Are all Air Force men as cute as you?
[/shameless flirting]
Why yes, we are. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bluesman *
**I am the Bluesman because I like my blue uniform more than my Battle Dress Uniform **
Interesting. I’d wear BDU’s for the rest of my career if they let me.
But since I’m supposed to be asking questions here… what’s been your best assignment locale-wise?
Well, not ALL of us…just the best ones! 
And if you’d have tried that flirtin’ thang at the party, doll, Nate woulda been hosing me down in the yard! As it was, you came DAMN close to gettin’ yer butt pinched. If I thought I could’ve convinced you that it was a traditional Halloween party game, you wouldn’t be able to sit down today. You cutie, you…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Rossarian *
**
Why yes, we are.
Previous post was NOT from Lucretia, it was from me.
Best assignment, BY FAR, was Bad Aibling Station, Germany. What a place…I’ve never been happier in my life, and I expect I’ll never be that happy again. I get homesick for it periodically, and it breaks my heart that it’s closing. [SOB]
I guess I like blues better because I do a helluva lot of intel briefs, and it just looks sharper.
Maybe she didn’t flirt with you because I was monopolizing you. Sorry, it’s that damn flight suit you had on…sssssexxxy! I love those things.
Aw, thank you. Maybe next time I’ll be in a better flirting mood. As if was, you looked so comfy in Geobabe’s bosom I didn’t want to get in the way.
Honey, I don’t think the Berlin Wall (pre-1990) could’ve gotten in the way! And yeah, it was purty comfy.
Hey, Bluesman!
Do fighter pilots still get to officially count their aerial “kills”?
Do they get to display their victories on their uniforms?
Are there any aces still actively flying?
Thanks, bro.
[shameless baiting for flirts]
You know I was AF intelligence too…
[/shameless baiting for flirts]
I know you asked Bluesman, but I was AF and I actually have a favorite. I’ve always been partial to the A-10 and I don’t know why. It’s not sleek, it’s not pretty, and it’s not fast. But something about the Warthog has grabbed my attention. I think I just like the idea of what it was made for - flying in low and whooping some ass on the ground. The plane was designed to take a beating from the ground, and it can take a hell of a beating.
Ok, I’ll leave the question answering to the OPer now. Sorry.
Now my question for bluesman - how long did it take for you to adjust to the restructuring of the AF? For example, I was in tech school and learned all about SAC, MAC, and TAC and before I had graduated, they changed everything. Even still, I thought of things in terms of SAC, MAC, and TAC. Do you still do things like that?
**
Howdy, Sofa King!
Just try to get 'em to STOP counting them, should they be lucky and/or good enough to get aerial kills!
Seriously, great efforts are expended to determine IF an enemy aircraft was shot down, and also by WHOM. There are good reasons for doing this, other than pilot ego or score-keeping. If an enemy aircraft was shot down, the enemy Air Order of Battle (AoB) must be adjusted, so we can estimate how many more aircraft we’re likely to face, and to analyze what tactics are working. Pilot debriefs (I know, I know - here come y’all’s dumb jokes :rolleyes: ) are combined with other data like gun camera film and radar tapes, and other information from eyewitnesses (either in the air or on the ground), and a whole bunch of other sources. That’s why you must know WHO shot down the enemy airplanes, to make sense of the debrief: analyze the wrong pilot’s tactics, learn the wrong lessons.
**
**
The closest thing there is to wearing kill marks on the uniform is the medal(s) that are undoubtedly on the way when a pilot’s victory is confirmed. It is a rare thing, and a mark of great prowess (or luck; and don’t think that doesn’t count) to shoot down enemy airplanes. Those men that do are going to be decorated and are on their way to great careers in the Air Force.
**
If you mean U.S. aces, then No. The Navy’s ace from Vietnam, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, is now a Congressman. I’m not sure what happened to his Guy In Back, Willie Driscoll. The Air Force had two aces, Steve Ritchie, who retired as a brigadier general, and his back seater, who actually had SIX kills, one more than his ‘boss’.
Since Vietnam, there have been ones and twos, but no American has gotten to the magic number of five.
If you mean ANY ace, possibly. The Israelis had several aces from the dust-up with the Syrians over the Bekaa Valley in the ‘82. (No Syrian aces, though. The kill ratio was 82 to 1. There almost weren’t any Syrian survivors!) So, it’s possible that some o’ them kosher killahs might still be flyin’ and fightin’.
