Separating the men from the boys

Woody,

What I actually *did* as a young idiot and what was 3710/SOP are two
different stories, of course.

3710/SOP aside, we were operating during the very end of the VN war. There
was a higher level of tolerance / looking-the-other-way by the low rocket
numbers back then.

Big sea change came in late 1973 / early 1974: end of actual US-involved VN
hostilities, Yom Kippur War / Arab oil embargo / fuel shortages, severe
throttling back of budget dollars and flight hours - and much more attention
to the bureaucratic i-dotting and t-crossing.

IOW, the fun was over.

Personal records. 100'AGL over water at night at mil power--same as you.
(Why? Because I was dumb. It's not like anyone can see you or you get
extra points for going that low and fast.)

Not QUITE as dumb as all that. Remember - in the Intruder there were TWO
pairs of eyes looking forward through the same windscreen. If the VS
community could do it - albeit at lower airspeeds - so could we.

500' AGL up the John Day River Valley at night in the goo. B/N's radar was
practically a pin point. Both of us agreed not to do that any more.

Now think about what that might have been like with an "A" system. BG

Owl's personal record: Daylight / VMC ~30' AGL at 360 over a VERY FLAT
section of
desert somewhere in the Chocolate Mountains range for about 2 - 3 minutes.
Dave, my stick, was a married man so we didn't press it beyond that.

******

As a new outfit back then, VA-95 was EXTREMELY fortunate. A former SPAD
squadron that also had a one-cruise flirtation with A-4s during the 1960s,
VA-95 was reestablished as the last VN-era A-6 squadron in 1972. The
Lizards were mainly a bunch of nuggets, yours truly among them. Only one or
two of the senior O-3s had cruised before. Senior leadership was a mix
of "pre-enjoyed" A-6 folks and A-4 community retreads. At this stage of
hostilities, A-6 talent was spread very thinly throughout the fleet.

This is a recipe for potential disaster for a new squadron, shooting
happening or not. But despite this, and the loss of a crew at Boardman
during workups, we had no mishaps during my stay with them - including the
entire 1973 cruise. I attribute this mainly to our (we nuggets) KNOWING how
little we knew and thus our paying strict attention to the details. (There
was also a little of the "I don't want to be the last guy killed in VN"
thinking in there as well.)

We thus spared ourselves from doing many of the dumb things others had done,
flying low aside.

--
Mike Kanze

436 Greenbrier Road
Half Moon Bay, California 94019-2259
USA

650-726-7890

"When was the last time in world history in which 'suicide' and 'martyrdom'
were the code of enlightened action admired by any society?"

- Roy Fassel (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/27/03)


"Doug "Woody" and Erin Beal" wrote in message
...
On 11/2/03 10:16 PM, in article
, "Elmshoot"

wrote:
[rest snipped]