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Navy Corsair IIs: dirty but deadly!

Never made it to AMCS because they wanted me to work in QA & Maint. Control. I refused to do either one. My last four years were spent as Line CPO for VQ-1. Normally the Line CPO job is considered an "entry level" position for CPOs, but I loved the job, and was good at it. 99 percent of the time, when a sailor reports to a squadron, he or she will get assigned to the Line Div. And it is not uncommon for them to get into trouble, sometime during their time in the "shack". Not so with my division. In the four years I ran the division, there was only one sailor who went to Capt's Mast (got caught taking multiple fuel samples from the same location on a EP-3). Add to that, I had the best LPO a Chief could hope for. I still stay in touch with him. VQ-1 was the first non-tailhook squadron I'd ever been in, and did not feel confident working in QA or Maint. Control. The Senior and Master Chief's all told me, "You'll never make E8 if you don't work in those areas." My reply was, "Yeah, so what?" I did the best I could as a E7. I was always either the top E7, or in the top 3, and was content with that. Pete
 
I was actually in Corrosion Control back in my AF days. My test scores were great but for some idiotic reason I no longer remember I put CC as one of my choices.
It was very depressing. It may as well just be called the paint barn because that was almost exclusively what we did. I already mentioned totally repainting the Wing COs plane once a month (to the point it was grossly overweight and a real dog) but the job was filled with the nonsense that lifers dream up*.

One particular incident comes to mind. There was a bombing competition announced for the Ninth AF, the rules of which were that 4 randomly chosen pilots from each wing would take off from their base fly to a bombing range and hit a target and return to their base, never having stopped anywhere going there or back. ie the only time they would be seen is as they flashed by at low level doing 450+ knots
This of course sets the lifer mentality snowball rolling. Well they don't know which of the 4 squadrons will be randomly chosen so we better repaint 4 from each. and of course they will have to have spares so we touched up an additional 4 per squadron. That's 32 jets if you are keeping score so that 4 could flash by a bombing range and the blur looks good. Stuff like that is why I say the fraud waste and abuse hunts for 600 dollar screw drivers were looking up the wrong tree. Waste is engrained in the mentality of the military.

While such stuff is not unique to CC it did burn me up that there was little doubt it was taking years off my life due to all the chemicals. We practically took a bath in MEK among other stuff. Two years ago I looked up my buddy Ed from back in the day,turns out two weeks after I had surgery to remove cancer, he died from the same disease.


* in my book not all career men are lifers. Lifer is a state of mind, "ate up" as we used to say. You may be out working on a jet and be glad to have an experience career guy with you but the lifers would be off supervising painting the office garbage cans camouflage grey so they look really squared away. (probably getting an atta boy in the process while others pulled their load)
 
Still waiting for the letter/call/email from the VA:

"If you were exposed to ____________ (fill in the blank) between the years of _______ (fill in the blank) and _______ (fill in the blank), please report immediately to your nearest Armed Forces or Veterans Administration medical facility :p87:!" I used to wear some amount of gas turbine lube oil constantly (yes I even remember the milspec), not to mention all the other chemicals we were exposed to! Just what was in that aircraft cleaning compound again?
 
Yep, I choose NOT to worry about all the stuff I was exposed to. Am powerless to do anything about it now anyway.

I am, however, glad to be moving up to Pensacola. The healthcare for military retirees up there is excellent; leastwise before IT gets changed as well. 'Nuff said. Pete
 
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