I've seen greenie boards go through several mutations...

Some squadron's it's the center of the ready room. One squadron on my last
cruise had a rubber turd (placed on the ready room chair of the no-grade
ball-flyer of the night) and a large 3/4 inch bolt (hung above the ready
room chair of the last dude to bolter). Funny stuff.

I've seen squadrons (even this last cruise) try to eliminate the greenie
board. Some (VFA-146 circa 1996-1998) made it work very well (winning
nearly 6 line periods in a row). Some (VF-211 same time period) tried to
mimic that behavior with less than optimum results.

My last cruise, one squadron OPSO tried to eliminate the greenie board and
met with fierce resistance from his JO LSO's. The head LSO even wrote a
bogus "history of the greenie board" point paper to defend it.

Seems to me that the squadrons that won line periods had either (a) more
experience than most other squadrons (i.e. less nuggets), (b) better jets
(i.e. Hornets over Tomcats... Although not ALWAYS the case), or most
importantly, (c) actually covered pattern and ball flying technique daily as
a 3 minute portion of every admin brief.

Then, of course, there's just dumb luck and talent.

--Woody

In 3/8/04 2:11 PM, in article , "Mike
Kanze" wrote:

Ed,

A further thought concerning the emphasis placed upon the Greenie Board...

Since the boat is a pretty tight place from which to operate aircraft,
flight ops must be done efficiently and safely. Part of this need
translates into maximizing the boarding rate. This is done in at least two
ways:

* Minimizing the interval between successive approaches. (During my 1973
cruise aboard CORAL MARU, we strived for a 15 second trap-to-trap interval.)

* Maximizing the number of first-time arrestments.

An air wing with a highly-efficient boarding rate enables the ship to stay
within the Air Plan ("on-time" launch / land cycles more likely, greater
margin within which to deal with inevitable problems, etc.) and maximize the
number of sorties available.

Crews that predictably contribute to high boarding rates are valued
accordingly.

Also, the boat is the only place where crews can really hone this particular
skill. FCLPs are not - by themselves - adequate. Besides, time ashore is
better spent on honing warfighting skills so that - when you do finally
deploy - you do so ready to fight.