{"id":374,"date":"2009-08-03T02:00:29","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T06:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/demons-live-on-at-military-academy\/"},"modified":"2011-02-25T23:44:13","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T04:44:13","slug":"demons-live-on-at-military-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/demons-live-on-at-military-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"“Demons” Live on at Military Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A local paper announced<\/a> the victory of the Demons over their adversaries during US Air Force Academy basic training, which ends soon as the new cadets will begin their academic year.<\/p>\n

Much has been made of the apparently “supernatural” terminology sometimes invoked\u00a0during Basic Cadet Training (BCT) at the\u00a0US Air Force Academy.\u00a0 For example, each of the squadrons of cadets is known by a letter, from A to J.\u00a0 They are:<\/p>\n

Aggressors
\nBarbarians
\nCobras
\nDemons
\nExecutioners
\nFlying tigers
\nGuts
\nHellcats
\nInterceptors
\nJaguars<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Each flight also had\u00a0some play on the word or\u00a0mantra with which cadets are expected to proudly sound off.\u00a0 For example, the Executioners yelled “heads will roll.”\u00a0 The Hellcats sounded off with “Hellacious Hellcats.”<\/p>\n

Decades ago — and long before accusations of Christian favoritism at the Academy — cadets were asked after each summer session\u00a0if they had been offended by the supernatural references of demons, the use of “hellacious,” and even the moniker of “Heathen Flight.”\u00a0 No offense was ever reported, either from religious cadets objecting to demonic references or non-theistic cadets objecting to supernatural ones.<\/p>\n

The “Heathen Flight” was a long-standing tradition during basic training.\u00a0 The flight would often stop by the Chapel while returning from another location.\u00a0 Because Chapel attendance was not mandatory (in recent years), those who did not want to attend were put in (now a much smaller) formation and marched back to their rooms or tents.\u00a0 The formation was referred to as Heathen Flight.<\/p>\n

While it was reportedly the source of an accusation of religious discrimination against atheists a few years ago, atheist cadets themselves found the moniker amusing, rather than offensive; in addition, the Heathen Flights were rarely composed merely of those who did not hold beliefs.\u00a0 Just as some non-theists may have attended Chapel services for their own reasons, likewise some religious cadets marched back in the Heathen Flight.\u00a0 Contrary to popular belief, cadets who did not attend Chapel were not forced to clean their barracks, though there was nothing to stop them from doing so if they chose.\u00a0 Instead, most used the time to write letters or do something personal.<\/p>\n

The military culture has a long and complex history of integration with supernatural imagery and terminology.\u00a0\u00a0Such\u00a0traditions generally persist because of\u00a0their cool factor, not because of any institutional support for the ideology behind them.\u00a0 It is unlikely, for example, that any of the basic cadets in the Demons honestly felt any connection with their evil spiritual namesake.<\/p>\n

The new cadets will now move on to formal cadet squadrons with more politically correct names, like Vikings (Valhalla), the Black Panthers, and the Grim Reapers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A local paper announced the victory of the Demons over their adversaries during US Air Force Academy basic training, which ends soon as the new cadets will begin their academic year. Much has been made of the apparently “supernatural” terminology sometimes invoked\u00a0during Basic Cadet Training (BCT) at the\u00a0US Air Force Academy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[1503,38,4,976,1500,1504,1501,2,165,65,1502],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-academies","category-culture","tag-black-panthers","tag-chapel","tag-churchandstate","tag-demons","tag-executioners","tag-grim-reapers","tag-heathen-flight","tag-military","tag-slander","tag-usafa","tag-vikings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}