Big League Beatdown of AFA Cadink

[rstev1955]

At Kadena AB in the early 1990's an F-15C pilot was caught giving a male crew chief a hummer. It's a true story and one folks outside the F-15 community love to remind Eagle guys about.

Ahhh....the 67th "Biting Cocks."

Okay...first post on this forum in more than 4 years. As a USAFA grad, and a fighter pilot for more than 27 years, I have two comments.

1. The major was out of line and should have been disciplined in private.

2. The AFA cadet is a future officer in our air force. What kind of message do we want to send him (and every other future officer) about this situation? He did nothing wrong to request a ride, yet the fighter community wants to berate him? It just shows the egotism and immaturity of our younger generation. I would love to see any active duty officer above the rank of major come on here and state differently.

Fighter Pilots: Save your talents, ego, and aggressiveness for combat where they are needed. Thank you all for your service.

 

[milplt]

Whining about what the Maj wrote? Get real.

________________________________
Subject: RE: Cadet request for F-15 ride
Here's the guy who keeps calling up and bugging the scheduling shop
about getting a flight.

Let's start off with this part of the e-mail. What does "keeps calling up and bugging the scheduling shop" mean? Does this sound like a cadet who has been told "no" more than once?

To me, it seems like this cadet will fit in with the many (yes, I will say it) non-operational officers and airmen who seem more like 9 to 5 (sorry, I meant 10 to 3:30 not including training, CC calls, luncheons, etc) office workers than military members ar war. A little leg work would have gone a long way - such as learning the designation of the squadron that he is trying to fly with. A little reading on the role of the WSO vs. an ordinary passenger in the back seat of an F-15E would have helped, also. Even some thought on how a passenger sortie would affect WSO student production at an RTU squadron would have guided the writing of this request. Show me an e-mail from a West Point cadet to an infantry officer asking to go on a hike and saying how he won't get in the way, and I'll admit that maybe this cadet isn't as out-of-touch as I thought. Those guys can tell me plenty about small arms nomenclature, squad tactics (i.e. the stuff they are getting into in just a few short years) while this cadet probably couldn't VID a Strike Eagle if it flew over the parade grounds much less tell me how it is employed. I have personally asked cadets to VID the aircraft on the ramp as we taxied by on the incentive rides that I gave them (through proper channels) and they have failed by a large margin. One verbatim answer that I got - "we only had to memorize that stuff our 4th class year, we don't have to know it anymore." Our cadets don't know the difference between an AMRAAM and an AWACS, it's just a memorization drill to them. To the West Pointer, it is required knowledge. It is a mentality difference that was almost addressed.

This cadet was nearly taught a lesson that would have taken him a long way. Nearly....until the Wing CC acted more like a politician than a Wing CC. The cadet was neither physically harmed nor emotionally scarred by the response. He may have been surprised, though. Surprised that the rest of the USAF is not like the USAFA, because apparantly his AOC's (or whatever they are called) have failed to teach him that. He seems to be a lot like a lot of his young officer compatriots. Who are they you ask - just ask some of your instructor friends. They are the ones who write stuff like "the evaluator's ground eval was a little too long and his evaluation of my flight performance was not an accurate reflection of my checkride" on their end of course critiques. Yes, they write things like that.

Those of you who were Lt's 15-20 or more years ago and who are upset by this e-mail have lost touch with your roots. I am sure that you have been told something more direct than this, and you can't even remember the details anymore - but I can bet you never repeated the mistake. It's called a debrief - leave the personal feelings at home and bring your thick skin.

Want to know what a d--k move would have been for the major? Had he memorized the cadet's name and done everything within his power to prevent his entry or passing of UPT, IFF, or RTU - now that would have been a d--k move. I doubt that he remembered the cadet's name past the weekend (or until the Wing CC got involved). Sending an e-mail to the cadet and his bro's - not a d--k move. Memorizing the Maj's name and scouring your airline's interview list so you can blackball him because of one e-mail chain when you have neither flown with him, crossed paths with him, nor know the details leading up to the e-mail response - now THAT is a D--K move!

Have you seen the videos of the F-15E's flying over Baghdad last week? Those dudes are busy deploying away from their families and fighting a war by providing CAS or interdiction to the soldiers who are busy dying on a daily basis. When they are home, they are working 12+ hours a day every day - all while dealing with a unknown volume of queep generated from the Wing CC on down.

