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Post by FlyNavy on Jan 16, 2007 12:11:47 GMT 12
Don, Is that "Kelly Louge" (long red hair) in the photo of an airframe anniversary cake cutting at RAAF Pearce? What is Kelly doing now? What is her rank in this photo please. Flying Officer? Phil.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 16, 2007 12:57:04 GMT 12
Oh man that cake looks good...
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Post by corsair67 on Jan 16, 2007 13:00:41 GMT 12
Well, Sharpie certainly came unstuck big time a few years later, didn't he! ;D
What became of the the CO house at Ohakea: is it still decked out like a French Chateau inside?
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Post by phil82 on Jan 16, 2007 13:47:34 GMT 12
A word of caution here gentlemen.This is the 'net, and comments about ex-serving people, true or not, need to aired with caution, especially if not exactly complimentary.Some of those people are still around!
As regards houses and expenditure,[and I know what happened] the case in question was a classic one of a junior [Works] officer with little service experience being unduly influenced by a much more senior officer with lots, but who made an inappropriate allocation of budgeted funds. That's all it was; not illegal or dishonest, just inappropriate. A costly career mistake. It is a fact, and I've seen it before, that you get some superb people in the air force doing what they're trained to do and doing it well. When that is flying and leading a squadron, it is what we're about, and what we expect, but that experience doesn't always translate into the executive management require of senior officers.
The house is still in use for its dedicated purpose!
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Post by skyhawkdon on Jan 16, 2007 14:19:56 GMT 12
Don, Is that "Kelly Louge" (long red hair) in the photo of an airframe anniversary cake cutting at RAAF Pearce? What is Kelly doing now? What is her rank in this photo please. Flying Officer? Phil. Yes that is her and yes she was a Flying Officer at that stage. She stayed in after the ACF was disbanded, but not sure if she still is or what she is doing now.
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Post by skyhawkdon on Jan 16, 2007 14:31:22 GMT 12
A word of caution here gentlemen.This is the 'net, and comments about ex-serving people, true or not, need to aired with caution, especially if not exactly complimentary.Some of those people are still around! An un-named former Base Commander/ex OCSW/ex CO75 would also come down to 2 Sqn to fly once a week. He would drop his car keys (BMW) on the flight line desk as he signed the aircraft out, with instructions for us to wash it while he was away flying. We washed it alright - after we had all taken it for a spin around the back of the airfield to see how fast it would go! ;D Top guy that one...
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 16, 2007 14:42:33 GMT 12
Good call Colin. I hate the fact that one incident, blown out of all proportion by the bloody media, has become the thing that a great man is remembered for. His abilities as a pilot and leader are what I prefer to recall.
Don, were there any other Strike Wing female pilots? She must have been quite a symbol for equality. I recall a female Iroquois pilot when I was at Wigram, Angie someone. We had several female mechanics and lots of female S&S workers too. I had no problem with them at all. So long as they did the job up to the standard required, fine. Several of the men I worked for and with never reached that standard, all the girls did.
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Post by phil82 on Jan 16, 2007 14:50:50 GMT 12
Don, there was a former CO 75, later an Air Commode, who got very drunk at a Dining-out at Shelly Bay on a night when I was the OO. I arrived back in the mess and hung my hat on the hook to find him leaning back and forth, and he said, "Closed everything down , have we? I suppose you'll be closing this bar next!".
I looked him straight in the eye and told him, "Well, it isn't on my list of things to do, but rest assured, if it was, it would be done, and right now!" Fortunately he was wheeled away by a much more temperate gentleman!
There were some real beaut guys, but some of them thought they were gods! It's a real shock to the system when they get out and find that poling a Squawk around the skies doesn't actually qualify you for much in the real world.
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Post by phil82 on Jan 16, 2007 14:56:28 GMT 12
I had, on a number of occasions, females working under me, figuratively speaking, and they were at least as good as the guys, and sometimes better!
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Post by corsair67 on Jan 16, 2007 14:58:33 GMT 12
I actually meant the PC-9 incident at Pearce. (The comment about the house was an off-the-cuff secondary comment; it looks worse than I meant it to be.)
