I tried Palace Chase... in 1972. Tried to get with an O2 outfit at Willow Grove. They had one of the airplanes I flew in III Corps near Saigon.

The Ops Officer looked at my record and asked what fighter I had flown. They had recently converted from "Deuces" to O2s and were not entirely happy. I said, "I didn't fly fighters. I went directly from UPT to O2s in Vietnam." He said, "you need some fighter time to be in this outfit."

There was a brown bar going for a local checkout flt. He had gone through Holloman and flown an AT-33 and shot a few rounds into a sock. He was 'fighter qualified'.

The Ops officer had never been in combat, never flown a real strike but had flown F-102s doing intercepts and he was 'fighter qualified."

I had over 750 hrs in the airplane, in combat and had probably more than 100 airstrikes and I was not qualified to fly O2s in the states.

Sometimes you gotta love the USAF mentality.. there seems to be a consistent thread.