Posted on 02/23/2004 9:18:37 PM PST by Pokey78
As a 1950s Air Force fighter pilot who flew the all-weather F-86 fighter-interceptor in a squadron transitioning into the F-102, the plane that George W. Bush later flew, I find most reporters' stories on Bush's military service terribly skewed by ignorance and partisanship.
Bush was not shirking duty. He was shunted aside. Our experiences were analogous.
We both were "lame ducks" nearing the end of our military commitment.
The Air Force in 1958 faced the problem of maintaining flight proficiency and combat readiness amid cutbacks as President Eisenhower determined to balance his budget; and in 1972 the problem was to "build down" from the Vietnam War.
Commanders allotted precious flying time to senior pilots who had long commitments ahead.
"For the convenience of the government," I and hundreds like me were booted back to civilian life three months early. Like Bush, we spent a lot of time in pilots' lounges "reading flight safety magazines and studying flight procedures," as Lt. Col. John B. Calhoun, a retired Alabama National Guard officer in Atlanta, described Bush's activity.
As a short-termer in 1972 Bush was essentially grounded and would never fly the F-102 again and knew it. And the Air Guard waved a happy goodbye when he applied for a six-months-early release to attend Harvard Business School. Basically, we were both pushed out so commanders could maintain maximum readiness. This was just the way the military worked.
Yet here, three decades later, comes then-Lt. Col. Bill Turnipseed, who "doesn't remember" Bush ever reporting for duty. Who is this witness? I asked a former Alabama National Guard pilot and friend who, like me, graduated from the University of Georgia in Air Force ROTC and spent three years flying in the country's Cold War air deterrent array. This classmate flew RB-47s on a lead combat crew in the Strategic Air Command, left active duty in 1958, and while working in Montgomery as a television journalist flew with the same Alabama Air National Guard unit run by Turnipseed in which Bush later served.
My friend left journalism for a career in Republican campaign media and in 1972 was running Fletcher Thompson's Republican Senate campaign in Georgia. He recalls: "I know the players. I always liked Bill Turnipseed. The Air Guard in Montgomery was a 100 percent partisan Democrat group. Bush was working about a half hour's drive time from Dannelly Field in the Blount U.S. Senate campaign against their top elected official; Red Blount had been Nixon's postmaster general.
"The Air Guard commanders knew precisely where to find Bush had he been needed. This Bush/Guard myth has never been anything more than a Democrat political lie top-to-bottom designed to smear Bush."
Moreover, the suggestion that Bush sought to evade the risk of wartime service in Vietnam by volunteering for the National Guard betrays colossal ignorance.
Air Force pilot training for all-weather fighter-interceptors typically covers 18 months of full-time active duty, followed in Bush's case by Air National Guard duty flying F-101s and F-102s. The death rate among military pilots flying the all-weather fighter-interceptors, landing in blizzards and rainstorms at night, has always been high.
It probably compares to and may exceed service in Vietnam, where fewer than 15 percent were assigned to combat units. (Al Gore was in that noncombat category.)
In my 33-month military career I was in the air or on the flight line when seven pilots "bought the farm." I have flown through the funeral pyre of a wingman and friend who crashed on takeoff, and seen the deadly thunderflash of another pilot who crashed in the same night fog and rain in which I had just landed my similarly crippled F-86.
Bush, in his five years of full-time pilot training and "weekend warrior" service, compiled 625 cockpit hours, more than the 519 I logged in three years on full-time active duty in training and combat-ready squadron service.
It is the custom among military veterans in Washington to stand when bands play their service tunes.
At the 2001 Gridiron dinner, among the thousand or so attendees, a sparse few dozen stood for the Army's "Caissons Go Rolling Along" and the "Marines Hymn"; fewer for the Navy's "Anchors Aweigh" and for the Air Force's "Wild Blue Yonder."
I noted only two standing -- this old Cold War peacetime fighter jock and former Lt. George W. Bush, the commander in chief.
I wonder how many of the reporters and editors feasting on these stories about "Bush's Guard records" have ever served in the military?
I noted only two standing -- this old Cold War peacetime fighter jock and former Lt. George W. Bush, the commander in chief.
I wonder how many of the reporters and editors feasting on these stories about "Bush's Guard records" have ever served in the military?
BUMP!
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