If this Maj wants to send a somewhat overbearing e-mail to a cadet who thinks this USAF is more of a flying club than a military at war - than so be it. I am inclined to give our actively engaged warfighters a little leeway. Putting yourself in no-sh_t harm's way on a daily basis - you have earned the right to play by some of your own rules. The cadet wasn't harmed and he almost learned a lesson that he could have shared with his classmates. Now the lesson is that if some big bad bully is mean to him (IP, Flt CC, etc), wait for daddy so he can save you, again. So when this student closes the gear doors of his T-38 without coordinating with the crew chief and his IP starts yelling at him and berating him as if he just tried to kill someone - should his first assumption be that the IP is over-reacting because he doesn't understand the severity of his actions and the last time he saw this he got an e-mail apology from the Wing CC. Sometimes you walk into blunt responses unaware - suck it up, learn your lesson, and move on. Quit coddling him and treat him like someone who is preparing for a career in a business where we kill people and destroy objects.

 

[yeahguy]

Great points by all.

BREAK:

Request more dirt on Yeager!

 

[Wang Wei]

Please explain . . .

Pretty good material here:

http://home.att.net/~historyzone/Welch2.html

 

[Wang Wei]

Great points by all.

BREAK:

Request more dirt on Yeager!

And then there's this:


Chuck Yeager, the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound, is feuding with his children over decidedly earthbound matters. Shawn Hubler reports.
Four years ago, shortly after his 77th birthday, Charles "Chuck" Yeager went for his usual walk. A much younger woman struck up a conversation on the path and, he says, he got the message. They were dating 24 hours later, and within a month she had moved in with him. The speed of events rang alarm bells for the retired US Air Force brigadier-general's children; they seemed to happen almost as fast as when he broke the sound barrier in October 1947.
Yeager had been widowed for 10 years, and was all but deaf in one ear. His children would later say that they couldn't help wondering about the then-41-year-old girlfriend, an out-of-towner named Victoria Scott D'Angelo, who claimed to have had careers in show business and investment banking, yet appeared to be unemployed and transient.
Discreetly, Yeager's daughter Susan looked into her background. What she found — lawsuits, restraining orders, claims of harassment and misrepresentation, an alleged physical attack on an elderly woman — so troubled her that she confronted the couple.
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D'Angelo denied everything, then blamed her accusers, then claimed to have changed her ways, according to Yeager's children. Within months, acquaintances and business associates of Yeager contend, D'Angelo began telling them that Susan, who managed her father's finances, was stealing from him.
By the following year, the old fighter pilot who shot down 13 German aircraft in World War II, had fired his accountant, his estate planning lawyer, his longtime personal secretary — and his daughter. Last year, in a ceremony to which his children and friends weren't invited, Yeager married D'Angelo.
Now, in a private legal proceeding, a court-appointed referee will harvest the fruit of the 81-year-old Yeager's romance — a tangle of bitter lawsuits that officially centre on two pieces of property, $US113,000 ($160,000), a tractor, some lithographs and the rights to Yeager's life story.
The children, though, say it's really about the woman who, as son Don Yeager puts it, "has pretty much succeeded in killing our family".
It is, in some respects, a common family trauma — ageing father falls for a woman younger than his grown kids. In this case, there's also Yeager's heroic reputation: the flying ace who in 1947 made history in a Bell X-1 rocket aircraft named for his first wife, Glennis. The man's man from West Virginia who, as Tom Wolfe so memorably put it, epitomised "The Right Stuff".
Don Yeager, a 58-year-old Vietnam combat veteran who runs a holiday lodge in Colorado, is the eldest of Chuck and Glennis Yeager's four offspring. "My mum pretty much raised us; my dad was out flying or fighting wars most of the time, but when he was home, he was a great father," he says. "We were like the all- American family."
Glennis was the linchpin, managing the clan — and its finances — from the lean military years through the prosperity that arose after Wolfe's history of the space program, The Right Stuff, turned Yeager into a pop culture icon.
According to court records, Glennis managed their estate plan, minimising taxes by making regular cash gifts to their children and grandchildren. Yeager's book royalties went straight to their children and his speaking fees, endorsements and other assets were shared via Yeager Inc., a family-owned corporation. When Glennis became ill in 1986 with ovarian cancer, she trained the second of their two daughters, Susan, to assume her financial duties.
Susan, 54, managed her father's business affairs from the time her mother died in December 1990 until the falling-out prompted her to move from the ranch they shared, and where he still lives.
Yeager's second wife's father is a Philadelphia lawyer, as are two of her three brothers. Her late mother was a social worker who persuaded former First Lady Betty Ford to go public with her alcoholism. "Tori", as Victoria was nicknamed, graduated from the University of Virginia in 1980 with a drama degree, and later studied for a master's degree in business administration.
Court records in Los Angeles, Ventura and Nevada counties show more than 30 court cases filed by and against her over the past decade. They range from a small claims suit in which she sued the phone company for static on the line, to a personal injury case in which she sued the city of Beverly Hills after falling off a chair in a police office.
Her most heated battles, however, involved a series of strikingly similar evictions that date to at least 1995, when she failed to pay rent on an apartment in Santa Monica. That dispute dragged on for months before both she and the landlord won restraining orders. In each case, she rented spare bedrooms from private homeowners who shortly thereafter asked her to move, citing unsettling or bizarre behaviour. In each case, she refused to leave until the landlord sought a court order.
Yeager recalls his first meeting with his second wife just after he had visited Australia: "I was comin' down the trail, and she was goin' up, and she said, 'What're you doin' on my trail?' Well, I said, 'Number one, it's not yours, and number two' . . . anyway, we started talkin' . . .
"We went around for, oh, I don't know, a-year-and-a-half. Then I just said, 'Let's get married'. She said OK."
Victoria Yeager says she didn't know who Yeager was when she met him and had to look him up on the internet. This is disputed. In a deposition, a longtime acquaintance of Yeager said Victoria had openly boasted that she had orchestrated their meeting. Indeed, almost every aspect of the Yeagers' love story has lately been questioned, with one exception — his feelings for her.
"Whatever he's got going with her, I've never seen him happier," says Dan Brattain, a pilot who has known Yeager for 13 years.
"He follows her around like a lovesick puppy," agreed Don Yeager. "That's what's saddest. He really loves her and she just uses and uses him."
Yeager says it's his children who have taken advantage. He echoes a charge she made repeatedly (and that his children dispute angrily) — that they "don't really work," and "live off their father's income".
"What it boils down to is that when I started runnin' around with Victoria, what they saw was that I would probably get married and Victoria would inherit my estate," he says.
- Los Angeles Times

 

[yeahguy]

ah yes, the new Mrs. Yeager and her attached equipment once again proving where the "root of all evil" begins...

 

[LearLove]

where did the rest of yearger $$$ go. the aircraft company presidents (floyd Odlym (SP??), larry bell) set him and several other test pilots up with matal/coal mines and oil wells out west back in the golden age of testing. that stuff has got to be big bucks today.

My HS baseball coach/gym teacher served in Viet Nam with Don Yeager. He said he was on heck of a soldier. They were both on the same LRP team going up into Laos and Cambodia. He had a pic on his desk of him in a huey holding a giant cobra snake buy the head and hanging it out the door as the helo flew along.

 

[Big Slick]

Back to the thread....

I don't know the major in this story, but I know the Wing CC very well. Ironically, I was in charge of the summer JETO sorties when he was the OG at a UPT base. Somewhere, I have a letter from him thanking me for doing a great job with the cadet orientation rides. I guess I was a little nicer.

The Wing CC in this case is the fastest-fast burner imaginable. Here are some high points: AFA grad, Masters at Harvard, DFC in the Strike Eagle, Major, Lt Col, Col and BG below the zone, weapons school, assistant to Al Gore....

This guy walks on water. Col X would give us very patriotic and inspired speaches about integrity, officership, etc during his commanders' calls. Personally, I am not as gung-ho. I never, however, hold these beliefs against someone if that is what they really believe. If they are just saying it to be PC, then I think its BS. With this guy, it was genuine.

Now, let's say your the greatest thing since sliced bread in the AF. Are you gonna let this major tarnish your image? Also, the response written by the Wing CC may sound corny to some, but he truly does feel that way.

In summary, I don't think the Wing CC in this case wrote this letter purely to cover his a$$. I think he really believes what he wrote to the cadet. Also, I wouldn't talk too badly about him since we will all be working for him someday.

 

[ExAF]

Don't Think So

Also, I wouldn't talk too badly about him since we will all be working for him someday.

I'll bet you your next paycheck that I won't be working for him ever. Cheers...ExAF

 

[Hagar17]

Wow, this dude was commissioned in 1986, 9 years AFTER his AW/CV.

Fast burner, indeed.....

Back to the thread....

I don't know the major in this story, but I know the Wing CC very well. Ironically, I was in charge of the summer JETO sorties when he was the OG at a UPT base. Somewhere, I have a letter from him thanking me for doing a great job with the cadet orientation rides. I guess I was a little nicer.

The Wing CC in this case is the fastest-fast burner imaginable. Here are some high points: AFA grad, Masters at Harvard, DFC in the Strike Eagle, Major, Lt Col, Col and BG below the zone, weapons school, assistant to Al Gore....

This guy walks on water. Col X would give us very patriotic and inspired speaches about integrity, officership, etc during his commanders' calls. Personally, I am not as gung-ho. I never, however, hold these beliefs against someone if that is what they really believe. If they are just saying it to be PC, then I think its BS. With this guy, it was genuine.

Now, let's say your the greatest thing since sliced bread in the AF. Are you gonna let this major tarnish your image? Also, the response written by the Wing CC may sound corny to some, but he truly does feel that way.

In summary, I don't think the Wing CC in this case wrote this letter purely to cover his a$$. I think he really believes what he wrote to the cadet. Also, I wouldn't talk too badly about him since we will all be working for him someday.