Ed brought up Palace Cobra. First, let me say I never evebn saw any
fuel when refuleing with teh F4 (Duh!- the recptacle's about three feet
beind the cockpit). Anyway - I was an RTU IP when this was going on -
we even got an O5 who'd been at Lawrence Livermore Lbs doing nuke
design for the last 10 years to check out in the F4. He was so full of
classified smarts he wasn;t going anywhere and definitely not to SEA.
But that was okay - he couldn't fly the F4 either and we finally gave
up trying to tech him how. . OTH I had a B52 copilot who oved the F4,
flew it like he was born in it and still hade to go back to B52s. TANJ
- there ain't no justice. If there was, USAF DCS/P would be frying in
hell right now. 'Palace Cobra' sent a lot of 'fighter pilots' over to
SEA who were seriously short of fighter skills. On the job training in
combat is not a very smart way to fight a war. But, seriously, it was
fun to sit around the Patrick AFB O Club (Cape Canaveral) and listen to
a lot of Space Command guys wearing wings whining about their
experience being too valuable to be sent off to SEA. Walt BJ