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Navy Wings?
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. |
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