This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Air Force

  • Another aircrew honored

    Eggs sends us a link to another story of aircrew bravery from a few months ago which resulted in the Distinguished Flying Cross for Staff Sgt. Joshua Reid and Master Sgt. William Fritsch and the Air Medal with Valor for Staff Sgt. Jason St John and pilots 1st Lt. Patrick Mount and Capt. Ryan Prince;

    Upon landing, Reid, on Pedro 62, and Fritsch said they were not aware they were being engaged by small arms fire.

    Once the PJs hit the ground, they had to engage the enemy.

    Once Pedro 61 was back in the air, Fritsch spotted an insurgent readying a rocket-propelled grenade about 75 meters away. He engaged by shooting almost 200 rounds of .50 caliber fire.

    “It had missed us,” he said. “That was just luck.”

    Fritsch saw a second insurgent readying an RPG and immediately warned his crew. As the grenade exploded near his aircraft, he again returned fire.

    Reid did the same from Pedro 62.

    With 25 coalition soldiers on the ground, Pedro 61 and 62 placed themselves in a blocking position between the enemy and friendly forces, allowing two Army OH-58 attack helicopters to mark and destroy the enemy’s position.

    “Any [mission] could turn into something like this in any given moment,” Fritsch said.

    Reid and Fritsch said the mission was executed properly and safely due to their training.

  • Six NYANG troops awarded Bronze Star for valor

    The Republic reports that a rescue crew from the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing’s 103rd Rescue Squadron are to be awarded Bronze Stars with a Valor device for their rescue of three Americans and an Afghan who had been injured by an explosive device. the rescue took place under intense fire;

    The Guard airmen are Capt. Ronnie Maloney, Senior Master Sgt. Erik Blom, Staff Sgts. James Dougherty, Christopher Petersen and Matthew Zimmer, and Technical Sgt. Anthony Yusup.

    Blom and Yusup serve part-time in the Air Guard. Blom is a Suffolk County police officer. Yusup is studying to become a nurse.

    The other four are full-time members of the 106th Rescue Wing.

    Yusup is from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, while the other five live in Suffolk County.

    From Read Media;

    The friendly unit was still under Taliban fire as the two helicopters approached the scene. Pedro 62, the trail helicopter, moved into the area to put the three-man team of Yusup, Dougherty, and Petersen on the ground first.

    As the helicopter moved in to off load the three Airmen it came under machinegun fire which continued as the men moved to linkup with the American and Afghan infantrymen who were sheltering behind a mud wall. Two rocket propelled grenades hit the ground five meters away from the Air Guardsmen as they began to conduct triage on the wounded Soldiers.

    Yusup, the leader of that three-man element, according to the official citation, elected to remain in the open while exposed to enemy fire so that he could control the casualty collection point and direct timely casualty treatment.

    Dougherty and Peterson ignored the enemy fire and began immediate treatment to save the lives of the injured men. When rocket propelled grenades hit nearby they covered the wounded with their own bodies.

    Meanwhile, the lead helicopter Pedro 61, landed to allow the other three Guardsmen: Maloney, the Combat Rescue Officer; Blom, the team noncommissioned officer in charge, and Zimmer.

    All three men ran across open ground, despite the enemy fire, to help in treating and moving the casualties.

    There’s more of the story at the link that you should read. We make fun of the Air Force and the National Guard, but, really, what would we do without men like these?

  • Snitching on classmates at the Air Force Academy

    The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that the Air Force Office of Special investigations (OSI comparable to the Army’s CID and Navy’s NCIS) has been running confidential informants among the student body at the Air Force Academy;

    Eric Thomas, 24, was a confidential informant for the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI — a law enforcement branch of the Air Force. OSI ordered Thomas to infiltrate academy cliques, wearing recorders, setting up drug buys, tailing suspected rapists and feeding information back to OSI. In pursuit of cases, he was regularly directed by agents to break academy rules.

    “It was exciting. And it was effective,” said Thomas, a soccer and football player who received no compensation for his informant work. “We got 15 convictions of drugs, two convictions of sexual assault. We were making a difference. It was motivating, especially with the sexual assaults. You could see the victims have a sense of peace.”

    Through it all, he thought OSI would have his back. But when an operation went wrong, he said, his handlers cut communication and disavowed knowledge of his actions, and watched as he was kicked out of the academy.

    “It was like a spy movie,” said Thomas, who was expelled in April, a month before graduation. “I worked on dozens of cases, did a lot of good, and when it all hit the fan, they didn’t know me anymore.”

    Air Force leadership denies knowing anything about the operations, but, well…you know. They probably want to gauge public reaction before they clamor for credit. I’m not sure that I know what my thoughts are on this. On the one hand, I’m glad that criminals have been removed from the officer corps, but, on the other hand, how are these petty criminals getting past the screening process? And I can’t help but think that pitting officer candidates against each other can’t be good for morale and readiness in the long run. I certainly had more respect and confidence in the officer than I do these days.

  • Airmen saving the world

    Air Force heroes

    Eggs sends us a link to the story of eight Airmen who came up on a 19 vehicle accident in Arizona and set to work pulling victims from the massive wreckage;

    Unlike in battle, where the airmen are prepared with proper equipment, these men had to make do with scraps and rubble.

    “Cardboard boxes on the side of the road to make splints,” another airmen, David said. “Rolls of tape, you know. Whatever we could get.”

