"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in message
om...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...
...
Bush was not guilty of being AWOL. In the Guard there are provisions for
individuals to perform "split training" and "equivalent training"
assemblies, before or after the scheduled drills, when they can't
reasonably
attend the scheduled events. Based upon the NYT investiagtion results,
that
is what GWB did--he was not the first, and he will not be the last, to
perform a portion of his duty in such a fashion.

I've never seen copies of the documents allegedly obtained by the
NYT. Have they been posted online?

Not to my knowledge. But another poster has included a rather detailed
analysis of Bush's records that does seem to support the contention that he
attended sufficient days of training each year.


Hopefully this will eventually settle the matter:


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...litary_records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Feb9.html

Looks like the former kind of makes the latter immaterial, and that he did
perform enough required duty to receive credit for "good" years.


This document has been cited as evidence of poor attendence, but it
certainly is not clear to me.

http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/doc23.gif

Hard to read it, but it appears to be nothing more than an acknowledgement
statement--the undersigned acknowledges he has been informed that he has to
perform IAW whatever regfulation and faces potential penalties if he does
not do so. Not an uncommon kind of transaction in the military.



... or (b) they volunteered for
active duty (just as Bush had volunteered for Palace Alert duty, which
could
have found him serving in SEA had he been accepted).

Somewhere I have seen a copy of a document in which GWB had expressed
a preference to not be assigned ot overseas duty. But I wasn't able
to find it just now.

That refers to the statement he signed upon initially entering the service.
As has been pointed out elsewhere by others, signing such a statement upon
service entry, for a guy going into a Guard unit, is not out of line. He had
enlisted into a vacancy in a particular unit, not into the Air
Force-as-a-whole as active duty personnel do. As someone else has already
mentioned regarding this, it is likely that he was told something to the
effect, "Nah, you are joining this ANG unit, so don't check the "am willing"
block for overseas service".


This is the first that I heard of 'Palace ALert Duty' or that Bush
had volunteered for duty outside of the US. Can you offer some
evidence in support of that, explain 'Palace Alert Duty'?

Palace Alert was a program where ANG F-102 pilots volunteered for extended
active duty periods (six months, IIRC) flying F-102's in active component
squadrons. The USAF was getting short of F-102 pilots in the later sixties,
so the ANG was a source for fleshing out that requirment. Palace Alert could
find the ANG volunteer serving at any number of F-102 bases (see:
www.philippecolin.net/Gmb.html ), including those in SEA. ISTR Bush
mentioned in his autobiography that he and a buddy signed up for the program
but were eventually told they lacked the experience that was required. Some
folks (one rather loud mouthed yet poorly informed old coot in this NG being
among the worst) claim that he nefariously *knew* he would not be qualified
for the program and dreamed this up as a way of being able to say he
volunteered for overseas duty when he knew it would not happen. But in fact
the determination of how much experience was required would have been based
upon how many pilots had volunteered at that point, and how many slots the
ANG was tasked to fill--here is an excerpt concerning an ANG second
lieutenant F-102 pilot who found himself serving in Iceland with the 57th
FIS while the bulk of the squadron was undergoing transition to the F-4:

"...what is believed to be the last F-102 intercept was made by 2nd Lt.
Grant E. Bollen. Lt. Bollen was an ANG pilot that volunteered along with
four other ANG pilots to go on an open ended TDY to Iceland to replace
"Deuce drivers" that were in the USA, converting to the F-4. His arrival
caused some consternation in Keflavik, because 2nd lieutenants were not to
be posted to Iceland. He had 500 hours in the 102, but he was not allowed to
stand alert at first and states that "I had to be escorted by a major
everywhere I went".

www.verslo.is/baldur/57th_fis/57th.htm


Was PAD related to the SAC in any way?

No, it was an ADC (Air Defense Command) mission.



... This was at a time
when the Marines were so hard pressed for pilots that they
had to send men to Army and Air Force Flight Schools.

It seems to me that if the Marines had to send pilots to the
Army and AF for training then the Marines must have had a SURPLUS
of pilots (e.g. too many to for the USMC to train on its own)
rather than being hard pressed for them.

I did not write that. Yeah, you'd have to wonder what the problem with their
own pipeline was, or what other considerations were taken into account
(i.e., this was arounf the time the USMC started to get the UH-1N, so
piggybacking Huey training on the Army's UH-1 training program would have
made some sense). Either way, the issue is meaningless to the GWB situation.



Hmmm...one wonders why those same archaic fighters were sent to Thailand
and
Vietnam throughout the major part of the war, and as we have already
seen in
another thread, why a couple of them were lost in combat operations.


If indeed they were archaic that does help to explain why some
were lost in combat, does it not?

Not really. The F-102 was never really intended to be anything other than a
point defense interceptor do defend against enemy bomber attacks. It did not
have the capability of carrying the best short range AAM we had
(Sidewinder), and it was rather pitiful in the ground attack role (which
some did actually perform in Vietnam). Nor was it designed to really mix it
up with enemy fighters. Baugher's site indicates that two were lost to AAA,
and one to a Mig-21. Another fifteen were operational losses not related to
combat (can't recall if that includes those destroyed in saper/rocket
attacks on their bases). It continued on in active service with the ANG
until the 74-76 timeframe, when the last were withdrawn from service; the
Turks and Greeks flew them for a few more years, with one rumored encounter
between a couple of Turkish F-102's and Greek F-5's (IIRC) in 1974.

Brooks


--

FF