Com-Central.net

or as we're sometimes known...the Plaid Stallions.

Better hide them wimmin' and children!

www.plaidstallions.com/fashion.html

ROFL...toooooo funny!

Ohhhhh man,

A period in my life I choose to black out. What a complete era of Nothing (76-80).

LOL Joe, I seem to remember something about eating a lot and saying "WOW". I wish I could remember more, but my short term memory in that era seems...well...blurry...

I seem to vaguely recall a nightmare, something about a green leisure suit, must have had too much of something strange or illegal before I went to sleep, yeh , thats it

I remember the green leisure suit from 1976 but then the nightmare called 'The Carter years' happened to the flightine. Do more with less, get 2% raises when inflation was running 19% (Because the Military was going to show the country how to belt tighten our way out of tough times)

Unfortunately I do remember those years

Bob,

Wasn't it a COL Miller that got relieved during an IG when they ask to put a certain amount of aircraft in the air at once at Langley?

When I visited my Dad 2 weeks ago and the subject came up on tight budgets (mine was 93-00) he talked about the infamous musical parts and black boxes.

Said the Wing Commander was a good guy and just got screwed.

- bsmart

(Because the Military was going to show the country how to belt tighten our way out of tough times)

Unfortunately I do remember those years

Bob,

You were just suffering from a "crisis of confidence", the tough times were just an illusion...

- Joe_D

Bob,

Wasn't it a COL Miller that got relieved during an IG when they ask to put a certain amount of aircraft in the air at once at Langley?

When I visited my Dad 2 weeks ago and the subject came up on tight budgets (mine was 93-00) he talked about the infamous musical parts and black boxes.

Said the Wing Commander was a good guy and just got screwed.

It was the summer of '80. I was at OTS. I was travelling the day that the disaster at 'Desert One' was announced. Several weeks into the course at the morning news update one of the Instructors asked I know there is at least one person in this class who was assigned to the Air Force's Premier Air Superiority Fighter Wing before coming here. I would like him or her to stand up." I stood up wondering what was going on. A couple people clapped. "Cadet it may interest you to know that yesterday afternoon the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing failed it's Operational Readiness Inspection." The auditorium got dead quiet. "You can be seated" he said then continued with the morning news report.

OTS was downhill from there. That wasn't the reason I washed out (spelling and English grarmmer took care of that. (If there were PCs with MS Word back then I would have done much better) but when I got back to Langley I found out that before the ORI team got to the wing (We always seemed to know when the inspection team was coming even though it was not supposed to be known ahead of time) The Wing Commander had a meeting with senior NCOs and told them there were to be no corners cut, no 'loose interpretations of the standards, and no trying to talk the inspectors out of any problems they found. He wanted to have a full open and true Operational Readiness Inspection. "He told us that if we were called on to go to war in a week he wanted everyone to know if we could or not.

The first step of an ORI is 'Aircraft Generation' While one (AMU) Aircraft Maintenance Unit packs up their entire shop and prepares to deploy everyone busts their but to get 24 aircraft FMC (Fully Mission Capable) and loaded with 3 external tanks and ready to fly away. They didn't make it.

The next year was horrible. 12 hours a day 5.5 or 6 days a week (they eventually settled on 2 6 hour shifts on Saturday). The only leave granted was for emergencies or in 'use it or lose it' situations. You can imagine what morale was ( I think we didn't have a single re-enlistment for over a year)

The common feeling was Col Miller sacrificed his star (Our Wing Commander usually got his first star after about 18 months in command). I think he retired after he was relieved.

Guys like that are rare but needed,

Takes a lot of guts to sacrifice your future for the greater good. We had some folks like that during the Clinton years when they reported the truth. Career suicide but necessary for the greater good. The only comfort they seem to have is knowing they forced a cold hard truth down someone's throat that things needed to be fixed. Shame that many undeserving weasels who stayed on benifitted from their sacrifice and got their star. Hell of a choice, do good by your country or do good by your current Boss.

When we all meet on Fiddlers green the truth will come out and those deserving will be redeemed.