heesfan5,
Jasperdog clearly has a lot of time on his hands... I amend my previous statement to read... "USMMA is a great place to go to school if you want to fly for the Navy... You'd be joining 'tens of hundreds' of Kings Pointer Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers who've gone before you."
V/r
USMMECOM
USMMECOM:
Actually I really don't have "a lot of time on my hands" - I just have a couple of things I'm passionate about, my Alma Mater and supporting it are one of those things - most specifically I'm really passionate about seeing it accurately and adequately portrayed, represented and supported. Those that follow or read my relatively frequent posts here as you obviously do know, I'm also passionate in my personal conviction that first and foremost it is a Maritime Academy and that is a very necessary thing the nation needs and service it provides. As such here's my math: An average graduating class is 250 giver or take (actually that's probably a high number).
So it really didn't take long for me to estimate things and I'm relatively sure get pretty accurate as to the estimate number of our relatively small (~15,000) alumni community of the number of military aviators. I didn't do it to take issue with you, merely to provide a more realistic number that was grounded in the reality that our entire Alumni base numbers less than 20,000 and the majority of those did not pursue aviation. Here's the quick, and most would say relatively dirty math. From the 1950's through the mid 1980's an average of 15% or less went active duty, the vast majority (virtually all) who did so went Navy, though clearly no more than 25% of those went aviation. So that's 35 years of classes number 250 *0.15*0.25 or basically 328 Naval Aviators - plus (+) - 25 years of Classes where being generous 25% of the Class went active duty and call it 20% of those became aviators (in any branch of service) or: (25 years)*(250 - even though that's a high number per class it should more than compensate for the times like last year when 33% vice 25% went active duty - *25% going active duty *20% got aviator billets = 313 for an estimated total of 640 - 1,000 Military Aviators out of the USMMA since it's inception. That includes two astronauts and to my understanding one Two Star Admiral USN, (Retired).
Given the number on post-WWII era alumni is only on the order of ~12,000 the fact that between 5 and 8% joined the Military Aviation community, I'd say that would show that as you note the USMMA is as good a path to such a career as any - a point you made and I never disputed.
So finally I have two questions for you - given that there is now an easy to use, well stocked option to obtaining virtually any sort of USMMA apparel as well as other USMMA related items on-line, with the notable exception of the highly sought after Kings Point G-String available on your site; and that option provides a large portion of it's proceeds to the USMMA Alumni Association which annually donates literally millions of dollars in support of the Regiment of Midshipmen and activities for the same that are not funded by the current Federal Government appropriations and budgets -
1) Why do you still feel the need and where do you find the time to continue to operate your site - the one linked to in your signature here on these types of sites?
and
2) Do purchases we make on that site result in similar donations being made to the USMMA Alumni Foundation or some similar legally chartered (the USMMA Alumni Foundation is a fully chartered 501-3(c)) entity such that at least a portion of those proceeds benefit the Midshipmen in short order and if so, what's the basic formula or history of those contributions been?
For the rest of the readers here looking for USMMA Apparel and/or items if you haven't checked out the "Official Site" for such items and the one that remits a meaningful portion of its proceeds in a way that will definitely result in donations to support the current regiment I recommend you check it out. Lots of nice stuff and a lot of choices/variety - though to be fair I can't find an item with the class and or comedic value of the G-String on the site USMMECOM's signature links to. The Official Site's URL is:
[link removed per forum policy per moderator's direction by post originator]
or you can link to it from the Foundation's home page if you want to make sure you are getting to the right one:
[link removed per forum policies per Moderator's direction by originator by post originator]
Also V/R
Jasperdog