However when I investigated the SerNo, it was a plane that had come in a few years later as a replacement! Still...:)
Posted on 12/25/2023 9:45:07 AM PST by Krosan
I am reading Christopher Hitchens's before-death memoir. I noticed that he always addressed his dad as "the Commander" (OF-4 in the Royal Navy) as he was taught.
Was this usual for kids born into military families in ~1949 or was it unusually strict?
A 20 year E1!
How many times can you get busted down before you separate?
LOL! Good one. I love it.
I haven’t noticed, but I also don’t usually have time for Peter Hitchens.
He spent 10 years in Moscow and “they got him”.
It takes extraordinary resilience to spend 10 years in Moscow and remain true because Russians are going to F with every prominent journalist as nastily as they can if they don’t play ball and on the other hand reward toadying very generously.
Dad enlisted as a Army private in 1961, re-upped twice and eventually GI billed a BA and then went to OCS and stayed until 1995, 34 total years. We never were required as kids to address Dad directly and Lt, or Captain, etc. We were required to answer the phone identifying to caller whose home was reached, in terms of rank.
Outside the home anyone else serving in the military we were expected to address as Captain Smith, Lt. Jones, etc.
Thank you. It’s what a supersonic fighter should look like...
older brother
\/
/-)
i learned what not do do
(for rear of wrath )
alot
from my older brother.
That's why they added the strakes under the tail, they provide just enough stability to keep the plane from 'getting ahead of itself'!
How different things were. I was 12 years old, and I would walk around the flightline, peering at all the planes tied down there.
Sitting in an F-8U 2N cockpit was a thrill for my 8ish year old self.
When I took my kids to the Hornet, they had an F-8 on the deck. We did a walk around, and I pointed out the APU was deployed as it would be to catch the slipstream and power the cockpit and hydraulics to keep the plane flyable. Then I commented that one of the pilots in my dad's squadron was in that situation and his failed to deploy.
The docent overheard me and asked if that was Rankin from VMF 122?
Yup. Turns out that aircraft, despite its Navy markings, was from my dad's old Marine Corps squadron!
It was very special to me to have my kids sit in the cockpit of an F-8 that might well have been the very same cockpit I sat in at about their ages!
yes reduced then retired before anything else could go wrong. but he still was enjoying the world traveling. lots of free military flights and mwr hotels and lodging.
john kerry will always be Kerry.
+++++++++
John Kerry will always be “Lurch.”
HMS Bounty comes to mind, and no that is not normal. However, I do recall an obvious affirmative action two stars wife who cut lines on base calling herself the generals wife.
However when I investigated the SerNo, it was a plane that had come in a few years later as a replacement! Still...:)
That’s an A-7, ain’t it?
It is indeed. Funny when I was a kid, I thought the A7 and F8 were the same plane but different models...:)
We always sat in the same place at the kitchen table. I never thought of them as ‘assigned’ but I guess they were. We had assigned napkins too. LOL
LOL, maybe you are a sister I didn’t know I had.
They are like cousins,
one long and cool and pretty,
the other dressed as black as coal...
Heh, The nickname for the A7 Corsair II, when I was in the Navy was “SLUF” which meant “Short Little Ugly F***er”!
The Captain of the aircraft carrier I was on (USSJFK) took the nickname for himself… It kind of fit!
I wondered if you would sign into this thread, and wonder no more! Hope you had a merry Christmas Day, rl!
My dad was a Navy pilot and served for 28 years. I was a military brat from the time I was born until I was an adult.
My dad was not one of those guys who brought the job home with him. He was fun-loving, had a great sense of humor, disciplined us when he had to, but no differently than a civilian dad.
The only time we ever saw “Officer Dad” come out was when my sisters and I started dating as teenagers. He’d greet our suitors with a gruff demeanor we didn’t recognize. He’d shake hands and say, “I’m Commander __________. I trust you’ll have my daughter home by {whatever the curfew was.}” My sisters and I would giggle to ourselves and say “Who *is* this guy?”
I did have a couple of friends whose dads were kind of “Great Santini”-like. They’d say “That’s an order!” or “Clean up your rooms for inspection!” Our parents ran a clean, orderly house wherever we lived, but not with military-style barking.
We had an Army family next door to us when we were stationed in the DC area who had six kids, some of whom were friends with my siblings and me.
They were taught to answer their home phone by saying their own variation of, “Colonel Smith’s quarters, Joanna speaking.”
At our house, we just said “Hello?” when answering the phone.
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