And you’re welcome, buddy. I am having a lot of fun with this thread.
Yeah, man, A-10s kick much ass! That airplane was the Air Force’s retort to the Army’s old insult-to-demonstrate-why-they’re-still-relevant: “Ya lose the war if there’s an enemy tank parked on yer runway, flyboy!”
The AF bought the A-10, which as good as said, “WHAT enemy tank, dogface? Oh, and hold our beer while we go out and win the war. Then sweep up the enemy pieces into little terrified platoon-sized piles, and we’ll give you a lift back to Bragg when you’re all done.”
I’m paraphrasing, of course.
I went to survival school with an A-10 jock from the Louisiana Air Guard. I asked him how he like it. He said, “After I got assigned, I was really disappointed. Ugly and slow, and I wanted beautiful and fast. Well, after I took it to the gunnery range for the first time, I’ve never wanted to fly anything else.”
As far as still thinking about the old commands, in a sense, I still think of them like that. It’s still pretty common to hear old guys like me say the MAC (for Military Airlift Command, pronounced ‘mack’) terminal, even though it’s the Air Mobility Command now. (I mean, Ay-Em-Cee? What can you do with THAT?)
And I wish ACC (for Air Combat Command, and pronounced Ay-Cee-Cee, so as not to sound like you’re gagging, which is what we all wanted to do when we heard what it had been changed to) was as cool to say as the old TAC (for Tactical Air Command, and pronounced ‘tack’, as in ‘bad guy’s ass to the wall’).
However, the old SAC (for Strategic Air Command, and pronounced ‘sack’) wasn’t as cool-sounding as the new STRATCOM. Now, THAT was a change for the better! Sounds like Dr. Quest and Johnny are in charge, or maybe Ralph Phillips (y’all 'member the kid in the Warner Brothers cartoon that got sent to his room? “Com-Ralph to HQ, routine report: aliens vanquished, Earth saved.”)
I tell you what I personally mark as the end of those days, though. It was several years BEFORE the re-org, but when I was at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Michigan (a SAC base - B-52s and tankers), they stood down the alert force. After sooooo many loooong years of instant readiness to go All The Way against the Soviets, the day they closed the alert facility and took the bomber and tanker crews off alert, and they went home and locked the door behind 'em, for the first time EVER. Man, it was HEAVY.
We won the Cold War that day. No parades, no celebration, no kissing pretty girls in the street. Just a bunch of iron men turning out the lights, locking the door behind them, and going home to their families.
And I helped win it.
Dam’ right I’m proud of my Air Force.
A trio of questions:
Do we still have F-111’s in service?
How many letter prefixes ARE there for aircraft, anyway? And does the “F-1” in F-111 and F-117 really indicate for “fighter bomber”, as I’ve been lead to believe?
And…Do they have to change the formaldehyde in the dead alien tanks at Area 51 once in a while, or does it keep pretty well?
Thanks for your time,
Nick Gaston
Since you know about Air Force One…what’s the code name for Air Force TWO, and where is it based?
And don’t give me that shit that it doesn’t exist 
Ahem…and iron women.
Lucretia, who was in the Air Force, and helped win it, too.
No F-111s in service, and there never should have been. It was a mediocre aircraft with all kinds of gimcrack hardware (extremely poorly designed terrain-following radar, an escape ‘pod’ for the crew, and a bunch of other crap that didn’t work) stuffed into it, and if you ever wanted an example of political decisions driving procurement, this is it. Jim Wright (D, TX), the powerful Speaker of the House, was King of Pork for many years, and General Dynamics, was in Ft. Worth, HIS district. Even though the project was started before Wright was Speaker, his mentor, Sam Rayburn (D, TX), was Speaker for many years before him. What REALLY sucks, though, is that the airplanes weren’t even made in Texas. But these guys had been so thoroughly bought that they did what they did for the corporation that WAS in their district.
Just another example of Democrats in control of America’s purse for their own benefit. (And I bet all the Lefties in here thought REPUBLICANS were tools of corporate America! You have no idea…)
Air Force trials showed that it was a poor aircraft.
But it was bought anyway.
Losses in Vietnam were high, and crews’ morale was low.
They were employed anyway.
