Replies

Given your experience would the military even a TANG unit use a civie PO Box in Houston, instead of the base address and mail room? And would you have justified centered just a memo? It was a pain in the butt to justify cent stuff on manual typewriters.

And would a Lt Col type up his own memos instead of his secretary? What about all those official letter head papers/forms that come from the base print shop? Curious minds need to know.

Then we need to know much more about those Regs sited in the memo. Just exactly what do they instruct GW to go do. Every Reg tells exactly what you are supposed to do.

I have no expertise in this field. My unit had an APO.

Out LTC did not have a secretary. Period. He had a staff who had some male clerk/typists, may be one or two in the entire unit 800+ guys. (Doesn't count battery/company personnel. It would be unusual for battalion HQ work to be farmed out the batteries.) Doesn't prove anything about the organization of TANG units. Also, if an enlisted member typed those things, Killian may as well have posted it on the Squadron Bulletin Board. One invariant is military life is rumor and gossip. Everyone in the unit would have heard that Lieutenant so and so got reamed for missing a physical in about fifteen minutes.

I cannot ever recall an officer doing anything so infra dig as touching a typewriter. It would be like the Czar of Russia cleaning a latrine.

The one thing I do recall is that the Army FM's (not regulations) had a form letter for every occasion. If the commander needed to reprimand or prod someone for failing to show up for a physical, I would be surprised if there wasn't a form letter he would have had typed.

As an aside, I don't know anyone who joined the Service because they liked the paperwork. There is a lot of paperwork necessary to doing the job. I would find it unusual that a military officer was a prolific writer of unnecessary documents. Guys join the ANG cause they like to fly, they like to tell lies over drinks at the O-club. No one joins to further their literary career.

This is just my impression, not proof of anything. But if I were on a jury....

I tell you what, given my experience (19 years as an AF civilian), none of this mess even looks partially real. Like you said in a previous post, they would have gotten pre-printed letterhead (printed in blue ink BTW), memos and letters were left margin justified, the address would have been XXX Fighter Intercept Squadron, Ellington Field, Texas (zip)....no way would there ever be a POB. I worked for plenty of Lt Cols and I can assure you, they NEVER typed their own memos. Another thing in the memos was the use of periods after rank abbreviations - not done in AF correspondence, i.e., lst. Lt. would have read lLt, as well as no periods after FIS or any other squadron designation. As O'Reilly likes to say, pithy....that's the way to describe military (or at least AF) correspondence...use as few words as possible to get the point across.