Our Aviation Intelligence (AI) was a fresh caught Ensign straight out of Air Force run AI school in Colorado. They filled his head full of nonsense like how tough a crowd a Fighter Squadron Ready Room would be....well, maybe there was truth to that! He certainly did not realize that humor was highly prized and everyone was a target. By resisting our mirth, he became a target. But he tried to take us all on....not with humor, but with plaintive attempts to get us to be serious about Aircraft Recognition (as well as ships and subs).
When I joined my Ready Room, I was already a fairly senior LT due to my time in the Marines, but although I was a “nugget” RIO, I took to aircraft recognition like it was in my blood. I even had my own reference library due to lifelong love of all things aviation, but that did not make our “Spy” happy. He said aviation magazines were simply hearsay and should not be trusted. I made a note to myself not to leave any laying around or risk them being put in the shredder.
Conversely, I noticed some of his Official slides were wrongly annotated. He was aghast that anyone would question anything that came through his official pipeline of dimly lit, purposely ambiguous B&W slides used to train and test us. I got ahold of his slide carousel and went to the CAG AI to report the errors since we were ultimately tested and I didn’t want to be trained on wrong aircraft. The ones I spotted were Mirage variants so CAG AI was happy because eventually the visiting Flag Staff tests the entire Air Wing and it’s a big deal to do well or not.
It quickly became a one v many with the Ready Room every time he tried to run us through a slide tray. He had shown a vulnerability and that was like declaring open season...on himself. He was crumbling fast like a sand castle against the incoming tide. It didn’t help when his reaction to taunts or frivolity was “You guys! This is serious” in a shrill voice. One day, he simply ran out of the Ready Room saying “This is just what they said it would be like!” The Skipper turned to me and said “Take over!” I did not need a cheat sheet, I knew what the slides were just by looking at them...as long as they were correct!
We got through the dreaded Air Wing wide Recognition Testing with flying colors and made it to our Med/IO Deployment. By then, he was starting to come back into the Ready Room. As we transited the Red Sea, he showed up with his Slide Tray to brief us on what to expect. Again, all slides were B&W. He showed us the AOB for Iran which included a P-3 in camouflage. One of the pilots asked what colors they were and he replied Desert colors like their fighters. I immediately contested that because my recent copy of Air International had that very airplane on the ramp in the states before delivery painted in hues of blue. I might as well been at the Salem Witch Trials....as a witch!! He was horrified that I would mention a forbidden publication!! I still retrieved my copy from my stateroom and passed it around so we’d know what to expect. Stayed tuned for the rest of the story....this is the exact picture in my magazine that he claimed was disinformation
When I joined my Ready Room, I was already a fairly senior LT due to my time in the Marines, but although I was a “nugget” RIO, I took to aircraft recognition like it was in my blood. I even had my own reference library due to lifelong love of all things aviation, but that did not make our “Spy” happy. He said aviation magazines were simply hearsay and should not be trusted. I made a note to myself not to leave any laying around or risk them being put in the shredder.
Conversely, I noticed some of his Official slides were wrongly annotated. He was aghast that anyone would question anything that came through his official pipeline of dimly lit, purposely ambiguous B&W slides used to train and test us. I got ahold of his slide carousel and went to the CAG AI to report the errors since we were ultimately tested and I didn’t want to be trained on wrong aircraft. The ones I spotted were Mirage variants so CAG AI was happy because eventually the visiting Flag Staff tests the entire Air Wing and it’s a big deal to do well or not.
It quickly became a one v many with the Ready Room every time he tried to run us through a slide tray. He had shown a vulnerability and that was like declaring open season...on himself. He was crumbling fast like a sand castle against the incoming tide. It didn’t help when his reaction to taunts or frivolity was “You guys! This is serious” in a shrill voice. One day, he simply ran out of the Ready Room saying “This is just what they said it would be like!” The Skipper turned to me and said “Take over!” I did not need a cheat sheet, I knew what the slides were just by looking at them...as long as they were correct!
We got through the dreaded Air Wing wide Recognition Testing with flying colors and made it to our Med/IO Deployment. By then, he was starting to come back into the Ready Room. As we transited the Red Sea, he showed up with his Slide Tray to brief us on what to expect. Again, all slides were B&W. He showed us the AOB for Iran which included a P-3 in camouflage. One of the pilots asked what colors they were and he replied Desert colors like their fighters. I immediately contested that because my recent copy of Air International had that very airplane on the ramp in the states before delivery painted in hues of blue. I might as well been at the Salem Witch Trials....as a witch!! He was horrified that I would mention a forbidden publication!! I still retrieved my copy from my stateroom and passed it around so we’d know what to expect. Stayed tuned for the rest of the story....this is the exact picture in my magazine that he claimed was disinformation
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