CCK, December 16,
1970
I
had a little heart-to-heart with Major E, one of the schedulers.
"Training item accomplishments" have become quite a hot item
lately. The wing commander is leaning on the director of ops who
is leaning on the squadron commanders who are leaning on their
schedulers to get all crew members up to date. In most cases this
is being accomplished with a pencil rather than an airplane. One
of the requirements, doing drops and formation flying, I haven't done
since I left Pope and they want me to certify that I've done a
personnel drop, heavy equipment drop, 2 CDS drops and a
GCA/doppler drop since I've been here! If they're going to carry
me on their roster as TAC qualified they're going to have to give me a
TAC trainer to do some drops. I've about had it with
pencil-whipping requirements.
Refusing to falsify this training certification
may have been a career-limiting move, but what could they do?
Send
me to
Vietnam?
CCK, December 17,
1970
Today's mailbag brought a letter of appreciation from a Colonel Payne
of Det One (Airlift Control Center at Tan Son Nhut)
commending me and my crew for our "outstanding contribution to the
airlift mission" and for completing 98% of our assigned sorties on
my first shuttle as an AC. The original went to CCK's director of ops.
Not bad. Also yesterday
Major Steve Kovacs passed on a similar compliment that we were really
getting the job done at TSN. That was nice to hear. We get
a lot of admonitions like "Don't screw up" but not much
positive feedback.
Rotation to U-Tapao, Thailand, December 21, 1970
I
got a no-notice checkride coming in from CCK today and did pretty
well on it. Even made a couple of grease job landings.
What could they do? Give me a no-notice checkride?
Interesting coincidence.
The flight record
form was the source of some problems today. The major whose
crew
deadheaded in with us wanted to log a little time on the forms,
which is quasi-legal, so I agreed
to put him on. Then
he
wrote in everybody else on his crew!
Kinda ticked me off. When I found out, I erased his name and
everybody else's except his flight engineer, who took Sgt. Bruno's
place on one leg and did a real good
job. Sheesh.
Back at CCK, December 30, 1970
When
I returned I worked on the information sheet for my Officer's
Effectiveness Rating. This morning Colonel R, my rating official,
informed me it was due yesterday! I was rather surprised when I
added up all my flying time, missions, etc. and found I've flown 251
sorties in Vietnam since I've been here.
