Just for grins and giggles, I'm going to close my eyes and see how much of a walkthrough I can do from old memory. The last flight I had in the -B was 04-NOV-84 ...
follow along with the virtual tour linked at the top if you want.
First, I'm not sure if the virtual tour lets you access the main hatch in the NATOPS prescribed method - approach the port side at the main landing gear, place your left hand on the tire, duck under the nacelle and step to the fuselage. Walk forward until you reach the hatch. Never NEVER step forward of that hatch! (Of course, we all know there are times you have to ... but hot crew swaps kept you on your toes - that prop is just inches from the hatch.)
my preflight - from old memory
Looking into the a/c from the main hatch has you looking at part of the AN/APS-96 radar assembly. The big tub slightly forward is the power amplifier. That beast weighed somewhere around 100 lbs. I stupidly took a challenge once to change it out myself. I succeeded, but my back paid the price.
The barrel-like device with the red tube pointing forward is the hydraulic reservoir.
Numerous (7, iirc?) hydraulic filters to check in this bay - a pop-up button on top indicated it had bypassed and needed attention.
The vapor cycle (air conditioning) components sat above that, with sight glasses for oil and freon levels.
The 4" sewer tube looking stuff is the radar waveguide that routed from the power amplifier into the overhead, aft to the crew compartment then up into the rotodome (Radar Dome) through a series of bends, joints, and connections that rotated in the dome. I'm sure none of them leaked ... the evidence of nearly all Hawkeye crew baldness is purely coincidence, right?
Stepping/looking up and forward, one of many circuit breaker panels. The big yellow handle was the main hatch latch. If you read the warning, "ensure cabin pressure is dumped" before attempting to open is a serious no-kidding (sailor talk self-censored - but I'm sure you mentally inserted the correct military terms for "no kidding"). There is a weight on wheels interface to the cabin pressure dump valve that you typically counted on before attempting to open the hatch, but during ground/deck maintenance, we connected a yellow gear air conditioning cart for cool all the avionics. Doing so would override the cabin pressure dump valve and would pressurize the cabin. I recall being distracted, in a hurry once to swap out some parts just before a preflight and didn't pay attention to the a/c cart running full blast and I yanked open the hatch lever. Next thing I know I'm getting helped up off the deck with the cartoon stars and birdies circling my head.
Turning forward, the port side equipment bays housed 3 UHF and 2 HF radios, TACAN, IFF Interrogator, IFF Transponder, KY crypto gear that we punched in the code of the day for IFF Mode 4.
The stbd side bays were all radar modules all the way back to the main hatch again.
Continuing aft on the stbd side, we come to George ... the autpilot system, or as marked AFCS (Automated Flight Control Systems). George was somewhat temperamental ... when he wanted to, he performed well. When he was out of sorts, well, he could be downright ornery. The black box under the AFCS junction box was George's brains - a bunch of potentiometers in there that one could tweak to really mess things up.
The covered compartment under George was where the Liquid Oxygen (LOX) bottle lived.
Doing an about-face here and looking port again is the Litton L-304 general purpose computer (aft) and the tracking computer (fwd) - the best of 1950s and early 60s technology that Grumman and Litton had. We loaded the ATDS program from the module in the upper left of the L-304 called a REC/REP (Recorder/Reproducer) that had small reel of magnetic tape inside that one would load during startup. If you look around the L-304, you can see some modules about the size of an encyclopedia and a thinner module between them. If you zoom in, it says "8K Memory" ... yep, 8 8k memory modules with a power supply between each pair. A whopping 64k of honest-to-goodness core memory. That computer fed target and tracking information to the tracking computer (fwd) that had a large rotating memory drum as storage. After I got out of the Navy and worked for Computer Sciences Corp, we maintained and upgraded the software (written in C then converted to Litton Assembler) for the whole ATDS system contracting to FCDSSA. One of the old-timers on the project gave a lunch and learn talk about code optimization for the tracking computer. Optimization was ensuring that your next instruction was as physically close to the drum head location as it could be without being "too late" as the drum rotated. This system could store and manage over 300 active targets.
Continuing aft into the mole hole, 3 stations of mostly identical layout, the Radar Operator (RO), the Combat Information Center Officer (CICO), and the Air Control Officer (ACO). My seat - RO - had additional equipment that the others didn't. Fwd of the scope, there is the system status panel, the jukebox and the oscilloscope combo that allowed me to punch in different selections to show info on the o-scope for troubleshooting or fine tuning radar parameters and other observation points. Just forward of that was the most important controls of the mole hole - the Vapor Cycle control (air conditioning)! My seat was relatively warm, and I needed to balance keeping the forward equipment compartment optimally cool (without freezing up). The rearmost (ACO) seat was the furthest away from any heat source. That poor guy needed arctic gear back there, and even worse when I flew. I liked it COLD!
Looking at the scope you might notice 3 sections - left right and center. The right section, lower corner has a small BNC connector. This is where the "pencil" connected, that let you tap on the radar display and "hook" or select targets. The upper display would show information about that target or other info as selected (intercept info, etc). The E-2C and subsequent upgrades put much more of that info on the screen, more like modern Air Traffic Control centers.
In the footwells, notice 2 pedals - those were the Push To Talk controls ... Intercom (ICS) and Radio. Further forward on the panel you can see the radio and ICS selector switches. UHF 1 and 2 tuner controls were in the cockpit, UHF 3, 4, 5 as well has HF 1 and 2 were on the CICO and ACO stations. HF 1 was on a fixed wire antenna that was strung from vertical stabilizer, forward to behind the cockpit and back to the other side vertical stabilizer. HF 2 was on a trailing wire antenna that reeled out from the tail with a weighted drogue to pay it out. Landing checklist included "trailing wire antenna in", but had safety interlocks with gear down activating the reel in, and dropping the tail hook chopped the antenna off if it wasn't stowed. You can imagine a heavy drogue and antenna wire rocketing down the flight deck on arrested landing.
IFF interrogation controls were on my left.
The seats were relics from ancient torture devices, containing a parachute pack as the backrest, and life raft and survival gear in the seat pan. When you strapped into the seat you buckled the parachute and seat pan on but all stayed strapped together with the seat. In the event of a ditch or bailout, you pulled a lever that released the whole mess from the seat frame and crab-walked your way to the main hatch (or overhead hatches in the cockpit and over the ACOs seat).
Wow - that was fun (and way too long!). Edit - I didn't complete the exterior preflight - aft equipment hatch (outside in the tail) had the trailing wire antenna, more hydraulic filters and other gear. We often parked Tail Over Water (TOW) so a lot of times that hatch was inaccessible until after we started up and taxied forward.
