July 12, 2023 - Iceland

Today we are finally heading home. British Airways booked us on a flight with Iceland Air, first to Keflavik, Iceland, and then to Baltimore. Here is our ride at London Heathrow Airport.

Yay, we made it! It is our third day wearing these clothes!

Incredibly, an active volcano was firing off, close to Keflavik. Are you kidding me? You can see the plume in this blurry picture.

Fortunately the volcano was small. The air over Keflavik was clear. Here is a good shot of Keflavik Airport and the small town of Keflavik just to the right on the coast. Keflavik sits by itself on a peninsula on the southwest corner of Iceland. It is about 15 miles west of the capitol Reykjavik.

Looking east back at the volcano and the small town of Grindavik. Somewhere out there before you reach Grindavik is the famous Blue Lagoon.

Looking east. Reykjavik is barely visible in the distance.

I was very interested in Keflavik because this isn't my first visit.

I deployed here with a P-3 squadron back in late 1993, early 1994 for about four months. I remember Iceland as being cold and always dark. Sometimes the wind blew so hard you could not walk upright, but had to lean into it. We lived in the BOQ which was basically a motel. Also in the BOQ was the famous “Brass Nut”, which was just a room converted into a bar. It got a lot of use. In the 1980's, Kevlavik was known as the "ASW Capital of the World", ASW standing for anti-submarine warfare. The Naval Air Station was very active with P-3's constantly out flying looking for Soviet sumarines transiting the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. But by 1993, those days were long gone. The Cold War was over. Russian subs hardly ever left port anymore. The fancy underground ASW operations center was empty and dead. I remember being bored in Keflavik most of the time. I played a lot of racquetball.

I was aware the Keflavik Naval Air Station had closed in 2006.

While we taxiied to the main terminal, I looked out the window to see if I could see anything I remembered. And sure enough, I spotted the big hangar we operated out of back in 1993-94.

Not only that, I was surprised to see two P-8 Poseidons parked on the ramp. I subsequently learned that US forces returned to Keflavik in 2016 to cope with increasing Russian military activity around Iceland.

The main terminal was busy and crowded as Keflavik is the main hub for Iceland Air. We boarded our connecting flight to Baltimore without incident and with that our Germany trip was concluded.

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