The Flight Deck

The week of Memorial Day over 500 WWII veterans gathered at Willow Run Airport to participate in a photo shoot for a new documentary, “Detroit: Our Greatest Generation.”

My mother, who is 88 and served in the Pacific Theater, says it was a wonderful event. She was one of the few women WWII vets present, not surprising as female commissioned Army officers were as scarce as hen’s teeth even during the War and very few of them are still with us.

More details on the gathering, links to photos of the vets and info about the upcoming documentary on my personal blog, here.

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This parenting gig, not always such an easy thing.

Some of you might recall that the Kit Kat joined the rank of the bus drivers this past Fall. And at first she really enjoyed it. In fact, the biggest challenge was getting her to bed after Cadet night because she was too excited to actually sleep.

Alas, that was not meant to last. Around Christmas time, she decided this was no longer something she wanted to do. It was much too boring, you see.

Unfortunately for her, the house rule is that if you start an activity, you have to finish out the year. And so it was that with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Kit Kat was forced to keep her commitments.

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My blog perusing is fairly limited and began when I was referred to Lex’s place and I spent the better part of three weeks reading every thing on it. OK I’m obsessive that way.

Well my one and only daughter, of whom I am very proud, has started her own blog and seems to be doing quite well with it. It is not anything like Lex’s place or any other Mil Blog as it is focused on modern married life for those much younger than I. But it makes me proud to read it even if I have exactly nothing to contribute and would just get in the way if I did. I think it as sort a “Martha Stewart” type thing without the empire and focused on Gen Y (at least I think I’ve got the right designator).

Well she got nominated in one of those online things under the category “Best Eye Candy”. Now I must admit when I first read that my mind was worried if somehow there wasn’t some huge mistake and it was somehow listed in a porn category but, fears resolved, I learned it was for having the best visuals and such.

In any event, I doubt the readership here would find the topics at the top of your interest list but if you are the wee bit curious you can check out at Modern Eve and should you be so inclined vote for it via the link on the home page.

What started as a hobby has become her obsession (I’m sure Lex can relate) and seems to be gaining some real traction with even a few “new media” types poking around.

In any event I’m incapable of being objective as far as anything my one and only does so forgive this intrusion into the land of kinetic delivery vehicles and such. Sometimes a new recipe for Blueberry Cobbler makes the world seem less foreign from the one I grew up in…..

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So, when you allow open registration on a blog, all kinds of bugs can creep in through the cracks. They don’t get posting privileges – ergo, access to my database – until I’ve upgraded their status from “contributor” to “editor.” Because you don’t want just anyone putting stuff up on your little slice of the internets.

If I don’t recognize the handle from comments, or if the email address under which the registration was made seems screwy, I delete the login from the admin panel. If you’ve registered and can’t get access to post and think you ought to be able to, please send me a PM to remind me who you are and we’ll open the gates.

Carefully.

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I wrote this a few weeks ago and posted it at my place.   Since it actually has something to do with the military, and Lex is in Sick Bay for the nonce, I thought I would post it here too.

Deployments are a part of military life, and Navy life in particular. My father flew the P-3 Orion, land-based patrol aircraft. When he was in a flying billet, he was deployed pretty much half of the time. 6 months home, 6 months away, in a never-ending rotation. It was only during a “shore duty” command that he was home more often than that.

At the time, the Army and Air Force were different. Although they didn’t deploy per se, those families tended to move a lot more often, and lived in way more exotic places (back then) like Korea and Germany. I knew Air Force brats that moved pretty much every 18 to 24 months for years on end.

Me, I liked the Navy way better. Sure it sucked dad being gone, but abode stability was a small price to pay for having a dad with the coolest job in the world short of astronaut or secret agent. And those involve significantly more travel, from what I hear.

In any case, I was recently going through some old pictures that my parents converted from slides (remember them?) into the much more robust format of the digital image, and I came across this one:

Patuxent River Naval Air Station, July 1971. VP-49 is leaving for a deployment to Keflavik Iceland, a base where I would serve (if ever so briefly) some 30-odd years later.

The young LT walking across the ramp is my father, and the woman holding the infant is my mother.  The little girl is my sister, and I’m the infant (in case you hadn’t gotten that far). This scene is replayed across the Navy every day of the year. Always has been, always will be. Sailors walk away from their families to an airplane, ship or sub, or even a commercial airliner for folks that do what I do.

