A couple of stories about Bear overflights in the mid-'70s.
Coming home from the Philippines (Subic Bay), we didn't have enough natural wind over the deck to safely operate the F-4s (and the engineering plant on the ship was highly suspect... to the point of going dead in the water on the TransPac Eastbound), so the A-7s were loaded up with 'Winders and stood the alert until the weather became more favorable.
We (the fighter aircrews) all stood the alert-5... 24 hours a day... two hours at a time. On the way over (Westbound), the skipper at that time had the mindset that everyone in the squadron had trained hard and he had full confidence in us. (probably a a reason he made it to three-star)
On the way home... different story. We knew hours ahead of time when the Bears were coming. When he found out, the new skipper re-wrote the flight schedule and put the heavies in the go-birds, and he was in the first F-4 off the cat.
Well.... the Bears were intent on finding Enterprise, who was transiting Westbound and a few hundred miles south of us with the first fleet F-14s on board. The Big E went EMCON, and the Russkies were unable to find her. So, they flew a large circle around us, went on a search for Enterprise, then came back and overflew us. By the time they got back, the schedule-rewriting skipper was Bingo and was actually on the ball when they made their overflight. Sometimes justice is done...! We launched another F-4 to do the intercept (along with a Brand-X Phantom).
In the end, all it really told the JOs in the squadron was: "You're good enough to stand the alerts around the clock, but you're not good enough to fly the actual mission."
At this point a spontaneous JOPA sprung up in the squadron, ... but that's another story.
