Forcing an issue. Kara Hultgreen and others

One of these days I hope to see a news article along different lines. A sample of which I will now write.

For the first time since the Vietnam war we have a new ace. Commander Emily Lotus, 63, of Fleabag, Texas became an ace in seven harrowing minutes as she managed to shoot down six Slobovian fighter aircraft in an airborne free-for-all. Her wingman, Lieutenatnt (JG)Jose Sanchez, 27, of Yuma, AZ shot down an additional four.

The flying brawl started when a Slobovian fighter opened fire on the pair. Lotus, call sign 'Granny' immediately returned fire splashing two fighters. Her wingman, Sanchez, call sign 'Sombrero' followed suit and knocked out another Slobovian.

Both fliers then fired additional missiles and each pilot shot down another pair of fighters.

Conserving their remaining missiles, both pilots switched to what was referred to by a Navy spokesman as 'Old School gunfire'.  The spokesman described the fight as being 'a flying melee where each pilot 'reverted to WW1 dogfight tactics' and each brought down an additional fighter until the rest of the Slobovians broke off the fight and headed home being chased for a distance by the pair who promptly strafed the enemy runway and returned to their carrier. The name of the carrier is being withheld for security reasons.

At a hasty news conference, President Yankovic seemed nonpllussed. He commented, "Big deal. Fifteen Slobovians tried to shoot down a pair of our guys and lost. They got shot down by somebody's grandmother and some wet behind the ears kid. That's what we pay our service men and women to do."

Please note that there was no bullshit commentary about this being a great victory for women, the elderly, Hispanics, etc. It was simply a victory for the United States.

Later on in the week you run into Bob, a retired Annapolis grad that recently retired from the Navy as a captain you know he still has an in with the Navy and you ask him for details.

You find out that Emily Lotus is a black woman, a grandmother of four that is being allowed to continue flight duties for as long as she can continue to pass the flight physicals because of a shortage of pilots. Sanchez is a gay mustang officer that came up through the 'Blue to Gold' program and qualified for aviator training. He's married to an Asian man.  His father was a legal immigrant and a lettuce picker. Sanchez came up the hard way. Proud of his heritage, he got his callsign because he wears a huge sombrero he bought on liberty to the pilot's briefings. Both are respected, capable pilots.

Please note that this is simply a case of letting anyone who truly qualifies do the job. In each of these cases both fictitious characters managed to meet all the requirements and excel with no political meddling.

Now lets take a brief look at the results of political meddling. The case of Kara Hultgreen comes to mind.

Kara Hultgreen was probably an adequate land based Naval Aviator that was striving to become a carrier pilot. Truth is she likely needed additional training. She was carrier combat qualified but there seems to be some murkiness about this.

It appears that pressure was brought to bear was brought onto the Navy from various politicians to get a woman carrier qualified and it wound up not only giving the Navy a black eye but costing Kara Hultgreen her life.

Nobody had the balls to speak out and say that Kara might have needed additional training. For a while I blamed this on the Navy until I remembered the real chain of command. It's the politicians that have no business in the day to day operations of our services.

Yet they meddle with them constantly, pushing a favorite son here and there. (This isn't just a liberal thing. Both parties are guilty of this) I personally know of an officer that was promoted for political reasons and I consider him to be a real dud. He probably should have left the service as an O-3 but was promoted rapidly to O-6. Thank God someone up the chain assigned him to a duty where he could do little damage.

Back to Kara. Why wasn't she either retrained, assigned to shore duty or even washed out? Simple. Some politician or politicians likely wanted to prove a point for political gain. Kara was simply one of several pawns and getting her carrier combat qualified was what the politicians wanted to see happen to appease woman's groups.

Anyone with an understanding of the military knows that there are both direct orders and tacit orders. Likely nobody outright said, "Kara Hultgreen passes no matter what." What damned well been might have been said is "If you fail Kara you better have a damned good reason."

Even the greenest ensign fresh out of school knows what THAT means. There are tangibles and intangibles in a fighter pilot's skill and it means damned good and well that unless there is tangible evidence like failed written exams or a busted up airplane they are probably going to have to pass someone. The candidate could go bust on intangibles like leadership and ability to get along but is likely to be rubber stamped.  passed on and sent to duty. This is plain wrong.

