Posted on 08/26/2018 3:25:38 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
PING!
Ping.
I saw it back in the 80’s. I was fortunate, I had jet engines to rebuild and didn’t have to deal with the BS.
When I was in the Air Force, every section I was stationed in told me this story at least once.
Same thing happened with Chuck Yeager.
Read a book recently about the air war over the north, something about one plane shot up losing fuel. They did not want to eject over enemy territory.
Another pilot somehow managed to get underneath and push him enough to get him away from danger so they could eject when the fuel ran out. They ejected and were rescued.
Of course, the brass wanted to punish the innovative pilot that had saved the crew. His using unorthodox maneuver was intolerable.
Robin Olds quashed that and got the guy a medal. He was a fighter pilot's pilot.
In the day when senior officers put country before career. How nice it would be to have a smidgen of that now.
Met Robin back around ‘04. Really nice, humble guy.
Yeager was there, too. Full of Yeager. No longer a fan.
Friend of mine served in Olds unit in Viet Nam, had nothing but great things to say about him and how he and the others respected all that he did.
One of a kind, and we need more like him
What’s the story behind the photo?
“Wolfpack” aviators of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing carry their Commanding Officer, Colonel Robin Olds, following his return from his last combat mission over North Vietnam, on 23 September 1967. This mission was his hundredth “official” combat mission, but his actual combat mission total for his tour was 152! COL Olds boldly led the 8th TFW Wolfpack from September 1966 through September 1967, as it amassed 24 MiG victories, the greatest aerial combat record of an F-4 Wing in the Vietnam war.
General Olds observations is exactly why I quit the AF after a 10 year short career till 1977. The command had no idea how to run the AF without a war. Training got slack, small tasks became more important than war readiness exercises. Just had enough of piss poor management. I am a third generation Army Air Corps/Air Force family of fighters. I cried long and hard when I asked for discharge. May our President Trump do all in his power to fix the DOD.
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General Olds looks a little like actor Dabney Coleman.
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