It was upgraded (FB-111), and given the electronic combat mission (EF-111). But eventually the high maintainance costs and low mission-ready rates drove it out of service.
The “F” designator does indeed mean “fighter”, but I’ve neve heard that “F-1XX” designates “fighter-bomber”. Could be right, though.
I’m not sure how many letter prefixes there are, because there are so many. “B” = “bomber”, “C” = “cargo”, etc. Then there are any number of two-letter designators: “SR” = “strategic reconnaissance”, “EA” = “electronic attack”, etc. And a whooooole bunch of others, too. “TA” = “trainer attack”, etc.
Finally, I can neither confirm nor deny that the formaldehyde is ever changed in the Alien Holding Facility at Area 51. Not there there is an Alien Holding Facility at Area 51. And I’m not sayin’ there’s an Area 51, either.
Fighter-bomber is usually either indicated with an FB designation (as in the unfortunate FB-111) or not designated in any special way at all (as in the F-15E, one of the best fighter-bombers ever…). Sometimes they just drop the “bomber” part and use “attack”, and you wind up with an F/A designation, as in the F/A-18 Hornet the Marines and Navy tool around in. There was talk of re-designating the F-16 Falcon as the F/A-16, but it didn’t catch on.
As for the whole F-1xx = fighter/bomber theory (and it’s not an illogical assumption, btw), you can punch a hole in that line of reasoning by taking a look at the F-104 Starfighter, a pure interceptor that was designed for speed and altitude at the expense of maneuverability and payload. They were definitely hot rods, but they weren’t what you wanted to use to drop steel on a target.
Just throwing my two cents as an aviation addict in…back to you, Bluesman.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bluesman *
**
Cool, man. I saw Muddy in 1979 at Davis and it changed my life. So, who’s your all time fav bluesman as well as your fav plane?
Yeah, the F-104 is one of the all-time coolest-lookin’ airplanes ever designed. It’s no surprise it came from the most innovative designer EVER: the awesome Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works at Lockheed.
It was right in the middle of the ‘Century-series" fighters: F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105, and F-106. It was indeed originally designed as a pure interceptor, but the inevitable happened, and eventually it wore the bomb racks o’ shame, sure sign that whatever government was operating it didn’t want to spend any money on a REAL air-to-mud airplane and cut the corners AGAIN. Because Kilt-wearin’ man is right: it ain’t designed for that.
And it did serve with many other governments all over the world. German Naval Air Arm just retired their last geschwader (squadron) a short time ago. I think the Italian Air Force is the last to operate any, the “S” model.
However, once we get to the “F-11X” designators, and there are only two, and both of 'em are fighter-bombers. So, I don’t know.
Actually, I don’t really know if there IS an Air Force Two. One would think that it would be any aircraft that had the Vice President aboard, but I’m almost certain (almost, that is) that those have the same designation as other VIP flights: Special Mission XXXX.
As for where AF2 is based (if it exists), no particular place, because if it works the same way as AF1, it applies to ANY Air Force aircraft, while the Veep is embarked.
That being said, almost all air travel by the President and the Vice President is aboard the Executive Transports based at Andrews. (Does anybody remember when Bush Sr.'s Chief of Staff, John Sununu, got blasted by the press for misusing these airplanes? Seems he was booking himself, his wife and some buddies to go to New York for stamp shows aboard the Gulfstream IIIs and Sabreliner IVs of the Executive Support Squadron at Andrews.)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by China Guy *
**
Yeah, he was great. I got to see him open for Clapton, but that was back before I could appreciate the style. Also, I was drunk as a lord.
If I had to pick a favorite blues artist, I just love the style of the King of the Blues: Mr. B. B. King!
“Favorite plane” is just too hard to narrow down. But as I said in an earlier post to this thread, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear that question is a J-3 Cub. I just love 'em. I spent three summers with one. This cranky old SOB that owned an airport and liked me decided he’d rather see his airplanes flown by somebody that would take care of 'em and appreciate 'em, since he couldn’t fly anymore, and couldn’t bear to give them up. So, we made a deal: I could “have” the airplane for the summer: treat it like my own. But I had to baby it and see to all of its needs. (Like I wouldn’t have, anyway - that 1941 J-3 Cub was my whole world.)
Pappy, wherever you are, thanks for the best summers.