Almost all combat types base their peers strictly on abilities when they are in combat. Their lives depend on this. It's a pretty good guess that a pilot doesn't care if his wingman is as a woman or is as queer as a $3 bill if he/she is a solid pilot. It doesn't matter.

I suppose a good enough reason would be something like she showed up drunk on the flight line or something. Maybe she could have been washed out for having a number of near misses or a couple of accidents or even flunked a written examination but the Navy was pretty much forced to do what they could to make damned good and sure Kara passed so she could become a political darling that politicians (mostly liberal) could show off to woman's groups. She and her instructors and for that matter the Navy were possibly nothing more than political pawns.

Couple that with an Air Force/Navy competition to get women combat qualified and God only knows what probably got swept under the rug.

Chuck Yeager almost had his career destroyed when he washed a political appointee out. Bobby Kennedy wanted a black man in space and had a black pilot assigned to be trained. Yeager washed him out because he didn't have the skill required and played hell defending his actions until he brought the candidates grades up. I would imaging had he not been the man that broke the sound barrier he would have simply been passed up for promotion and quietly forced to resign.

Incidentally in the Air Force/Navy competition to be the first service to fly a supersonic airplane that took of from the ground Yeager and flight engineer Jack Ridley were handed the Bell X-1 to try and beat the Navy. The X-1 had been dropped from a B-29.

Ridley carefully calculated the X-1's landing gear strength and a few other things and fueled it with enough fuel to take off, poke a hole in the sky and land. It was a risky venture over a meaningless inter service rivalry. The Air Force won. Big deal.

I wonder what kind of scurrying to run and hide would have taken place had Yeager crashed and burned. 

I've read some of the report and have a vague understanding of the physics involved in Kara's crash and as a person with some limited  flight training I readily admit that my instincts would have me do the same thing Kara did. When one engine stalled, she poured the coal onto the other which coupled with her control surface settings caused the plane to flip.


I suppose if I had to I could take a Super Cup off of a carrier and probably land it on a carrier in fairly calm seas without tearing it up too badly. A super Cub is a dead simple machine.

On the other hand, a Tomcat is one hell of a complex airplane and the physics of it require extensive training. They are not easy to fly and are very, very unforgiving unlike the Super Cub which was a basic private pilot trainer for decades. Things happen very, very fast in a Tomcat. While the stall speed of the Super Cub is about 45 MPH the carrier approach speed is about 125. Anything much slower and the airplane simply stops flying.

With a carrier speed of about 30 knots going into a 15 knot wind you can practically land the Super cub vertically. The Tomcat still has to approach the carrier 80 mph faster than it is going under these ideal circumstances. Of course ideal circumstances are few and far between.

Of course, when Kara was killed the pols all ran for cover and blamed the Navy. I don't hold the Navy responsible as much as I hold the politicians responsible. Possible as far up as the Oval Office.

The Wikipedia article says there was controversy over her death and it is reasonable to assume that time has changed the initial reports and softened things. While there may or may not have been an outright cover-up, I do believe that not all the details have been freely released.

The services are no place for political meddling whatsoever. The military has no room for social experiments. It should be the most strict out and out meritocracy in government. All programs should be open equally to everyone that wants to apply and those that meet the requirements should be eligible regardless of race, sex, color, age, whatever. I suppose that age might be a legitimate dis qualifier because of the return on investment factor, though. If a fifty year old manages to pass through SEAL school the Navy isn't going to get a whole lot of use out of him before he reaches retirement or falls apart because of old age.

If you can qualify you should be eligible with DAMNED few common sense exceptions.

I look forward to the day when we can see a news article like the fictitious one I wrote that has no political bent to it. Nothing about great victories for women, gays, immigrants, whatever, just a great victory for all of us.

We are ALL Americans and should share our victories and losses equally. Someone's grandmother shooting down a half dozen enemy airplanes isn't a victory for old people, blacks or women. It's a victory for all of us.







To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY