Best COVID-19 MEME

Now that's impressive...
 
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Apparently, some aviators actually wore those!
 
and the fun police promptly shut it down...

this is just the latest in a long and glorious history of politically incorrect flight suit/jacket patches
 
Devil Doc said:
Tailhook, I wasn’t there and I’m never going back.
Click to expand...
I have some very mixed memories of this episode.
First off, I'm a SWO and Tailhook was not something that I'd experienced nor wanted to. I'd
heard much about it over the years but it wasn't my world. At the time, I was a drilling reservist so
the Navy really didn't have a handle on my whereabouts most of the time but THIS time, I happened to
be on Active Duty aboard ship for a NATO exercise off the coast of Norway.
Once the investigations into Tailhook started, the Navy in its infinite wisdom had a series of efforts
to determine who was there. Now, let me restate, I'm a SWO and in this case the NAVY had ironclad
evidence that I was thousands of miles away from the debacle but no matter, over the course of a
year or so, I was summoned to my reserve center on six occasions to sign paperwork that I had not
been at Tailhook. In almost every case, this was during the week so included missing work as the
Center was over an hour away and of course there was no compensation for time/trouble. I had a
shipmate at the time, an NFO who actually WAS there but I don't know of any issues that he faced.


.
.
Life has its strange turns and this one does as well. About ten years (and 2 companies) later, I started
attending the "New" Tailhook in connection with my civilian job. While there was a fair amount of
adult beverages and even bacon (in the buffet), I consider it to have been a pretty good professional
event and went about 8 times over 10 years. Evidence of my feelings can be seen by me bringing
my then 16 yr old USNA candidate son who wanted to fly with me one year. I have a great picture
of he and I with Senator McCain as a memento.
 
Funny....I learn so much about our sister services on these pages. I interviewed a bunch of flag officers for my PhD research (finishing it up). One was a USNA rear admiral, pilot. I asked about tailhook...he showed me that exact patch...and a bunch of others and said: "no comment." Then I learned about detailers.

His fun story? He made O-6 without going to the war college...got his job as "Air Boss/CAG?" which was what he wanted (said he didn't want to be a flying SWO...had to ask about that). From that he went to Sodom-on-Potomac. After a job he hated...he moved to another one in the puzzle palace. Then he called his "detailer" and said: "Get me outta here, one more assignment with jets and I'll retire; my career is obviously over."

The detailer said: "This is WHO?" So he repeated his name...and the detailer said: "Captain, listen to me very carefully...I am no longer your detailer. Goodbye."

That was his promotion notice.

Keep it coming folks!! I like learning new things...

Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83
 
That Tailhook was a watershed event in many ways.

I was at the S-3 RAG just a few years prior, and plans were being made for the officers to go, “admin rooms” (party rooms) planned, what birds/which pilots, etc. The XO (still a good friend) called me in and told me I should not even think about going, that it was not a welcoming nor pleasant environment for women, pilot or not, unless they had a certain agenda, and he knew that was not me. He was dismayed by many things he had witnessed in the last several years, but felt compelled to attend as XO. The S-3 community was very short on pilots at that time, so I had been ordered in as a general-purpose “any line officer fill” Assistant Schedules Officer in the shore-based training squadron. I worked hard, worked my way up to Schedules Officer, a LCDR billet, and improved the training hop completion stats and reduced student pilot and NFO completion time for the air syllabus, making my CO/XO/DH happy in a time of IP shortfalls. CO ranked me #1 out of 33 lieutenants but told me to keep my mouth shut about it, that he would take crap about it.

DH, career fighter pilot with 4 commands at sea, had stopped attending even before I met him. He said it had degenerated from primarily a professional symposium to a drink-ex with far too much shady stuff going on. He could party with the best, but didn’t like what he was seeing.

1991 was in those turbulent years in the run-up to 1996 when all combatant ships and aviation platforms were opened to women. Prior to that, the interim phase had been logistics and training platforms for women in pilot, NFO and SWO communities. There was a lot of nastiness, incidents, ugliness, as everyone adjusted. I have always said if a “#militaryMeToo” was started, the stories from that time would be horrifying.

I believe Tailhook has returned to its roots, with a focus on professional development, with enjoyable socializing, but nothing that would start a social media uproar.
 
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