The Blue Angle diamond will turn – again – to a wedge:
Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger, a spokesman for the flight demonstration team, said Thursday the squadron will finish its last three airshows next month — one in Texas and two in Florida — with five jets instead of six.
Dunkelberger would not identify the two members involved but said the relationship was between a man and a woman. All six of the F-18 stunt pilots are men, and 23 of the squadron’s 133 members are women.
Dunkelberger says a military administrative hearing will be held to determine further disciplinary actions, which could include removal from the military.
Nothing new under the sun. There are no new ways to break airplanes, and no new ways to trash careers. But on the upside, it looks like there will be positions opening up in the Prestigious Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron.
Sometimes you’ve got to find the pony in the pile.
Never underestimate the power of a woman!
Dunkelberger would not identify the two members involved but said the relationship was between a man and a woman.
Well, at least there’s that.
So, when is the Navy going to give one of those open positions to a woman? The Thunderbirds have had a couple now, and they look really good from the ground.
re SJBill….standby for incoming. All hands brace for shock. Hit Alpha – Hit Alpha. Fwd-midships-aft.
If you’re going to leave men and women in proximity, they’re going to find a way to form relationships. All the regs you can write won’t change that. All this is going to destroy an Officer’s career and force a good Petty Officer out of the service.
It makes no sense.
ASM826 -and upon what do you base your presumption that the Officer should not have his career “destroyed” and the “good” PO forced out of the service?
one small misguided missile takes down the mightiest warbird…
Idaho Joe’s right on the money. I had the same thought …
Sorry, Lex, I should have realized that whatever sins Naval aviators have, they’re the good old fashioned kind …
Marianne
Ron,
In some ways, it’s like the design decisions made when laying out a cockpit. It can be intuitive and pilot friendly, or it can be poorly designed, leading pilots astray, unable to manage the information and controls. It is possible to design in failures.
Rules against fraternization between ranks were written when there were no women in the ranks. Thousands of years of military tradition have been overturned in the last couple of decades. We have designed in a failure point, and left the systems in place to punish people for that failure.
Both the ground crews and flight officers of the flight demonstration teams are picked from the best, most motivated, individuals in the various services. I can safely assume that the PO in question was very good at her job, had very high ratings, and was career oriented. I can say the same for the Officer. Both of them violated regulations. Both of them will pay the price.
I, personally, disagree with the policy. Either separate the genders, or accept human nature. We will no more be able to regulate human sexuality in the Navy than the Bishops have in the Catholic Church.
Obviously, the Navy is not checking with me on this policy.
Semper Fi,
ASM826
Some days it just doesn’t pay to be regarded as a “good stick”…
Levity aside, this is just sad.
Idaho Joe-
I thought all the Tunderbirds were women. Did I miss something?
Good weekend everyone! Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me shomething aged in peat(smokedbarrels).
Nose
Lex, it is a sad day, but these two individuals knew the deal before they started. The question becomes, who was in control? Was he in control of the joystick or was the joystick in control of him? This is all part of the issue of discipline of the uniform, especially the demonstration team.
re “Nothing new under the sun. ”
True, yet it’s unbelievable how low our expectations have become and continue to go……
We expect this kind of news on a weekly basis now.
b2
AMS826 – I understand your point, however the job involves following rules, you don’t have to like them. And I don’t think fratenization rules are obsolete – if anything they’re more relevant than ever. If a person is going to play where they work (and I’ll spare you my opinion on that subject) they ought to have the sense to stay in their paygrade.
Regards
Idaho Joe-
They have to apply. The Navy doesn’t “give” a position away, per se. The “Boss” is the only member of the team that is directly appointed by the Pentagon. But all members have to meet certain requirements such as flight time, qualification in a “tactical” jet, and other flight requirements along those lines.
The “Blue Angels Year in the Life” documentary a few years ago on the Military channel gave quite a bit of time to the application and selection process. It’s available on DVD and it might answer more of your questions.
I do agree that it would be nice to see a female pilot in the ranks of Blue Angels demonstration pilots, as the Thunderbirds have had female team members, and the Navy has had female tactical jet pilots and NFO’s(navigators) for many years.
But at the same time, the Blues have a tradition in their application and selection process, and appointing a female demonstration pilot for the sake of it, negating their selection process, would be detrimental in the long run.
ASM826: We’re on the same page, FWIW. It also appears we’re in the minority among present company on this point, as well. I just have the hardest time visualizing the military as monastery… it’s not, never has been, and never will be.
How did that old saying go in the draft-era Army–”If the Army had wanted ya to have a wife they’d ISSUED ya one!” Highly skilled, enthusastic, and patriotic or not, women are still a needless distraction that has been force-fed into the system for reasons of both “progressive” social experimentation and failure to address true manpower needs. Incidents such as these are self-inflicted wounds that degrade the effective functioning of the organization and lead to loss of key personnel through resignation in disgust and an ultimate overall degradation of both morale and fighting capabilities over time. We’re kidding ourselves if we think otherwise.
I expect our air demo team members to have the integrity to avoid inappropriate fraternization with the same or opposite sex, or the wiliness not to get caught. Same goes for Presidents.
ASM862, Buck,
I’m in with you guys also. Of course, I take the view that all rates ought to be open to anyone who can qualify. That means ALL the quals, not just “gender adjusted” ones. Male, female, other, it doesn’t bother me. Just do the damned job and forget all that diversity crap. One color, one mission, one Navy.
respects,
Best advice a boss ever gave me: “Don’t get it where you work.”
While I empathize about how unfair life is where men and women in the military are concerned, both members signed contracts with certain stipulations. One of them is fraternization. They understood the rules. They broke them. The rules don’t have to make sense, they are the rules. I deal with this bureaucratic thinking at the oil company where I contract. We (among the group) laugh about it, make snide comments about it, but at the end of the day are contractually bound by “The Rules”.
There is also something to be said about “Good order and discipline”. Also in this day and age, there is the whole harassment thing, where a superior/subordinate is concerned. I see all sorts of danger (both legitimate and imagined) for allowing a superior/subordinate relationship to exist ESPECIALLY IN THE SAME CHAIN OF COMMAND. That is why most companies don’t allow husbands and wives to work for the same manager.
So while I sympathize with the pilot’s inability to follow his dad’s advice about KPIP, and I understand (at least remotely as I age) the whole hormone thing with virile young people, it would be disastrous to allow this kind of activity even consensual.
I don’t mean to sound cold hearted, but controlling nature instead of letting it control you is the name of the game. It may sound trite to some, but it’s real nonetheless.
As a former Skipper (and former POW) once said to a group of us ” You don’t like the rules? Go join another canoe club”.
I seem to remember a pretty big dust up the Blues had in the late ’80s (early 90s?) which involved scantily clad folks and a swimming pool in full view while on the road….
Mongo,
Methinks you’re right.
At the same time, I cannot but think this couple are merely an unlucky duo who were actually caught……
This discussion sparked some long dormant synapses…
Early 70′s, back in The Day when Trader had all those (topless) Asian women in his employ. I was jussst old enough to be out drinkin’. Thought I was worldy-wise I tellyah.
Some of the Blues maintainers had a rented house on Gulf Beach Highway. Crusty bunch; every one of them had done at least one Vietnam cruise.
By dent of association I got invited to a party there. Still ranks as one of the wildest fetes I ever had occasion to attend.
Not sure those guys wouldn’t have a hard time even getting into today’s Blues…much less making it through a tour without ending up afoul of the moral standards of today….
It’s my understanding that being in the military involves the ability to follow rules. And being in the Blue Angels – whether in the cockpit or as part of the crew, involves following even more rules. If you cannot follow those rules, you should not be a part of that organization
At the same time, I understand where ASM826 is coming from. And given the fact that I tend to break more rules than I follow…well, let’s just say I can see where he’s coming from.
These rules are stupid.
Unless he abused his authority to *bed* her or abused it to get her favors who should care ?.
Noone that’s who.
And since the unit question is the Blue Angels and not usual allotment of navy bums -I kid, I kid, put down the knives- we can safely assumes that no abusing of any kind except the consensual went on. At least I was led to believe that the Blue Angels would screen such disgraces out.
To further inflame both sides of the aisle I will point out that the usual women in combat makes men stupid argument falls flat here since a) He would not have been in combat alongside her anyhow which is since b) I’m not aware that the Blue Angels are on the books as a combat unit.
P.S. Please don’t ban me I’m tired and while the above right now sounds totally valid to me there is a tiny voice telling me to shut up and go to sleep. But I won’t let take the voice command of me. Yet. Still I might wake up and regret this.
Thanks for the hearty laugh, Nose…much appreciated & confirmed my suspicions. We used to kid about the “Rangers in Action” demonstration personnel in much the same way.
“Don’t ride my working stock,” a former FRS CO of my acquaintance used to say. There’s always a power imbalance in any relationship that does not respect the differences in rank. Fraternization rules are good policy: There’s plenty enough humanity in any tight knit organization already without throwing in hormones and sexual jealousy. If Petty Officer X is canoodling with Lieutenant Y, it puts everyone in a tight spot come FITREP/EVAL time. Did s/he deserve that career enhancing #1 of n Early Promote recommendation? Or was it payback? And we have all seen the general societal slouching effect when powerful men are free to employ their interns to personal effect.
Everything is moving towards entropy anyway, but we still rage against the dying of the light.
