Good Bad and the Ugly of VT 4 and 10

[nittany03]

Oh also, no more jet SNA training at NAS P'cola.

Unfortunately . . . God I can't stand Meridian.

 

[A4sForever]

My whack at it:

Circa 1970... they were pushing as many studs through as they could thourgh whatver means because of Vietnam. Some studs ended up going through USAF UPT before either rejoining the Navy pipeline... or they got a full set of AF lead wings and then CQ'd at the RAG and got their Navy Wings after CQ.

Other possibility is... they had gone from T-28 Trojan to T-34 with no CQ in Primary, but had not yet implemented CQ for intermediate in T-2 buckeye..... because my guess would be they probably did T-2 CQ in advanced, but they probably had just transitioned into the brand spanking new TA-4J.....

Close, but not quite.

One of the "hold-backs" broke with one of my VT-4 STUD-mates while I was circling overhead the Lexington .... he did an OUTSTANDING job of staying on the deck (he was in full power when the holdback broke --- it was a component of the T-2C bridle system ---) but unfortunately one of the E-men on the deck was killed when he ran over him. Whew .... tough stuff for a STUD with just @ 120 hours total time and around 90 in the T-2. But he did well to save himself and the plane. He couldn't eject as we had a 60 knot seat in those days ..... he literally ground-looped on deck.

"They" checked and found @ 25% of the holdbacks were defective. CANCEL CQ UFN !!! After sitting around VT-4 for about 3 weeks --- "they" culled out the top 30% of STUDs based on grades and sent us on to Texas for Advanced. No Basic Jet CQ. The rest of the guys stayed in Pensacola for several more months until a new set of holdbacks was shipped and then CQ'ed in Basic Jet.

BEAUSE of the Vietnam push you referenced, we got sent to Texas without the first CQ --- that's why the grades came into play. So when we showed up on the ball in the TA-4J for the first time --- it really was the first time.

I later waved some Marine squadrons who got AF wings instead of the Navy program --- big problems for about 30% of them at the ship. I actually had to DQ the Ops O and a couple of senior, experienced LT's. I wasn't too popular at the Cubi O'Club that night.