During my tour in my first fighter squadron in the early 1980s (F-111D, Cannon
AFB, New Mexico) I heard a poor soul on stuck mic. Unfortunately, he was doing
a pretty good job of disparaging his flight leader. I was a First Lieutenant
and a wingman in a flight of two Varks that had flown to Red Flag at Nellis AFB
(out and back). We flew the mission, delivered our weapons, egressed and
humiliated some Eagles (even with their inflight reload capability) and then
RTBed to Cannon. There were a few other off-station aircraft in our strike
package, including an F-4G two-ship from George AFB. A few minutes before
Nellis Control handed us off to Center, we heard his transmission. What
follows is only a sampling of his verbal assault on his flight leader.

"Jesus, what the ****'s he doing. ****, he must have his head up his ass
again."

"Now what the **** is he doing. Lead's head must be up and locked more than
usual."

"How did we ever get stuck on his wing? What a loser."

It got worse. A lot worse. Finally, right before Nellis Control handed us off
to Center, it all came to an abrupt halt. We discussed it during our debrief
and we surmised that Lead must have rocked his wingman in to fingertip position
and gave his wingman a visual hand signal. We got a lot of mileage out of this
for a few weeks. Unfortunately, none of us carried a cassette tape recorder
that day. I really wish that we had one.



Kurt Todoroff


Markets, not mandates and mob rule.
Consent, not compulsion.