Which is not to say that human beings won’t make mistakes: Sex happens. It has happened. It will happen again. Still, societies great and large have standards.
Nobody expects that making a thing punishable will eliminate it, but it very well might suppress it, which is a social good of its own. We don’t hang people for stealing horses – we hang them that horses might not be stolen.
Lex, well said. They weren’t excatly my thoughts, but they are now.
Vr
What no taildragger puns after all that stick humor?
I’m not aware that the Blue Angels are on the books as a combat unit.
Minor historical note. The Blues did in fact deploy as the nucleus of an operational unit in Korea. There was even a shortlived television show named “Blue Angels”. I would hunt down the Naval Aviation News on the Naval Historical Center site that showcases the story, but they are still having slow download issues :
Although 1950 was the first full season with the Panther the outbreak of hostilities in Korea in June caused the team to be ordered back to the operational fleet on 20 July. By that December the Blue Angels had formed the nucleus of the newly established ‘Satan Kittens’ of VF-191. The squadron’s F9F-2Bs flew combat missions over the Korean peninsula from the deck of the USS Princeton (CV 37) and while deployed suffered the loss of its skipper (and former Blue Angel leader) LCDR Johnny Magda who was killed in a mission over Korea.
Also, I would opine that the schedule and high profile visibility the Blues keep demands an inherent “stick it out there” mentality…arguably at nearly the jaw clenching pace that combat demands.
But the good Captain Lex (as usual) says it best. The rules are there for a good reason, and if you wish to live in that world you have to meet the demands put on you.
Once again Lex hits it out of the park.
Well, frankly, this lowly Ensign doesn’t know this guy’s commissioning source or how he came about thinking that either O on E relationships or whatever he was doing was kosher (not in the Navy/Marine Corps at least–In the year I spent on an AF base it seemed to be sadly a different story). If one thing was ingrained in my mind at the Boat School, it was that inappropriate relationships are the #1 way to degrade good order and discipline.
I’m sure that he getting relieved wasn’t the first time that the inappropriateness of the relationship was brought to his attention. He did the deed, and has to face the music. Rules are rules.
What, no outrage at the “stunt pilots” comment in the article? Shouldn’t the correct term be “stunt aviators”? Sorry Lex, just kidding from an old zoomie.
ASM826, thanks for your thoughts.
I suspect the rules now are the same that were in place when I was in; you don’t do it, and if you do it and get caught, you are SOL. No excuses.
In an elite military group I should think that there is an even higher level of expecations. Our politicians provide us with enough examples of the lesser forms of behaviour.
Regards,
Ron
****Groan****
The crux of the problem? I ain’t gonna touch it. It’s one of the few topics I agree with Skippy on. It ain’t my Navy anymore. It’s theirs. I’d be interested though, to see a military under AMS’s code of conduct- “anything goes if it’s tied to nature”!
Sid you bring up times lost forever in this unnatural new order. Your anecdote has zero applicability to the Bizzarro World. They have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Lex- you could have posted on Legacy Hornet wing hinge cracks (bad and getting worse) or about the latest F-35 snafu…instead
***groan***
b2
I mind the time when the skipper of a certain jetville, and former Blues boss, lost his job over an ongoing series of interludes with one of his J.O.’s.
Said skipper went to the bottom of the good guys list, out the gate, and later out the front door when his once beloved fired him.
I mention it because his comfort level with the whole thing got so high, that he would be out with the lovely lass for a run down the flightline during flight ops for all the world to see; poor example for the troops, thought I then.
Maybe in some subconscious way he was tired of his career and looking for a way out. But what do I know?
Sid: think it was ’89, San Jose. Made the news, several guys got sent home and left the maint team back for the fleet shortly thereafter. (Splash 89….might’ve been 90, it’s fuzzy). Earned the team Cinderella liberty for awhile, first time in team history.
One rule in the somewhat closed culture of a huge bureaucratic company with which I work:
“You don’t dip your pen in the company ink.”
Same old, same old.
And don’t forget, when a man starts thinking with his little head, he starts doing dumb stuff.
And I think there’s an Army saying that said to keep your indescretions a 100 miles from the flagpole. Obviously this aviator and his paramour didn’t follow this rule.
And she deserves to be tossed as well. Coming from a woman’s standpoint… she knew the rules when she got in, and you don’t chase what you should not have.
Period.
Keep it away from work, stay away for whom you work, and keep a nice cordial relationship with those you know you should not have any type of relationship with… such as bosses, married men, etc.
No excuse on her part. NONE.
She knew the rules, as did he.
I’ve worked with men, nearly exclusively, for 20+ years. There just is… no… excuse.
….The good folks over at http://www.defensetech.org have some more info on this – be forewarned, they name names.
Mike