Mine was the Air Force of Jimmah Carter, and was a low point for funding, and discipline. Air Force Basic Training was six weeks long, and out of those six weeks included only one half of one day on the Confidence Course. The rest of the time was spent making sure all of your shoes were in a straight line under your bunk, and that your underwear was folded precisely 6” wide in your drawer.
Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Air Force, and I took it more seriously than most. I was promoted in the earliest possible time every cycle, and was an E5 when my enlistment was up. That wasn’t much to my friend who enlisted in the Navy at the same time I enlisted in the Air Force, but it was the best that could be done wearing a blue suit.
But the thing that constantly reminds me that I wasn’t really in the military is that there is a seven year gap between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the Grenada war in 1982 that is ineligible to join the American Legion because there was no ‘conflict.’
I served from 1977 to 1981.
I missed the renaissance of the Reagan Years, and I have no idea what the Air Force of today is like, but it has to be better than the post Vietnam funk it was in when I served.
Funny...very similar. I was in 1975-1979, and I was in the Navy of Jimmah Carter...boy, did I hate that, having him as CIC. My first voting experience was to vote against him in 1976. They had his damned portrait somewhere, perhaps on the ship, and I hated seeing it.
I made E5 as well, and IIRC, that was the best you could do in the military at that time in a four year hitch, because every time I was able to advance I did, so it was impossible to make E6 in four years.
Now, we couldn’t steam and fly all the time, and spent more time in port on deployment than we needed to, because there was not much money to fly. I remember cannibalizing the bejeezus out of planes because spare parts were harder to come by, and when training, our pilots were not expending much ordinance, they were dropping those small, silly blue training bombs more than anything else.
I didn’t think the morale was particularly bad, though, at least not in my unit and not on the ship in general. I was told by people recently that there was a lot of racial animosity, but I didn’t see much of a difference with society in general, and I had shipmates and squadron buddies of all colors. I did get jumped and beat up by a bunch of black guys one night on base at Cecil Field, and it was clearly a racial attack, but when I went over and told my Petty Officer in charge of the night shift, he asked if I wanted to get a bunch of guys together to go find them. I said no, but in the intervening years, I have come to appreciate that, because Petty Officer Woods was black, and while I looked hard at a lot of black guys after that looking for one of them, I never felt like I let it rule my relations. I knew people like Petty Officer Woods had my back regardless of the fact that he was black and I was white.
I certainly knew there was none of this political correctness crap back then, and people did make pointed racial or ethnic comments both in jest and in seriousness, and nobody went running to a superior officer because of it. You just sucked it up and took it or dished it back.
I remember a few years back watching the PBS series “Carrier” filmed on the Nimitz, and I was appalled and nearly speechless. As bad as some things were when I was in, I didn’t see people puss out like they did in that series. I never, ever saw anyone doing that kind of thing, and the insanity of that mixed crew and all that melodrama, well...I just couldn’t understand it. I wanted to reach through the screen and give them a slap in the face and say “Come on-strap on a pair! You enlisted on your own, nobody twisted your arm to sign that paper!”
Any time someone whined or began to puss out, someone would invariably say that, so...you never did it, because you didn’t want to hear it!
I too missed the Reagan years. Well, I got a lot out of the military. It gave me a lot of tools that I have depended on my entire career. I went to college, but college could never, ever have taught me the kinds of things the military did. I sure do appreciate it.
Also, no chemical warfare (tear gas) training and if it was too hot in San Antonio you didn't even go to the Confidence Course (obstacle course) at all. My TI told our flight to go around the "crawl on your belly through the mine field."
I also made E-5 in three years and nine months, but I was one of those six year enlistees that sewed on A1C half way through basic, so I didn't go below the zone. I enlisted in 1975 with two months left of the Viet Nam Era.