Posted on 09/25/2008 1:11:13 PM PDT by PurpleMan
If Gen Curtis E. LeMay were still in charge, he’d have had them shot - that’s the SAC way.
Read the entire article. YIKES!!! That is one hell of a blood bath. Every bit deserved.
Yep - lot’s of new room at the top. Anyone that hasn’t retired yet, just hasn’t gotten around to doing the paper work.
Oh yeah - too bad American business doesn’t have the accountability, responsibility and professionalism the military has.
When you screw up, you are taken out and put to pasture immediately.
TAC-excuse me, Air Combat Command can't seem to handle nukes very well.
The adults tood up and took responsibility, and killed their careers.... although retiring as an 0-9 isn’t a bad gig.
Do bad the CINC/POTUS 92-00 couldn’t do the same thing.
No kiddin'. Anybody know how many field and company grade officers were relieved, and how many NCOs and EMs were kicked out?
So much for the whole "Officers never get punished" thing....
That’s the question. Can we handle Russia and China like LeMay handed Japan? I’m not talking about Hiroshima and Ngaasaki. Are we ready for a sustained air attack?
It's not... but think about what general officers typically do after retirement. They don't become WalMart greeters. They become board members or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, mayors of medium-sized cities, etc. How many Fortune 500 companies are going to hire the guy who lost the nukes?
Don't get me wrong, these guys are getting everything they deserve. They deserve their retirement for the 25-30 years of honorable service they gave the country. They also deserve to NOT get those typical post-career jobs.
LeMay was definitely NO NONSENSE. Long after he retired, his legacy was very strong - by the book and absolutely NO MISTAKES - one strike and you were out.
The Air Force would need a radical culture change to bring back SAC in it’s real form.
Ping.
LOL, I am on a gov network and when I hit the link all I get is:
Web Content Denied
I checked the bios on these folks. All have fine backgrounds and likely performed at a high level to gain their ranks and positions.
The USAF is a huge organization requiring the talents and skill of people from all disciplines. Every USAF officer, NCO, and enlisted person is important.
That said, slighting TAC is unneccesary. They bagged the TAC guy months ago. Of the general officers hammered in the article, roughly 80%-90% of possible service years between enlistment and the establishment of the ACC was spent in SAC, Logistics, or Space Command.
The Ogden Air Logistics Center (OO-ALC) control is the hub depot and shipping controller of all non-nuclear munitions throughout the Air Force but also include logistics management for ICBM components. The mix up of the ICBM nose and fuze(the correct spelling) assembly being shipped to Taiwan fall under their purview. Something apparently was amiss when they sent Nuclear Ordanance Material Components to Taiwan. This stuff is separated and tracked separately from conventional munition components.
Following on the heels of the nuclear tipped cruise missile debacle being sent to Barksdale AFB by mistake, this eff-up got magnified because of it.
In my brief four year enlisted career, I spent all of it in TAC. TAC has always had a more relaxed attitude. Lax standards for uniforms, military bearing, discipline, rampant recreational drug use, were all part of the late 1970’s TAC that I knew. Not that it was complete chaos, or something out of M*A*S*H, but there was much more “spit and polish” in SAC than there ever was in TAC. When ACC was formed and given the nuclear mission, I think more of the TAC culture survived than the SAC culture.
It was understandable, since like M*A*S*H, TAC was known for it’s TDYs and forward deployments, while SAC stayed on the same base day in and day out, painting the same rock over and over again. LeMay put the Fear of God into the SAC culture, and given the graveness of their job as the ultimate deliverers of Mutually Assured Destruction, it called for a certain level of taking your mission seriously.
Nah. He’d make them ride a bomb out of the shoot like Slim Pinkins
I have nothing but respect for SAC. There is truth to some laxity in TAC units. At Holloman, they had guys smoking pot and working on F-15s. Needless to say, drug testing began and swept out a lot of personnel.
As for painting rocks, my old man used to say that Gen. Creech had to have had stock in Pittsburgh Paints. Once Creech came in after Dixon, a whole lotta rocks were painted. No disrespect to Dixon as he had 3rd world dollars to work with during his tenure and he was renowned as a highly effective CINCTAC - his staff went on to run much of the USAF through the 80’s.
As a system, I believe the entire USAF had a tough time with personnel following VN and during Jimmy Carter. It is a credit to SAC that it maintained high standards during those days.
Ironically, CINCTAC was chaired by SAC guys up until ‘76 or ‘77 when Creech came in. I could be wrong, but I’m 95% confident.
The original article has been pulled.........
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