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Post by phil82 on Jan 16, 2007 15:24:13 GMT 12
Calum. I've just put the dinner in the oven,[ in between innings], and came back to say that I doubted very much that your comment was made other than 'tongue in cheek'. You beat me to it.
Just as an aside, but apropos of horses for courses, and 'cometh the hour ', I have a very good book by Max Hasting in which he covers Wg Guy Gibson very well. According to just about everyone who knew him the man was a complete prick, but when it came to bombing dams, nobody did it better!
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 16, 2007 17:45:19 GMT 12
Lets face facts, the type of person selected to be a fighter pilot in the 1980's and 1990's were deliberately sought out to be of a type - people who were very conifident, single minded and determined, goal driven, etc. They were also highly intelligent, and highly motivated. Most of all, competitive. Sometimes in finding all these qualities in a young man, they also came along with arrogance, and on occasions, downright pigheaded obnoxiousness. Not always though, not at all.
When this article came out I was undergoing the recruiting process. I first saw it in 1988 in fact when one of my best mates Alan was also planning to join up. He leant me the article as he was quite excited by it. I remember him remarking how the pilots came across as total 'tools', especially that last comment "If you ain't a knuck, you ain't worth shit."
Of course I later came to realise when I was in the RNZAF that it was probably a case where not all pilots were like that and the journo picked on a few more colourful ones for the article. I also came to realise that a lot of the competitiveness they had was part of their job, they HAD to be the best. If they showed themselves as wanting to be anything less, there'd be trouble.
I did have the pleasure to meet Oz on several occasions later when he was instructing at CFS, Wigram. He won't remember me, I was just the S&S section guy he visited on occasion with his gear. But I certainly remember him as he was something of a celebrity of my youth in my eyes. He was always a very nice, polite chap, with a good sense of humour. I guess he was living by then in a slightly more relaxed environment, and he was a little more mature, but I was most impressed by the man. I never saw him as the cocky knuck he almost came across as in the article. I think a lot of that was 'for the media'.
Most pilots I met were great blokes. I only recall one displeasant character (who is mentioned in passing in the article), and who exceeded the obnoxious knuck demeanour. He used to arrive at Wigram occasioanlly and throw his weight around all over the place - word spread fast that he was on base, and generally he left a trail of pissed off people wherever he went becuase he'd deliberately decided he was God's gift to Wigram and was going to show us how the sharp end did it.... a total twit, BUT still a damn good pilot and I still respect him for his flying ability if nothing else.
I did hear he later went onto selling insurance.
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Post by skyhawkdon on Jan 17, 2007 6:52:45 GMT 12
Don, were there any other Strike Wing female pilots? She must have been quite a symbol for equality. Kelly was the only one who got as far as the A-4. There was another one (Heather Pert) before Kelly who was on the Macchi but I think had a medical problem and got grounded. She later went on to fly the Iroquious. Kelly was a real nice girl - down to earth and fitted right in with the boys. I was at PTS when she did her Wings Course and we were all impressed with her.
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Post by FlyNavy on Jan 17, 2007 8:22:19 GMT 12
Don and all, Thanks for the info about Kelly. My comment (not about people I don't know) is that the press will always write firstly what they want - whether it is real or not - secondly the press will always latch on to the 'sensational' (even if it is not) and exaggerate it for their own (storytelling) purposes. I would take whatever the journalists write 'with a grain of salt'. I have in my possession a few local Sydney paper news articles which are just ridiculous and I was there (35 years ago at Nowra). We had a journo referring to our RAN Skyhawks as "Hawks" which we never did - only a loud junior Tracker pilot (who escorted the journo around the base) called Skyhawks "Hawks" and what did he know. So you can see how things get quickly out of proportion in these articles. Probably grains of truth in that article - as you all suggest - but overall individual pilots needed NOT to be 'a...holes' (I would say) for obvious reasons. :-)
Also it was not unknown to be 'pulling the journo's leg' at all times. Sometimes inexperienced journalists would not get the joke and take our idiotic remarks literally. What did we care?
