Tag Archives: Tradition

Gen Welsh Orders Air Force Health and Welfare Inspection

Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh ordered his wing commanders to conduct “health and welfare inspections” with the intent of fostering respect and professionalism.  The Air Force announcement was fairly benign:

Commanders across the Air Force will conduct health and welfare inspections…to emphasize an environment of respect, trust and professionalism in the workplace…

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III tasked commanders…to examine their work settings and ensure Airmen at all levels consistently apply standards of professionalism and respect across the service.

The Air Force Times took a more direct approach, saying the target was material that “objectif[ies] women:”

Commanders and supervisors in all corners of the Air Force Read more

USAFA Tradition of First Shirt, First Snow Goes Bad. Supposedly.

A variety of websites are now reporting on the injuries US Air Force Academy cadets received during attempts by Four Degrees (freshmen) to drag their Cadet First Sergeants through the first snow of the season.  The decades-old tradition is one of many that generally stay out of the public eye, though YouTube videos and the like have revealed them for years.

While there is apparent shock that “nearly 30 cadets” were injured in some form (including — gasp — bruises) during the devolution to a “brawl,” that injury count probably doesn’t crack the records set during Read more

US Military has a Drinking Problem, Army Frat Party Goes Bad

Update: Major Garbarino was convicted at court-martial of being drunk and disorderly and received 30 days and a fine of six months pay.  He was acquitted of other charges.

The Associated Press announced that the National Academy of Sciences has called ‘substance abuse’ within the US military a “public health crisis.”  Among other things:

The study…says about 20 percent of active duty service members reported they drank heavily in 2008, the last year for which data is available. And, binge-drinking rose to 47 percent in 2008 from 35 percent in 1998.

The report also cited abuse of prescription drugs — particularly prescription pain killers and similar drugs, the use of which has skyrocketed to “nearly 5 million prescriptions” over the 1 million issued more than a decade ago.

The issue of drinking, of course, is nothing new.  Just rent Read more

Marilyn Monroe and the General

[Marilyn] Monroe was famous for her quips and sexual innuendos. When asked what three men she’d like to be trapped on a deserted island with, she responded Joe DiMaggio, Albert Einstein and Hoyt Vandenberg – her husband, the scientist and the Air Force general respectively.

Now that’s not something you hear everyday, and from an article written by a wing commander, no less.  General Vandenberg was a US Military Academy graduate and the second Chief of Staff of the Air Force.  Vandenberg Hall (or “Vandy”), one of the residence halls/dormitories at the US Air Force Academy, is named after him, as is Vandenberg AFB in California.  It seems Marilyn Monroe had a thing for him.

US Soldiers Get Coined by General

A recent Army article noted that the commander of forces in Afhganistan “coined” members of the US military for their exceptional performance:

Marine Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan…presented ISAF commander coins to six soldiers surrounded by their friends and fellow service members during a mid-day ceremony here.

After listing the accomplishments of the soldiers, the article included this summary of the tradition:  Read more

Camp Pendleton Cross Prompts Wider Review

The demand by Jason Torpy, speaking for the one-man Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, that the US Marine Corps remove its “Christian privilege” (the crosses on Camp Pendleton‘s ridge on Camp Horno) has spurred a “wider review” of similar memorials around the world:

Capt. Greg Wolf at the Pentagon headquarters of the Marine Corps said Thursday that an “operational planning team” is conducting Read more

Air Force Chief of Staff Gets Hosed

General Norton Schwartz recently took his final flight in the US Air Force, known traditionally as a “fini flight,” and he was greeted in the traditional manner, by his wife and a fire hose:

“Fini flights” have sometimes become common place, even occurring as a pilot moves from one flying assignment to another in the same airframe.  There is something special, though, to a true fini flight that caps a nearly four decade career.

General Schwartz is scheduled to retire later this year.  General Mark Welsh has been nominated to replace him.

There’s a Busload of Nuns on the Runway

During every pilots’ recurring Emergency Procedures evaluation (whether in a simulator or in a table-top with an instructor), there comes a point where the evaluator needs to make the pilot “go around,” or wave off the landing, in order to observe the required “single-engine go around” or equivalent emergency go-around.  This might take an extreme situation, because a pilot in an emergency would have wide latitude to land even if, for example, the control tower told him not to.

Unless, of course, there’s a busload of nuns on the runway.  It never fails,  Read more

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