are for the crew to know.