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Do tell.

Facts are stubborn things. The stories recounted are unvarnished.

A little aside: about a year later, I was talking to one of your counterparts who worked through the strike. He agreed with my assessment, and told me that on that day, he noted in the log that most of the shift didnt show up for work, and that it was a minor problem.

Was there extra work, mistakes made? Yeah. I recall following a Frontier jet who was told to go around because the local contoller made an error clearing the departing traffic to go in front of him.

So tell us: where did Reagan make his mistake? should he have let PATCO dictate policy and hold the country hostage?

Reagan didn't many ANY mistake.
I was working USAF air traffic control at Seymour Johnson AFB the day it happened in the tower.
In two hours we had 5 Lear Jets and 3 C-140s on the ramp to take about a fourth of our RAPCON controllers and fly them to different FAA facilities to go immediately to work in those FAA facilities.
We lost another fourth of our controllers to the FAA within about 2 weeks, by reassignment to FAA facilities.
Also our airspace that we were responsible for under our Letter OF Agreement with the FAA, tripled in size , plus we were given a corridor of airspace to control from Seymour Johnson AFB to DARE COUNTY RANGE.
Most of our radar controllers were checked out in their FAA facility within a couple of days.
Some of our controllers from the tower went to FAA Towers were their was only two FAA controller/supervisors and one FAA trainee that didn't walk out on the strike.
Those military tower controllers went to work immediately upon arrival at the FAA tower, and after 8 hours of work, were then sent to find a hotel to stay in.
And yes they were checked out on the spot, (rated/certified for that facility), and most of them never returned to the Air Force.
They just changed from a USAF uniform one day, to civilian clothes the next and tripled their pay check.
All USAF displaced controllers working for the FAA drew about 2 /12 times their regular pay for travel and temporary, high-cost-of-living pay.

And to this day the FAA still holds a grudge against USAF controllers.

"Do tell."

Yup...I wuz there.

The things you were related were as viewed from one cockpit....that AIN'T the big picture. From the cockpit, a pilot does not know anything about the air traffic picture other than what he can see, or hear on the single frequency he is monitoring. An air traffic facility handles far more than one pilot can be aware of.

Where you were on 8/3/81 had a large impact on how the strike affected operations. You related one facility that was little affected, and that is undoubtedly true. I worked at Chicago Center, the busiest air traffic facility in the world. Eight of us were non-Patco and never left, 14 came back before the deadline, which left us with 22 FPL controllers. Counting sups, certified staff, and 3 recent transfers who returned, we had 58 people certified to handle traffic......we fired four hundred sixty five.... more than an inconvenience