I love watching you guys purse fight and wang measure over medals.
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Combat Time . . . .
- Thread starter robav8r
- Start date
It's called a satchel. Indiana Jones carries one...
On the other side of the equation, I already posted the points I earned towards an air medal. Don't have one, needs about another couple weeks in Djibouti to get one. Personally, based on I what I did, I don't feel I rated one even if I had met the hours, but that didn't matter. We have criteria, and based on the very real threat my flights met it, I just don't feel special. All I can say is I'm pretty intimately familiar with the pooping habits of a couple certain terrorist fuckheads, so I guess that gets me my 14 points.
My old man retired with 55 air medals . I always thought it was cool growing up and of course I am proud of him, but I remember him telling me when I was still in high school that they don't really mean anything.
I was proud to get my first couple but I really understood what he meant when I received four of them from my last deployment from just taking off and orbiting at FL500, above any threat, where the only real danger was falling asleep during landing after a 10-12 hour flight.
I live in TN now and along with Purple Heart license plates, the state issues air medal plates. Can't help but chuckle when I see one...wonder how many "thank you for your service" comments they get while driving around.
I plan on getting an air medal license plate once I move back to Texas. My sense of embarrassment is outweighed by free parking.
And if you somehow ever end up with 50% disability from the VA and get those plates, you can drive most Texas toll roads for free
Do those plates get you anything special? Discounted registration maybe?
I'll skip the discussion over gongs, prizes, and gewgaws.
I will, however, refer to the opening question of this thread. "Who has the most "combat" time?" Well, the winner is the US Army by almost any measure not involving ships. The Navy runs a reasonable second place with the Marines in a near tie. The Air Force, mostly because of their newness, come in last. Of course, I am keeping the Army Air Forces of WWII in the Army (where they belong). Army rotary wing operations also strip out every service since. Hell, I imagine the helicopter "ring flights" around Iraq must amount to thousands of hours alone.
In WWII the US compiled just shy of 108,000,000 hours of total flight time. The USN flew 1,987,852 combat sorties in WWII and the Army Air Forces flew 2,300,000 combat sorties. I do not know if these numbers include USCG coastal operations.
In Vietnam the US Army logged over 10,000,000 combat hours in UH-1's and AH-1's alone. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Army Blackhawks passed the 1 million hour mark back in 2009 with one dude went over 2000 combat hour mark!
As for the Air Force, their numbers are difficult to get at (the Navy's much harder). I will note that contrary to popular belief the top sortie dog in the AF was the F-100 Super Saber with 360,283 missions (more than all the P-51's of WWII). The USN flew 785,000 fixed wing combat sorties in Vietnam, the Marines 347,000. The USAF flew 679,700 fixed wing combat sorties in VN. I haven't yet found a good source for rotary wing missions.
In Desert Storm the fixed wing sortie count was pretty even with both Navy and USAF coming in just below 10,000 combat sorties. I have no reasonable information on fixed wing operations in Aftpghanistan or Iraq.
I will, however, refer to the opening question of this thread. "Who has the most "combat" time?" Well, the winner is the US Army by almost any measure not involving ships. The Navy runs a reasonable second place with the Marines in a near tie. The Air Force, mostly because of their newness, come in last. Of course, I am keeping the Army Air Forces of WWII in the Army (where they belong). Army rotary wing operations also strip out every service since. Hell, I imagine the helicopter "ring flights" around Iraq must amount to thousands of hours alone.
In WWII the US compiled just shy of 108,000,000 hours of total flight time. The USN flew 1,987,852 combat sorties in WWII and the Army Air Forces flew 2,300,000 combat sorties. I do not know if these numbers include USCG coastal operations.
In Vietnam the US Army logged over 10,000,000 combat hours in UH-1's and AH-1's alone. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Army Blackhawks passed the 1 million hour mark back in 2009 with one dude went over 2000 combat hour mark!
As for the Air Force, their numbers are difficult to get at (the Navy's much harder). I will note that contrary to popular belief the top sortie dog in the AF was the F-100 Super Saber with 360,283 missions (more than all the P-51's of WWII). The USN flew 785,000 fixed wing combat sorties in Vietnam, the Marines 347,000. The USAF flew 679,700 fixed wing combat sorties in VN. I haven't yet found a good source for rotary wing missions.
In Desert Storm the fixed wing sortie count was pretty even with both Navy and USAF coming in just below 10,000 combat sorties. I have no reasonable information on fixed wing operations in Aftpghanistan or Iraq.
I'd submit that USN sortie totals were entirely too much for OEF. Possibly the worst use of CVW assets ever. Though I'd guess it checked some box green in some metric somewhere and not only made Admirals happy but kept us "relevant".........though I'd argue it furthered the argument that we are irrelevant.
Interesting. As an historian I will note that many of these metrics are fairly useless unless taken with good amount of analysis.
"An historian?" I say, tut tut, cheerio, old chap!
Well, having started my grown up life as a "grunt" who bacame a "rotor head," I felt the need to class things up a bit now that I have a fancy education.
Edumucation.
I went far enough that we call it skoolin'.