“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 370

Military History Monday strikes again! And today I’ve got two kind of odd ones for you.

“The Small Boat Navy”, a 1968 Navy propaganda film about shallow water Navy ops in Vietnam. The odd part? This is narrated by Steve Martin Perry Mason Chief Ironside Raymond Burr.

Bonus: this is a little on the short side, and just has overlaid background music, but I wanted to include it for the odd factor. Video of test flights of the prototype two seat Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II trainer jet aircraft from the 1970s.

What’s odd about this? Two things: this is the only one of these aircraft ever built.

It was originally intended as a prototype for an A-10 trainer / all weather and night attack expansion of the A-10A Warthog, but no money was allocated for further production of the variant so it remained a one-off. Today this aircraft is on display at Edwards AFB.

Thing #2: The guy flying in the second seat is…Barry Goldwater. Yes, the Senator from Arizona.

Goldwater remained in the Arizona Air National Guard until 1967, retiring as a Command Pilot with the rank of major general. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft. As an Air Force Reserve major general, he continued piloting aircraft, to include the B-52 Stratofortress, until late in his military career.

2 Responses to ““What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 370”

  1. tim kies says:

    My best friend passed away a few weeks ago, and he had been in the Navy during the Vietnam war. He was on a submarine at first, then he get stationed on one of those types of boats that ran up and down the canals, patrolling for North Vietnamese soldiers, and dropping Marines and picking them up from time to time.
    I worked with him for over 30 years. He didn’t spend much time in country, but enough.

  2. stainles says:

    Mr. Kies:

    I’m sorry for your loss.

    I had kind of thought that once you were assigned to a specific branch – submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers, small boats – you stayed with that branch until you either advanced in rank to the point you were doing desk work, until you left the service, or unless there was some medical reason you couldn’t serve in that area. (Like, you had a medical condition that kept you out of subs, but you could still do a shore job.)

    Am I mistaken about that, or have things changed since ‘Nam?