First Post!

[wyntrout]

Hi! I hope that non-military can participate, too. Both my wife and I are retired from the USAF. I served from August 1964 to August 1968 and made SSGT E-5 before departing the USAF for college using the GI Bill... and working part to full-time... and some of those Federal Loans helped with luxuries, too.

I went back into the Air Force in June 1972 and was commissioned in September 1972. I joined to become a navigator... my top and only choices were Pilot, Helicopter pilot, or Navigator. I don't know if I could have held out for pilot, but knew I wanted to fly again... more fun that a desk job! I wouldn't have re-joined for a non-flying job.

No one needs to get carried away with his/her history or biography... just thought I would mention mine a bit.

I was in the USAF Security Service and flew in RC-130's and RC-135's as a linguist eavesdropping and recording target radio transmissions... mostly Tactical Air... GCI and cockpit stuff in-theater in and around North Viet Nam. This was my second language training in the Air Force, the first being a whole year in Arabic! They had too many Arab linguists! I was able to cross-train after volunteering for Vietnamese, but got a short course of 4 months which wasn't much for a tonal language! On my way to Japan in Spring of 1967, the Six-Days Arab-Israeli War started and the Air Force kind of regretted getting some of their Arab linguists into more critical languages as I did!

After commissioning in 1972, I trained as a navigator and then was selected for B52 navigator training and later Radar Navigator training at the flight school before my first assignment. They had an accelerated program from the start for Radar Navigator/Bombardiers... maybe not the best program, as you didn't get the helpful training in the navigators seat before taking on the harder job.

I got into the D-model... tall-tailed models... of the BUFFs just after they had returned from SouthEast Asia in 1974 and I retired before the first Gulf War, so I never dropped bombs on anyone... intentionally!

There was that one night over unfamiliar territory where I had "difficulty" finding my radar aiming point until late in the run... low level around 500 ft and 350 to 400 mph... at night... at a range in Avon Park, Florida. Anyhow, with about a minute to release on the bomb run, I positively identified the aiming point and put my crosshairs on it and told the pilot to center his indicator. He asked if I was sure... and I was... everything looked okay... we turned on the radio tone and had tone break at release for radar scoring... we actually released dummy bombs, too... pretty unusual... but that was this mission... real drops. There were no bad reports of unidentified fallen objects, but the ground crews didn't find the bombs either... the impact points. I sweated that for a few days, because that's always a nagging fear... that something might have gone wrong!

Anyhow. I like to yack and thought I would go first here. This isn't meant to be a biographical forum... just discuss whatever.

Click on my screen name and there is an album and more info, with comments on the photos as you click on them.

Wynn