Vidas Vilkas and I went through Preflight School together in 1969. Excellent representative of the fine folks in CG aviation.

However, Vidas was very tight-lipped about his family since many were still living in behind the Iron Curtain (Lithuania?) then.

--
Mike Kanze

"Press '1' if you speak English, press '2' to disconnect until you can."

- Anonymous

"qui si parla Campagnolo" wrote in message oups.com...

Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 10:54:10 -0500, wrote:

On 21 Jan 2007 15:27:39 GMT, Bob Moore
wrote:

qui si parla Campagnolo wrote

Mike Kanze wrote:
My entire class was SERGRADed.

When I got my wings along with about 15 others in Beeville(first 2
weeks of June, 1974) we were the first nuggets to get fleet orders for
a long time(maybe a year or more?) 2 F-4 seats( I got one-other Mike
Price), some A-7 seats, couple of A-6..more than a few A-4..Not enough
nuggets to fill all the rquirments but they wouldn't let any Sergrads
take the excess.

What's SERGRADed?

SElective Retained GRADuate. Newly winged guys plowed back as
instructors.

That's what we in the junior service call a FAIP--First Assignment IP.

It was a result of the rather extensive draw-down of pilot
requirements at the end of the SEA conflict. In USAF, the agreement
was that each major air command would take UPT graduates in proportion
to the number of line pilot slots they had. So, Training Command with
28% of the AF pilots at that time had to take a quarter of the
graduates.

There was a lot of emotional argument about quality, but it really
turns out that the job is so rote that a brand-new grad can be pretty
good at it. The only thing missing is the intimidation factor that is
the basic stock-in-trade of the military flight instructor. The three
tool of the IP: fear, sarcasm and ridicule.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

I thought it was noise, pain and repetition, no wait, that's for little
kids. I was ususally impressed with the 'plowbacks' in VT-26/5. Most
were very good, but the 'fleet' guys did have something 'extra', even
if it was just a sea story. One of the best in VT-26 was Vidas
Vilkas..Coastie who fenagled his way out of something in the CG to the
USN TraCom..great guy, as memory serves..it WAS 32 years ago.