Finally!!!--truck plates!!!

[rockrat]

You might wonder why I am making a big deal about license plates???

I have been after "Fallen Airman" plates for decades, here in Colorado, to honor and remember my Father.

Previously, it was for those killed in combat only, but now it has been changed to "Line of duty" fatalities. Father having been killed when his B-47 (The Widowmaker!!) went down in a field near the base. Maybe the letters to newspapers and congresspeople did some good. Think I read somewhere that almost as many were killed in training accidents as combat, during WWII.

Paperwork has been completed and hopefully should be here within the month.

[Carbineone]

Thanks for your Fathers Service and that sounds like a nice way to Honor Him..

[clarksvillejoe]

Congrats rockrat, I wish they had such plates in Ohio.

[Txcowboy52]

Very nice rock ! Great way to honor your dads service !

[Scrounge]

You might wonder why I am making a big deal about license plates???

I have been after "Fallen Airman" plates for decades, here in Colorado, to honor and remember my Father.

Previously, it was for those killed in combat only, but now it has been changed to "Line of duty" fatalities. Father having been killed when his B-47 (The Widowmaker!!) went down in a field near the base. Maybe the letters to newspapers and congresspeople did some good. Think I read somewhere that almost as many were killed in training accidents as combat, during WWII.

Paperwork has been completed and hopefully should be here within the month.

Congrats! I spent a decade as a photographer for the USAF, May 1975-May 1985, and much of my work was documenting aircraft accidents and the fatalities that often resulted. Five years of that was at Nellis AFB, NV, where they do the Red Flag Exercises. Those were started because someone in the USAF noticed that most of our fatalities in Vietnam were guys flying their first ten combat missions. They were trying to give our new pilots the first ten missions as a freebie, if at all possible. However, especially with high performance aircraft, things don't always work out. If you make the training realistic enough, any accident can be a fatal accident. The folks who died in training accidents are as much patriots and heroes as the ones who die in a war.

Bill

[contender1]

Outstanding!

[rockrat]

"The folks who died in training accidents are as much patriots and heroes as the ones who die in a war."---Scrounge

Exactly my thoughts too!! They wrote the check for "up to and including my life" and it was just cashed early

[MrWolf]

Very nice rock ! Great way to honor your dads service !

Totally agree. Congrats

[GregLaROCHE]

The quote that more were killed in training than in battle, comes from training pilots during the First World War.

[Scrounge]

The quote that more were killed in training than in battle, comes from training pilots during the First World War.

As I used it, it wasn't a quote, it was an observation from the undeclared war in Vietnam, which had only recently ended, and was instituted with the realization that training has to be realistic to be useful. As a generalization, I'm sure it's probably much older than that. Pretty sure there was some Sumerian NCO telling his guys that the more they trained, the less they would bleed. While I was there, Nellis AFB was averaging about 20 aircraft accidents a year, many of them with fatalities. Part of what we did was try to figure out what caused the accident, so we could prevent it from happening again. It cost several millions of dollars for a fighter aircraft, and a few more to train and qualify a pilot.

The jets I worked on before I became a photographer were $27million each when I started working on them in 1974. Some of the accidents were aircraft malfunctions, some pilot error. When you're moving literally "faster than a speeding bullet" 50 feet from the ground, it doesn't take very long to get in trouble.

My first accident at Nellis, the pilot flew the aircraft into the ground at about 450kts, while watching the bombs he'd just dropped exploding on the target he'd just attacked. The target was a tank formation near the bottom of a valley in the desert. Pilot was not a newbie. 4000 hours in the airframe, 4 combat tours in Vietnam. However, there was vegetation there, mesquite bushes. They're about 3' tall, or just shy of 1 meter. Pilot was from the Illinois Air National Guard. Lots of trees there in Illinois. They're 30'-70' tall. And the ground sloped up to the peak of Quartzite Mountain. From the air, you cannot tell how tall the "trees" are. He hit just below the peak, and debris scattered over the top and down the far side. He may have died fast enough to not know it was happening. I sure hope so. He probably thought he was well clear of the ground, but he was looking at bushes, not trees. That's pilot error. And he was flying an F-100, not the most modern jet in the world even back in 1978. Nam had only been over for about 3 years at the time.

Top Gun is the Navy's version of Red Flag. And both organizations send pilots to both schools. Not everyone at Top Gun is a Navy or Marine pilot, and not everyone at Red Flag is an Air Force pilot. If you've seen the movie about Top Gun, the Navy pilot who filmed the air-to-air scenes for the movie was an OpFor pilot at Red Flag while I was there. I met him several times, and processed film for him while he was at Nellis in the late 70's and early 80's, before Top Gun the movie came out. Lt. Commander "Heater" Heatley.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Lt.+Commander+Heater+Heatley&t=brave&pn=1&ia=web&iai=r1-3&page=1&sexp=%7B%22biaexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22msvrtexp%22%3A %22b%22%2C%22mliexp%22%3A%22b%22%7D

Bill