Posted on 05/08/2013 2:25:33 AM PDT by markomalley
I was a career missile officer and did my first tour in the AF at the 91st at Minot. This is not unexpected since SAC was dismantled and the strict training and evaluation protocols of the 60s, 70s and 80s went away. The loosening of strict control means sloppy performance and failure to follow the procedures in place to assure that nuclear weapons are safe.
There is also the real fact that missile officers have a very small chance these days of having a viable career path and I’m sure many see it as just a starting point or a jumping off point. There is also the lack of more senior and experienced officers in the crew slots these days. We used to have a crossflow of officers from other career fields who brought some other experience and discipline to the operations.
I would put it directly on the low level of competence of the commanders both as commanders as well as their knowledge of the mission requirements. Many of them come to the job not even knowing that the pointy end goes up.
A SAC shield with the iron fist squeezing a set of gonads instead of lightening bolts. I still have a patch with that around here somewhere.
Steal it from my profile.
That must have been after I was there in the mid-late 70s. I didn’t hear of any suicides just before arriving, or while I was there. There weren’t any missile crew suicides among any of the guys I served with and there was one I know of after I left; a squadron ops officer whom I knew from my time there but he had other problems. During my time on squadron wing staff at the old 44th at Ellsworth I had not heard of any either. At least during my time in both places the bulk of crew members were certified stable individuals. At Minot we only had one lieutenant who really was crazy and his nickname was Crazy Mac. Anyone on crew at Minot at the time would recognize who this individual was and thankfully they finally got rid of him. He was the only fellow crewmember who truly made me uneasy.
I didn’t see it on your profile but an example is available at this url: http://www.strategic-air-command.com/patches/cmd-SAC-humor.htm
second from the top.
They learned their lessons well, emulating what I remember from Army Air Defense Artillery. Our motto back then was "ADA - We Eat Our Young". We had way too many officers, particularly at Field Grade level (Major, LTC) that were REMF's that should have been kept away from troops.
I had no problem questioning some of the orders of my ranking officers, when the situation demanded it. I had no delusions of making it a career, which I found to be liberating. By the time I made 1st LT, I had commanded both Chaparral and Vulcan platoons, and passed several tac evals.
I admit I could be a PITA to deal with, as my attitude changed radically after flunking my first tac eval. If I was truly the officer responsible for what my unit did, or failed to do, then I was going to do things my way. Fortunately, I worked with excellent NCOs and enlisted men during my Army career.
As I approach my 60th birthday (next year), I know I'm still a PITA...just ask my kids!
So you’d sacrifice your children to the forces of homosexuality, communism and Islam. Go to it, buddy.
That is the $64 trillion dollar question, isn’t it. Well, the voters supposedly put him in that position, so let’s see, shall we?
I never heard of any suicides of crewmembers, at any of the missile wings, but Minot had a reputation for suicides. I can honestly say that I have not run into more people I thought were “just a little crazy” than I did while I was a crewmember, but hey, maybe I was the one who was crazy?
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