    They went from vehicle to vehicle trioging victims at least 30 minutes before any advanced medical teams arrived, trying desperately to calm the injured down.

    Airman Wes remembered talking to a driver who felt guilty about the crash.

    He said while he was focusing on making sure the victim was okay, he also wanted to distract the man from his distress.

    “[I asked] him about himself…get his name and reassure him that we’re going to get him out of there.”

    After Dave rescued another man from his car, he recalled how happy the man was to see all of the airmen by his side.

    “When he was able to see that there was actually people there to help, he was really…the look on his face was really grateful.”

    The men helped medical helicopters land, and when they knew the paramedics had the scene under control, they quietly slipped away.

    Firefighters on scene told Nine On Your Side that night, that they wish they could have said thank you, and they weren’t sure what they would have done without them.

    According to DVIDS they were PJs of the 48th Rescue Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.
    The video of the interview with the eight heroes autostarts below the jump;

    (more…)

  • Geez, USAF – Not Again!

    Well, it seems as if there have been some additional problems in the USAF’s Nuclear Kingdom.

    Four USAF officers were disciplined recently.  They were launch officers and/or assistant launch officers assigned to Minuteman units.

    The issue?  They failed to follow procedures regarding sleeping while on alert duty.

    Per current policies, one of the two-person team manning an underground Minuteman launch bunker is authorized to get some sleep at any given time – IF the facility’s blast doors are closed and locked and only the launch crew is present.  If the blast doors are open, or if anyone but the launch crew is present, either member of the crew sleeping is an absolute “No Go”.

    The reason for this policy regarding blast doors and sleep should be pretty damn obvious.

    Yeah, you guessed it.  Some crews decided to cut corners – on at least two occasions this year alone, and apparently on multiple other occasions that weren’t caught.  No compromises or incidents resulted, but still:  “That’s not good”.

    Fox News has more details.

  • #@&!! TDY Fraud

    I alluded earlier to a problem in the Arizona Air National Guard.  It looks like the subject of this article was the reason.

    It appears as if some of those assigned to the 214th Reconnaissance Squadron, Arizona Air National Guard and based in Tucson, were really enduring a hardship tour operating those remotely-piloted aircraft (RPAs).

    How bad, you ask?  As in drawing TDY allowances while living at home and flying RPA missions in support of deployed troops.

    One of the indicted was an O6 – Colonel Gregg Davies.  Ranks of the remaining personnel indicted were not immediately available.

    Davies reportedly used his position “to circumvent measures that were supposed to prevent unauthorized temporary duty entitlements when military members are neither deployed nor away for training from their home.”  The others apparently just raked in their unauthorized cash – to the tune of over $1 million total.  Many individuals involved are thought to have pocketed upwards of $100,000.

    I hope the justice system burns the hell out of these fools.

  • Uh Oh . . .

    Hope I’m wrong, but it looks like there might be something seriously bad going on regarding the Arizona Air National Guard:


    A formal announcement by the Arizona Attorney General is due at 10PM MST/PDT. I don’t know how long it will be afterwards before details might be available.

    I’ll try to post an update later today if/as more info is released.

  • Regarding Lt Col James Wilkerson, USAF

    In case anyone’s forgotten:  Lt Col Wilkerson is the former Aviano AB IG who was convicted of sexual assault by a General Court-Martial and was sentenced to 1 year of confinement plus dismissal (the equivalent of a Dishonorable Discharge for an officer).  However, his sentence was set aside by his then-commander, Lt Gen Craig Franklin – ostensibly, in part because Lt Gen Franklin felt Wilkerson was a “committed husband”.

    Lt Gen Franklin’s action caused huge amount of consternation at the time – IMO, rightfully so.  I mean, really:  what’s the point of holding a court-martial at all if you’re going to ignore the verdict?

    Well, it appears Wilkerson will only be a Lieutenant Colonel a short while longer.  Seems he got a “show cause” letter regarding his retention on active duty from the CG of Air Combat Command, Gen Mike Hostage, recently.  Since he had 20+ years of active service, Wilkerson opted to retire rather than appear before a board of officers considering his retention.

    However, the acting SECAF – The Honorable Eric Fanning – has determined Wilkerson did not serve successfully at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. (No joke.) He’ll thus retire as a Major, effective 1 January 2014.

    Funny how a felony conviction for a morally reprehensible act – even if later set aside – causes most people to view the individual who was convicted, isn’t it?

    No, it’s probably not adequate justice in this case.  But it’s better than nothing.

    It also appears that his GCM conviction wasn’t the first incident of sexual impropriety of which Wilkerson has been guilty.  The USAF revealed in June that further investigation determined Wilkerson had had an extramarital affair and fathered a child out-of-wedlock some 9 years or so ago.

    I wonder if Wilkerson’s wife knew about the earlier affair and kid – and if she will dump his ass after he retires?

    Wilkerson was a Major at the time of his affair.  Unfortunately, the statute of limitations for that misconduct is 5 years.  I’m guessing the acting SECAF felt he couldn’t use that misconduct as justification to rule Wilkerson’s service as Major unsatisfactory due to said statute of limitations.  I’m also wondering how Lt Gen Franklin feels about setting aside Wilkerson’s conviction now.

    In any case:  it certainly looks like this guy being “invited” to leave active duty is an example of “good riddance”.  IMO, it’s a pity it had to be put off for nearly a year due to an ill-advised action on the part of one of his previous commanders.

    Ditto the fact he’s being allowed to retire at all.