The legend of the Jolly Rogers Skull and Crossbones...

As an AQF-2 (P1) attached to VQ-2, I was barhopping the streets of Rota, Spain one afternoon in ~1960 when the sound of an explosion closely followed a fireball rising rapidly over the base. Informed later VA-84 (Jolly Rogers at that time) had just lost a Crusader (& crew) while executing a low level inverted run down the runway ...practicing for an air show or some such at Rota, TAD off the boat. Sad afternoon ...
 
Pilot Fighter said:
VFA-103 are the current Jolly Rogers. I was curious if they have continued to deploy with Ens. Ernie or if he is on permanent display at the O Club.
Click to expand...
Ens Ernie goes along with the squadron on deployment and is display din the ready room. I spent 6 months at VF-103 before I got accepted for Aircrew Program.
 
That's a cool story and tradition. Maybe the fighter dudes here have a different perspective on this, but I don't see some real human remains going over too well in an AF squadron.
 
Pretty sure I've seen it before, so I think they have the thing still. They were also the MUTHA squadron in 2012, so they got to lug that stupid thing around to the club and everywhere else. The bones are definitely cooler than that. I think my favorite tradition, is the Felix cat. I've heard it is a maintainer, since no pilot has admitted to it, but he makes for an entertaining time at 6:30 AM driving to a brief in Fallon when he pops out of the darkness and jumps in front of your car. It is a human in a felix cat suit. There are prob photos on the interwebs of it, but it is slightly morale boosting when you are just trying to wake yourself up for the super sweet brief that is about to follow.
 
The Jolly Rogers' tails on the F14 is the most amazing looking aircraft tail I've ever seen. Even used it as the basis for my last tattoo.
 
f_a-18f.50b.jpg
 
Yeah, I have to say that, even as a legacy VF squadron hater, I appreciate their jet art. Maybe it is because as a little kid I had those dumb little F-14 toys with a stick and a trigger on the back that made missile noises, and my favorite one was a Jolly Rogers jet. Who knows....

As a side note, even a single CAG jet is technically in violation of USN aircraft marking regs. Accepted tradition, so it continues. That said, -103 went ahead and painted the tails of all their jets flat black with low vis markings on the rest of the aircraft like the high vis CAG jet last year before deployment #1 of the 2 in the last year. I had to hand it to them, that was/is cool looking and I guess kind of a middle finger to the regs nazis out there. Fine by me! Unfortunately one of them is at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf now
 
///AMG said:
As a side note, even a single CAG jet is technically in violation of USN aircraft marking regs.
Click to expand...

As much as I would like to further your bad-ass anti-authoritarian explanation, there is an "aircraft paint deviation" process. I only know this because VS-41 had to get approval for their big shamrocks on their tails. When they got done, they all looked like CAG birds.

However, I bet that nobody actually waits for approval to start painting.
 
MikeD said:
You're assuming that the AF even knows what the hell "tradition" even is, as all they've done in the past decade and a half, is destroy any they ever had.
Click to expand...
Given enough time, I'm sure they can scrape together some faux nostalgia. But I don't expect to ever see anything whimsical like this on an AF bird.
S-3+Viking+Tail+Screwbirds.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top