"Luis ORTEGA" wrote in message news:...

[...]
> Computer records show last physical as May 1971. Which also shows him as CR
> MEM ON FS (crew member on flight service) not PILOT.
>
> During his fifth year as a guardsman, Bush's records show no sign he
> appeared for duty.
>
[...]

> Sept. 5, 1972: Bush is granted permission to do his Guard duty at the 187th
> Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery. But Bush's record shows no evidence he
> did the duty, and the unit commander says he never showed up.
>
> November 1972 to April 30, 1973: Bush returns to Houston, but apparently not
> to his Air Force unit.
>
> May 2, 1973: The two lieutenant colonels in charge of Bush's unit in Houston
> cannot rate him for the prior 12 months, saying he has not been at the unit
> in that period.
>
> May to July 1973: Bush, after special orders are issued for him to report
> for duty, logs 36 days of duty.
>

Along with the 1999 investigation by the Dallas Morning News, this
paints a picture for me. Here are some quotes:


"Records from his military file show that in January 1968, after
inquiring about Guard admission, Mr. Bush went to an Air Force
recruiting office near Yale, where he took and passed the test
required by the Air Force for pilot trainees. His score on the pilot
aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile,
the lowest allowed for would-be fliers."

"He was accepted because he was one of a handful of applicants willing
and qualified to spend more than a year in active training, and extra
shifts after training, flying single-seat F-102 fighter jets. Once he
was in, Guard officials sought to capitalize on his standing as the
son of a congressman."

"After completing basic training in San Antonio in August 1968, he
helped out aircraft mechanics at Ellington until that November, when a
pilot-training slot came open. He was promoted to second lieutenant
and began a 13-month pilot training program at Moody Air Force Base,
in Georgia."

"Under the terms of his contract with the military, if Mr. Bush had
failed to complete pilot school, he would have been required to serve
the Guard in some other capacity, to enter the draft, or to enlist in
another branch of the military. After passing flight training, Mr.
Bush was schooled for several more
months at Ellington, and in March 1970 began flying 'alerts,' the name
used to describe the 147th's mission of guarding gulf coast borders
against foreign attack."

In 1970, Bush told the press,
"Fighters are it. I've always wanted to be a fighter pilot, and I
wouldn't want to fly anything else."

In 1999 he said,
"You will die in your airplane if you didn't practice, and I wasn't
interested in dying."

'A former non-commissioned officer who worked on planes and supervised
other ground crews at Ellington said Mr. Bush was not a silver-spoon
snob or elitist, unlike some former Air Force fliers. "I remember him
coming down, kicking the tires, washing the windows, whatever," said
Joe H. Briggs, now of Houston.'

********

I like what I see of Bush's personality here.

I've read that his college friends said he drank a lot because he felt
he was expected to follow his father's footsteps, but he wasn't cut
out for it.

An aptitude at the 25th percentile suggests that Bush would never be a
Chuck Yaeger, but it seems the ANG wanted him as a pilot for
publicity.

In March of 1970 he began serving as an interceptor pilot. In May of
1971 his physical report listed him as a ground-crew member, not a
pilot. Briggs, who supervised ground crews, found him unusually
helpful for a pilot. Now it sounds as if Bush had been removed from
pilot status.

Like a space shuttle, the F-102 settled and touched down fast. For
somebody without a strong aptitude, it sounds like an accident about
to happen. It would have been a black eye for the ANG if Bush had
gone up in a ball of flame. After they paraded him before the press
as a pilot who had always wanted to be a pilot, public knowledge that
the ANG had grounded him would also have been a black eye for the
organization and his father, Congressman Bush.

I think there was an inquiry about retraining him to fly a more
forgiving aircraft, and that was turned down. It sounds as if Bush
would have been glad to fulfill his obligation in other ways, but if
he'd stayed long at Houston or any other base, people in his unit
would have realized he'd been grounded. I think the ANG arranged for
him to lie low, to protect their own image.

I'm sure I could criticize Bush on some counts, but in his military
service he sounds like a decent, patriotic young man for whom being a
congressman's son was a misfortune.

Homer