How to bruise a Blue Angels pilot's ego in 3..2..1..

I'm in the Army now, which stands for Ain't Ready for the Marines Yet!

I'm not sure how the acroym works out, but Air Force means something like "sleeping in hard air-conditioned billets, watching cable TV, eating steak for dinner, smoking cigars and drinking scotch at the O-Club, chasing local skirts, and occasionally going out and playing around in a really expensive airplane."

At least that's what guys from every other service tell me it means.
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The WSO in the back was a classmatte of mine in the RAG. She's good s***, though not "one of the pilots"

I've had this nearly happen to me trying to exit the runway on a cold/icy morning in fallon. Was about the first 10 seconds of that video, not including going off the runway (luckily I hit some traction again and got it under control).
 
Desert Storm was the Marines at their best.

The Air Force bombed the enemy for a month. Finally the Marines went in and claimed to be the tip of the spear.
 
My buddy Matt Suyderhoud is a new BA pilot, thought it might be him. He's the right wing so not him. He and I were T-45C IP's down in Kingsville...as was his twin brother. What's cool about Matt and his identical twin brother were both Hornet pilots while their father was a Blue Angel pilot years ago as well. He posted a pic of he, his brother and his dad posing in front of a jet when they were young...and now, him posing with his dad. Crazy that a 45 pilot selected with the Blues. The best of the best don't often go to the VT's and I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that (timing aside), the guys with better FITREP's and such will choose other avenue's to stay in Hornets. He used to fly off me wing :) I know what he was thinking, this guy sucks lol

One thing about Matt, anytime we came into the break, be it baby forms and on, he wanted to be at 350KIAS, even on Form 1. Studs were a bit timid during baby forms but he didn't care. The 45 could easily do more than 350 but were limited due to wing limits as pilots were constantly over geeing the aircraft in the break. My buddy Butter Cup, biggest damn dude I've seen in any plane, let alone a T-45 was 6'4" and 280lbs on a light day. Looked just like the Rock, a twin of the Rock, no kidding. He got more ass then any dude I've ever known. He came blasting into San Antonio into the break at somethlng like 470KIAS, pulling a bit too many g's. Hornet guys ;)
 
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I knew an IP from Merids that went to the Blues as well......Tickle.....think he may have been on the 2011 team or so, maybe 2012.

Think the statute of limitations has passed now, but we had "fast break Friday" in Meridian, and it was definitely tested, especially by some studs on their FCLP solos. I remember coming back from Joe Williams one afternoon, and thinking, why not. Asked tower for the carrier to low key. My memory is probably wrong now, but I remember being just shy of 5 bills, zooming to 3k or whatever it was, and executing a very needless PEL in the sake of non-existent "currency". Tower dudes loved it, and nobody noticed.
 
"He got more ass then any dude I've ever known."

Tell me more on this guy, he sounds interesting...
 
I knew an IP from Merids that went to the Blues as well......Tickle.....think he may have been on the 2011 team or so, maybe 2012.

Think the statute of limitations has passed now, but we had "fast break Friday" in Meridian, and it was definitely tested, especially by some studs on their FCLP solos. I remember coming back from Joe Williams one afternoon, and thinking, why not. Asked tower for the carrier to low key. My memory is probably wrong now, but I remember being just shy of 5 bills, zooming to 3k or whatever it was, and executing a very needless PEL in the sake of non-existent "currency". Tower dudes loved it, and nobody noticed.

Did you have to come downhill to get 5 bills? I often went past 500 when coming down hill out of the MOA (we didn't have the same restrictions you guys did) but we were always limited to 350 in the break. At sea level, no idea what the 45 can do, it's not exactly overpowered lol
 
Desert Storm was the Marines at their best.

The Air Force bombed the enemy for a month. Finally the Marines went in and claimed to be the tip of the spear.
A read of Task Force Grizzly, and Task Force Taro, tells the story. The Marines were ordered in well before the rest of the ground forces were deployed.

February 23, 1991, although the ground campaign of Operation Desert Storm would not begin for more than twelve hours,
U.S. Marine Colonel James A. Fulks had nearly twenty-seven hundred U.S. Marines a dozen miles inside of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait and had orders to move that night through the first of the two thick minefields the Iraqi army had planted just to the north.

Task Force Taro, commanded by Colonel John H. Admire, had marched into Kuwait two days earlier. Alone, with no tanks and few heavy weapons.

Both units were ordered to infiltrate through the first minefield well before the start of the ground war. They then were to march farther into Kuwait to shield the breach of those mines by Myatt's two powerful mechanized regiments the next morning. In the midst of the most technologically advanced conflict in history...the so-called Nintendo War....most of the marines in the two task forces marched the twenty miles from the Saudi border to their blocking positions, carrying their gear on their backs or pulling it in crude handcarts.

In Operation Desert Shield, Seventh Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB), commanded by Maj. Gen. John I. Hopkins, began flying into Saudi Arabia on August 14, while three ships of Maritime Preposition Squadron (MPS) 2 sailed toward the gulf with the unit's heavy weapons, vehicles, and supplies. Within two weeks, 15,248 marines were deployed in the desert north of the Saudi port of Al Jubayl.