As a kid, what did I know? It was a part of life. Didn’t all dads do that? I can’t recall ever thinking, “gosh, it sucks that my daddy has to do that”. I thought they all did.

I don’t think it was until I had to leave my own daughter that I understood what it must have been even remotely like. And his deployments were pre email and international phone calls for less than $10 per minute. We got letters, most of which I have kept. Yes dad, I’m being a good boy for mommy and I have cleaned my room.

Have you ever watched one of those History Channel-esque documentaries on the military? And how they have the obligatory scene of the return from the deployment? Yeah, still kinda chokes me up.

But you know what? It makes me truly appreciate my family. My wife, my loving parents, and my absolutely perfect daughter.

But do you know what I thought was really interesting about this picture?

See that number on the tail? 156529?

That plane is still flying. Converted to an EP-3 and assigned to VQ-2, according to the latest information.

That means that sometime in the next 12 months or so, there will probably be another young LT walking on a ramp, towards that same plane, with his wife, daughter and infant son waiving goodbye.

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Earlier this year, the President’s chief economist, Dr. Christina Romer, said that the jobless rate would only hit nine percent if Washington failed to pass the trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending bill. Less than four months after the President signed the “stimulus”, the unemployment rate has hit 9.4 percent.


(Clicking on the graph will take you to the blog post about it)

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My shipmate Dave (who goes by the name of Uncle Cobs), is just starting his Individual Augmentee (IA) training prior to a one year deployment to Iraq.

He set up a blog over here to keep us up-to-date on his progress.

Interesting stuff for us Navy-types.

Drop by and say “Hi” if you get a chance.

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Much to my continuing amazement–and giddy joy–I find myself in possession of a gift certificate for Barnstorming Adventures… a dogfight flight, to be exact (apparently there really ARE Angels here on earth, and I’m not talking about the soldier kind)

Now, unfortunately I don’t seem to know many locals who find this a particularly notable or thrilling turn of events.  So here’s the question:  Who will I fly against? Who’s got the guts to go man a mano with Fuzzybear Lioness?

Nominations for Future Victim of Fuzzybear are now open.

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Imagine you are a soldier wounded in action in Iraq or Afghanistan. Thanks to unprecedented efforts by the Army to save the lives of wounded soldiers, you stand an excellent chance of surviving just about any wounds. From self aid and buddy aid, Combat Lifesaver aid, Army medics, new technologies in shock/trauma care and rapid medevac by helicopter air ambulance, and dedicated C-17 flying hospital aircraft, all that can humanly be done will focus on getting you to an in-theater hospital to stabilize you and then evacuate you to a regional medical hospital, usually Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany, where you can receive definitive treatment.

So far, so good. But for better or worse, a soldier’s platoon is both his “home” and his alternative family. Many a soldier has been wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan and woken up in Landstuhl AMC. Somewhere along the line, from the battlefield to the hospital, our wounded warrior was stripped naked, and everything he owns has either been discarded, or is still back in theater. He doesn’t have so much as a toothbrush or a change of underwear. Hell, he doesn’t have any underwear to change out of. As emotionally traumatic as being wounded might be, finding yourself in a strange environment with little in the way of personal possessions and even lacking a pair of pants for the sake of personal dignity is even worse. Sure, eventually, the wheels of the Army will turn, and your possessions will catch up with you. But these things take time.

Into this breach has stepped a remarkable organization. Soldiers’ Angels. A volunteer based non-profit, SA has made it their mission that “no soldier goes unloved.” One of their projects is the First Response Backpack. A simple backpack stuffed with some toiletries, some loose, comfortable sleepwear/sweats, maybe a few goodies, and a nice, warm blanket. Many is the soldier who has been torn from his friends to find that someone cares enough about him to make sure he had enough comfort items to get through the first few days. Go read the thank-you notes at the links. I challenge you to read them and not tear up.

Soldiers’ Angels provides many more ways to show your support of Americans in the service. This just happens to be my particular favorite. I was reminded of this yesterday. I was at the Orange County Scottishfest. Soldiers’ Angels had a booth there showing what they did for our troops, and of course, raising funds to continue doing it.