To my knowledge the RAN pilots (from USN safety culture) were taught to be direct and truthful to one another (which could be extremely painful if one was on the receiving end) but disconcerting if one did not know why a pilot was talking so directly. Can't say anything about the RNZAF of course. It would be easy to be offended - or get the wrong inference - if a journalist was around to pick up the wrong impression. Just my thoughts on the issues raised in this thread. Phil.
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Post by phil82 on Jan 17, 2007 9:10:24 GMT 12
Spot on Phil!
Having once been totally mis-quoted as "an air force spokesman said" by a cretin of a journo, I have long since come to the view that they have never understood what it means to be a serviceman, and especially aircrew who, rightly so IMHO, have much to be elite about.
The RNZAF, like the RAF, RAAF, RAN, whoever, have always been very selective in to whom they gave the keys to their aircraft. It's a tough selection process, and the chop rate from wings courses is very high so that only the very good get through. I can recall wings courses in NZ where only one or two graduated from an initial course of 18 or 20. If you were one of them, good on yer!
Privately, having been driven to many places around the world by air force pilots, I would quite happily go anywhere in the knowledge a military man was up front.
As a matter of interest, I was in ANZUK in Singapore 1974-76, and worked with an RN Lt Cmdr, a pilot, who was the only survivor of all of those graduates of his wings course, and that was peacetime flying!
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Post by phil82 on Jan 17, 2007 9:14:01 GMT 12
"I did hear he later went onto selling insurance".
...and I bet I know who he is!
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 17, 2007 17:01:14 GMT 12
I'll bet a lot of people here do, Colin.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 17, 2007 17:09:25 GMT 12
That is not exclusive to Air Force personnel - many actors and other public figures do the same thing.
Yesterday I saw Ardal O'Hanlon (Father Dougal of Father Ted) interviewed on Parkinson. He said he always lies to the journalists, just make stuff up. He said before he bagan a tour of his one man show he did last year he was interviewed and the journo asked what he'd done recently. As he hadn't done a lot he joked he'd just finished a long run in a musical with Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas. Despite Sinatra being long dead, the gullible reporter published this. He was astounded enough to see it in print, but he said it got worse as for the next week his agent got loads of calls offering him parts in musicals!
Another actor who makes stuff up on the spot when talking to journalists is Sir Michael Gambon. He told Jeremy Clarkson on top Gear that you can't believe half the stuff he's been quoted as saying as it's all lies, his lies.
I think it's funny when reporters take stuff as a read, and never do the research. Dangerous, but funny.
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Post by mumbles on Jan 17, 2007 19:25:48 GMT 12
From admittedly an outsiders perspective, some of the behaviour described sounds like either a wind-up (the crossword), or not quite in context ('sub-human').
I also work in a profession that few outsiders understand and it isn't unknown for my co-workers and I to deliberately give a false impression or two to the gullible.
Did the "We've got tonight" ritual last?
At the time of the disbandment Kelly Logue was reported to be going to C-130's.
There was a woman on 14 at the time of the TV3 doco in 1998 who dropped off her course due to illness. I remember an instructor referring to her as "Megans [?] gone u/s.."
Fun to read that article again after so long. I've been looking for a copy for yonks, but old N+S issues are almost impossible to find in second hand bookshops and fairs for some reason.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 17, 2007 19:41:37 GMT 12
I actually spent many years wishing I had a copy too, and did manage to find this copy in a second hand book shop. Looking back at North and South, it was a superb magazine. I haven't seen it for some time (not one for lifestyle magazines generally). Is it still as good?
I also have another article i got from a 1987 N&S on the RNZAF Musuem's 'Geriatric Air Force". I have mislaid that too in the past year or so but if it resurfaces I'll post it. It's excellent.
As for "We've Got Tonight" I wondered the same thing. Was it still the Sqn song later in years?
I recall when I was at Wigram all the No. 3 Squadron Detachment guys used to thrash "their" squadron song, Khe Sahn by Cold Chisel. Does No. 3 Sqn still have an affection for that song?
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