As more marines arrived from their bases in California, Hawaii, and Okinawa, Hopkins' brigade was integrated into Myatt's First Division. It was the first time a full marine division had deployed overseas since Vietnam. At the same time, helicopter, fighter, and attack squadrons of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing, under Maj. Gen. Royal Moore, flew from air stations in California and Arizona to occupy airfields prepared by marine engineers and navy Seabees.

Myatt organized his division into five task forces with different capabilities and purposes. The first was Task Force Shepherd, which would use its nimble eight-wheeled light armored vehicles (LAVs) for screening and scouting. Myatt then formed two assault units, Task Force Ripper, commanded by Colonel Carlton W. Fulford, and Task Force Papa Bear, led by Colonel Richard W. Hodory. In anticipation of a fast-moving battle in the desert, these units were equipped more like army mechanized brigades than the usual marine light infantry regiments. Each assault force had two infantry battalions plus combat engineer and reconnaissance units. For the mobility essential in desert warfare, each had two companies of thinly armored, tracked assault amphibious vehicles. Ripper also had two companies of M-60 main battle tanks, and Papa Bear had one. Task Forces Taro and Grizzly were more typical marine units, with two battalions of infantry but no tanks or armored vehicles.

While the marines of the First MEF were moving into defensive positions in the desert, fifteen thousand more leathernecks were sailing for the gulf aboard ships. And tens of thousands of soldiers of the U.S. Army's Eighteenth Corps and hundreds of U.S. Air Force warplanes and support aircraft flooded into Saudi Arabia and neighboring nations. Military forces also came from Great Britain, France, and several Arab countries.

Just after midnight on January 16, 1991, Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm.

The two marine division commanders devised different plans for breaching the minefields, but with similar goals. The First Division would use Task Forces Grizzly and Taro to protect the main assault forces, Ripper and Papa Bear, which would conduct their own breaches. The Second Division would rely on artillery and air cover to defend against counterattacks and assigned only one regiment, the Sixth Marines, to make their breaches. Each of the regiment's three battalions would cut a single lane.

Moving closer to the Kuwaiti border, most of the Marines left behind their tents and sleeping bags, only to suffer through surprisingly wet and frigid nights. The ground war initially was set to start on February 22, but Boomer asked for a delay in the hope of getting better weather to allow full use of the vital marine air support. The weather, however, did not improve, and in a situation similar to what General Dwight D. Eisenhower had faced on the eve of D-Day in 1944, Schwarzkopf decided to attack despite the poor conditions. 'We fought the ground campaign over the worst four flying days of the whole war,' Moore, the marine air commander, later complained. 'General Schwarzkopf and every weather guy in Southwest Asia promised 72 hours of good weather, but we probably didn't get 72 minutes.

In the end, the U.S. Marines had made about one hundred miles in one hundred hours, defeated seven Iraqi divisions, destroyed 1,040 tanks, 608 armored vehicles, and 432 artillery pieces, and taken 22,308 prisoners — at the cost of five killed and forty-eight wounded.
 
Did you have to come downhill to get 5 bills? I often went past 500 when coming down hill out of the MOA (we didn't have the same restrictions you guys did) but we were always limited to 350 in the break. At sea level, no idea what the 45 can do, it's not exactly overpowered lol

Yeah probably, and it was probably closer to high 4's. I doubt I ever saw 5XX anything in that jet. Anyone ever get it supersonic?
 
None of that changes that, for a month prior to that, airmen were flying into the most heavily-defended area of the world since Hanoi daily and nightly, and systematically dismantling the Republican Guard and regular Army. An enormous amount of damage to the Iraqi military's fighting capability was performed well before the first regular soldier or Marine even crossed the Kuwait border.

The "in the end" statement makes it seem as if the Marines achieved all of their accomplishments by themselves, in a vacuum. To put it in perspective, two squadrons of F-111s and F-15Es destroyed more tanks in one week than the Marines claim to have done in that statement.

It was a team effort.
 
Yeah probably, and it was probably closer to high 4's. I doubt I ever saw 5XX anything in that jet. Anyone ever get it supersonic?

I said often past 500, meant 400. I touched 500 a few times shortly coming down hill during a tail chase. Some of our FCF claimed they had, pretty much going straight down. I really have no idea.
 
None of that changes that, for a month prior to that, airmen were flying into the most heavily-defended area of the world since Hanoi daily and nightly, and systematically dismantling the Republican Guard and regular Army. An enormous amount of damage to the Iraqi military's fighting capability was performed well before the first regular soldier or Marine even crossed the Kuwait border.

The "in the end" statement makes it seem as if the Marines achieved all of their accomplishments by themselves, in a vacuum. To put it in perspective, two squadrons of F-111s and F-15Es destroyed more tanks in one week than the Marines claim to have done in that statement.

It was a team effort.

In that statement, it looks like the Marines are saying they destroyed 1,040 tanks in four days. How many tanks did USAF squadrons destroy? I have no idea, I'm just curious for comparison.
 
In that statement, it looks like the Marines are saying they destroyed 1,040 tanks in four days. How many tanks did USAF squadrons destroy? I have no idea, I'm just curious for comparison.

I'm deployed, so I don't have access to all of the records I have at my home, but I have a quote from a F-15E guy who said at a press briefing that F-111s and F-15Es were destroying 100-150 tanks per night.
 
I believe the F-111 destroyed more tanks/armor in Desert Storm than the A-10 did.
 
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