Soldiers' Angels

The wonderful ladies there weren’t necessarily the mothers of soldiers. They just felt it was important work, and they should be the ones to step up and do it. And God bless ‘em for it.

Tomorrow is the day that we as a nation remember those who gave their lives on our behalf. Today, let’s take a moment to help out those who’s sacrifice is only slightly less. Give a little, won’t you?

Crossposted at my place.

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There is something that has been nagging me about the Automobile mess and the recent efforts by those in charge to right the sinking ships that are GM and Chrysler.

I won’t get into the forced shotgun marriage between Chrysler and Fiat other than to ask: exactly how good a deal could the executives at Chrysler have been expected to negotiate when the major stockholder and investor of last resort declared publically that they had 30 days to do a deal or be allowed to go under? I mean when you tell one party to a negotiation that the other party has a drop dead date to get a deal done that party is liable to drive (no pun intended) a harder bargain than if there was some element of uncertainty in the outcome. This would all be amusing to observe save for the fact that the major shareholder who committed this blunder was none other than the US Government and that means it is our future tax dollars (used to pay for the money borrowed to make the loans in question) who got squandered as a result.

I won’t go into the fact that the concept of bankruptcy is coded into Federal Law exactly to deal with the sorts of situation the companies in question now find themselves and that creditors extend credit or loan money knowing that there is Federal Law that will protect them, or at least determine with specificity, in what order they fall in the list of creditors to be paid in event of a Bankruptcy. I won’t mention that those laws were, in very real effect, thrown out to reward one class of creditors (the Unions) over another (Investors – AKA Bond Holders) with not a hint of explanation other than to label the latter class with the always in the context spoken derogatory adjective “speculators” while looking out for another class (workers) who through mandatory dues payments managed to find it within its budget during these trying times to donate millions to the campaign coffers of those who decided to ignore Federal Law by throwing the Bankruptcy Statutes in the trash.

No I won’t waste time going over those things. I want to talk about something I think I have some insight in, namely the plight of the Dealers. I am not, nor have I ever been in, the car business. But I have spent a lot of time developing and managing distribution strategies that involved wholesale distribution and retail dealer outlets for complex products. And based on my experiences I just don’t get it.

To hear the Car Companies (and by proxy the Administration) the car companies have to get rid of a large number of the dealers they have in order to return to prosperity. It is as if the fact there is a GM dealer on almost as many corners as there are McDonald’s is, in itself, a major contributor to their current woes. My experience runs contrary to what we are hearing. Usually, if a manufacturer signs up too many dealers the loudest complainers are the dealers themselves. Too many dealers chasing too little market leads to inevitable price erosion at the retail level and profit margin pressure on the dealers. The dealer buys the car from the manufacturer, sells it at a markup, and the net between sales price and what he bought it from is his gross margin. If the dealers all pay the same price (and by law need to under same terms and conditions) then discounting at the retail level hurts margins but does not affect revenue to the manufacturer.

Of Course, if the dealer stops making money then the other things the dealer does for the manufacturer (provide service infrastructure, parts sales, etc) will suffer and so the manufacturer has an incentive to see the dealers succeed and prosper. But how is it that closing a large number of dealers is going to help GM or Chrysler? Oh the argument goes that if the dealers are more successful they can provide better service and therefore make consumers want to buy more products. Yeah right. Of Course if, all other factors being equal and a GM dealer out hustled and out serviced the Toyota dealer then that would make all the difference. But, all other things are never the same. If they were the GM dealer in the pervious example would be a Toyota dealer.

So I don’t get the dealer purge. The ones left may very well be made stronger (as long as GM and/or Chrysler survives to supply cars to them to sell) but I don’t see how the purge will help Chrysler or GM design, build, market, and sell a better car or greatly reduce the expenses that the car companies spend in marketing and sales to support them.

There is something sinister about the way it has been done as well. There is something wrong about anonymous elites deciding the fates of these dealers and not allowing the market to work. I mean if I ran a 98 year old GM dealership in Podunk that only sold 35 cars a year and I wanted to keep at it and had the financial wherewithal to do so what is to be gained by GM to cut me off?

I just don’t get it. But I’m pretty sure that whatever explanation being given by GM, Chrysler, and the Administration doesn’t make any sense and therefore there is something else going on here and, like most everything else coming out of Washington, it doesn’t have much to do with free-enterprise and probably even less with sound business sense.

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