Fuck yeah!
Big watches!
Hooters girls dig big watches!
Pictured below...railroad grade [circa 1910] Illinois A. Lincoln, 18 size, 21 jewels in Dueber Railway Silverine case...
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These days, it's the opposite. AF fighter and exped VAQ people rack up missions (and Strike/Flight Air Medals) like crazy like you describe. Us schmucks on Das Boot got/get multi-hour multi-tanker transits to/from the AOR back to Mom.
No, it's not new since 2001. It's just funny that it's basically the opposite of what Cat is describing from the Vietnam era, i.e. land-based aircraft having long treks, and carrier people logging 1.0-2.0.That isn't new and isn't even close to what the Army help guys were able to rack up in Vietnam, Chuck Yeager even mentioned it in his bio.
If we were getting shot at regularly, and facing the same dangers that were faced then, I bet we would still use number of missions flown. Flying combat sorties for me wasn't much more dangerous than training at home.All I know is that ever since WW-II and probably even in WW-I, combat missions were quantified by number of missions flown. The bombing flights ate up hours, but after 25 missions, you were done...if still alive.
In more recent times, I see missions are now often quantified by "combat hours" rather than "combat missions." I can only suspect this is an Air Force adjustment, due to they distance and time to target in recent strikes.
My total combat "hours" pale to theirs despite my many combat missions in the most hostile skies since WW-II. All I had to do was launch off the carrier, go feet dry for 15 minutes blowing up SAM sites and oil refineries, and returning to a ready deck in less than an hour... if I was lucky.
Back when I was an admin officer processing S/F Air Medals there was a point system:
2 points for a strike (ordnance delivery opposed)
1 point for a flight (ordnance delivery unopposed)
0.4 points for a mission (CAP, recon, patrol unless opposition than credited as either strike or flight)
2 points per 25 hours
You could not use hours if the sortie was credited as a mission.
Any combination of 20 points equaled a S/F Air Medal.
Back when I was an admin officer processing S/F Air Medals there was a point system:
2 points for a strike (ordnance delivery opposed)
1 point for a flight (ordnance delivery unopposed)
0.4 points for a mission (CAP, recon, patrol unless opposition than credited as either strike or flight)
2 points per 25 hours
You could not use hours if the sortie was credited as a mission.
Any combination of 20 points equaled a S/F Air Medal.
Is that like a Captain introducing himself as a below zone Major?For the USAF fighter community (at least as of the last time I deployed in 2011), an O1 sortie is 1 point. A combat support mission is 0.5.
20 points is an Air Medal submission. 10 points for an Aerial Achievement Medal.
S/F varies a bit over time....at the end of OEF, one mission was some fraction of a point for doing nothing, to IIRC a point or two if you employed (uncommon). Beginning of OIR was one point/flight, 2 for employment. The bigger disconnect between FWD deployed and CVN is in the campaign medal criteria. Pretty easy for every admin dork in the AF to get one just by spending a month there, where the CVW folks need to spend something like 30 consecutive days in country, or 60 total or something like that. Or you can employ and qualify. In a non-shooting war like OEF, a full deployment in a VFA squadron often did not qualify one to wear the service medal.
Back when I was an admin officer processing S/F Air Medals there was a point system:
2 points for a strike (ordnance delivery opposed)
1 point for a flight (ordnance delivery unopposed)
0.4 points for a mission (CAP, recon, patrol unless opposition than credited as either strike or flight)
2 points per 25 hours
You could not use hours if the sortie was credited as a mission.
Any combination of 20 points equaled a S/F Air Medal.
Pretty sure the math is still the same, since when I flew out of Djibouti we were counting hours because our flight profiles made it faster to get to 20 points than by mission. 3 months I got to 14 points.
Still a thing on OIR, minus the "VFA not dropping" part. I felt bad for the VAQ guys who were doing good work and got the same medal as I did for briefing them in CVIC / the same medal as CSSN Schmuckatelli for burning their grilled cheese at midrats.