John wrote:
On 21 Jan 2007 06:40:03 -0800, "qui si parla Campagnolo"
wrote:

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.

I got my wings in August of 74 out of VT-24 also. Who else was in your
group? Not likely we ever flew any sorties together as you were just
far enough ahead of us. Jim Collins was my primary IP in VT-24. I had
Len Nicholson (USMC Captain) in VT-26. Gene Teter was CO of VT-24 then
and I crossed paths with him a number of times over the years. Got
qute a few former Bobcats here at the airline too. You may remember Al
Ramos - one of our senior captains now.

I was in VT-25. I don't remember a lot of the IPs, Dave McNally, Roger
Hoos, some really good USMC major, a gent fro OV-10s. Wigs Ludwig was a
TraWing guy, another future boss of mine in VF-31 and VX-4. Remains a
mystery why all the fleet seats for our bunch, fewer before and after.
When in the F-4 RAG, VF-101, Oceana, we were in a very small
class..only 2 nuggests, some F-8 transition guys(Red Best was one of
the F-8 transition guys, another of my futrure bosses).

I got SERGRADed to VT-24 myself. There were 9 of us who got winged on
the end of August. 3 got SERGRAD (myself, my best friend Craig
Henderson (VT-23 Kingsville) and one to Meridian), 1 each A-7 and A-4
fleet seats, 3 got VC and one went to a desk and never got a cockpit
again. All of us were disappointed because just a few months earlier
(as in your case) there seemed to be plenty of orders and few
SERGRADS. However, the hump from the 'Nam push caught up to us. And it
got worse - a couple of classes after us all the orders were SERGRAD
or desks (just about 50/50).

In spite of the purge earlier, there were still too many in the
pipeline. That, combined with the transitions that were going on. The
S-3 was not yet on-line, the A-4 was giving way to the A-7 and the F-4
to the F-14. As squadrons came back from Nam they got decommissioned
or lost their aircraft while the crews went through transition. That
meant not enough seats for the guys coming out of training. We had
guys that got S-3 orders, but had to come back for two weeks of flying
every 6 months until the RAG stood up and actually had jets for them
to fly.