My three maternal uncles fought in Vietnam, two of them as Infantry Officers in the US Army, the youngest of them only put in his four years as a Grunt and never went past Sargeant, while my Dad enlisted in the US Air Force and was assigned as a cook, because he was a very good one, despite him signing up for jet mechanics, he was always begging his Base Commander to send him over, but the C.O. refused on his personal grounds, he loved my Dad's catering skills. Meanwhile, my Dad's younger brother cowarded out, claiming consciencious objector, refusing to touch a weapon of any kind in basic, and was stationed as a Radar O'Reilley in Okinawa. I tried to enlist into the US Army myself in 1990 when I was 20, but a surgically reset double compound fracture of my lower left leg designated me medically 4F, after the Army Doc denied me, Saddam invaded Kuwait two weeks later.
@NativePortlander1970 I got to do what your dad wanted to do. I was a fighter crew chief in the Air Force for 8 years, 1977-1985. I started out on old F-4 Phantoms that flew in Nam. Then I went to the brand new F-15 Eagles. Loved my job, I even had an engine run license. I could do ground runs up to 80% If I had stayed in I would have went to the Gulf war with my unit in 1991. I'm the only generation in my family that did not fight in a war. From the civil war to the gulf war. The picture below is my F-4 after we pulled the engine to fix the afterburner. We were ground testing the burner at 3am while TDY in Hawaii 1979.
@NativePortlander1970 I was at Nellis from 1977-1981 I went to Holloman AFB in New Mexico to work on the F-15's I moved back to Las Vegas in 1985, and been here ever since.
@NativePortlander1970 I loved watching the F-15's do max climbs. They were the first aircraft to be able to accelerate straight up like a rocket. Due to their thrust ratio being higher than their weight.
