Photo of a C-130 cockpit:
Obama in his 20's:
Interesting comment on beldarblog:
Tantor made the following comment | Aug 31, 2011 11:03:04 AM | Permalink
The thing is, flying is an unforgiving business and military flying all the more so. If you make a mistake in a C-130, you can die, as one of my classmates from the Air Force Academy did. If you make a mistake as a community organizer, you can just apply to grad school.
There is a cultural difference between aviators and the regular civilian jackass. When you fly, everything about your mission has to be right when the wheels come up in the well. You don't have time to redo things and may not have the gas. In the civilian world, you can pretty much do things over and over until you get it kinda right.
You can see that in Perry, who has made a habit of winning elections by intense preparation and innovation. By contrast, Obama is perfectly willing to take off with gargantuan programs that are untested, unwieldy, and doomed to fail.
http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2011/08/yes-perry-flew-jets-in-the-us-air-force.html
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C-130 Rick Perry: He flew the world before politics
By Sarah Kleiner Varble Abilene Reporter-News Posted April 23, 2011 at 11:30 p.m.
 Contributed Photo Gov. Rick Perry is shown in pilot training in the early 1970s. He eventually chose to stay in Texas and fly C-130s. He was based at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene from 1974 to 1977.
Rank: Retired as a captain [ Note: The writer is incorrect in using the word 'retired', he didn't retire, though he was a captain when he left the air force. ]
Hometown: Haskell
Crew job: C-130 aircraft commander
Served in the Air Force: 1972 to 1977
Dyess AFB tour: March 4, 1974, to Feb. 28, 1977
His story:Way back before he was governor of Texas, Rick Perry had two choices as a young member of the Air Force.
He could either follow his dream and work toward becoming an instructor pilot in the sleek T-38, or he could fly the hulking C-130, planes that affectionately were referred to as "trash haulers" by Perry and his cohorts.
"There was no telling what you were going to haul around on any given day, from high value cargo like human beings to the colonel's kitty litter," Perry told the Reporter-News in a recent phone interview.
He wanted to fly T-38s, but not badly enough to move to Selma, Ala., where he would have been assigned. So, Perry chose to stay in Texas and fly the C-130.
In 1974, he moved to Dyess Air Force Base, about 55 miles from his hometown of Haskell, and began a career that took him all over the world and shaped his political future.
"It was one of the great adventures of my life," Perry said. "I had a fairly pedestrian life until I was 23 years old."
Perry could count on one hand the number of trips he had taken out of his home state by the time he graduated from Texas A&M University, but everything changed when he joined the Air Force.
Flying C-130s, Perry lived in Germany and Saudi Arabia. He flew in Central and South America, North Africa and all over Europe.
"I saw all of these different types of governments and I made the connections to how the people acted and looked, and it became abundantly clear to me that, at that particular point in time, that America was this very unique place and that our form of democracy was very rare," Perry said. " ... That was the greatest gift I received from my years of being in the military, and they really shaped my outlook on the rest of my life."
Perry retired from the Air Force in 1977 — but not without one last adventure.
As his final days approached, Perry was assigned to a mission to "haul trash" to Bermuda with a relatively inexperienced crew.
"I'm sure the young guys stayed up a little longer than the older guy, which would be me at 26 years old," Perry said, and they fell asleep on the way back to Abilene.
About the time the plane reached Atlanta, a fire light for the No. 3 engine flashed once. And then it flashed again.
Perry poked his co-pilot as the light reappeared and held steady on red.
Using the headset, he asked the loadmaster to take a look at the engine from the window and about that time, the engine exploded and blew a tail pipe off the plane.
"He started screaming that we were on fire and that we were all going to die," Perry said. "The aircraft operated as advertised and flies amazingly well on three engines."
Perry and his crew were stuck at Pope Air Force Base while awaiting a new engine. With three days left in his enlistment, Perry called the command post at Dyess and informed them that they would have to send a new pilot along with the engine if they didn't hurry.
"I said, 'In three days, I'm not Captain Perry anymore, I'm Mr. Perry, and I'm going home," Perry said.
The engine arrived and the plane returned to Dyess in time for Perry to retire Feb. 28, as planned.
He went on to be elected to the state House of Representatives, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and, finally, governor of Texas.
reporternews.com |
