when | Bush | other | situation |
Did not choose to join the full time active duty military | |||
Chose to enlist for duty in the (Texas) Air National
Guard On application:
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Waiting list of 100,000 nationally at the time | ||
17 Jan '68 |
Took the Air Force officer and pilot qualification tests
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May '68 | Graduated from Yale | 1/2 million men fighting; dying @ 350/wk | |
Years 1 & 2 | |||
27 May '68 | Sworn in | ||
after 6 weeks of basic airman training | Received a commission as a second lieutenant |
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Assigned to flight school |
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'fast tracked' into the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, a standby runway alert component of the 143rd Group | Over those on the existing pilot applicant waiting list | ||
Trained to fly the missile-equipped supersonic F-102 Delta Dart jet interceptor fighter | |||
Racked up approximately 300 hours of training flight time in the F-102 |
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Year 3 | |||
Jul '70 | Earned his wings | ||
Applied for a voluntary three month Vietnam tour | Was turned down for this volunteer active duty option | Air Force needed additional F-102 pilots to fly reconnaissance missions. | |
Left to fly as a "weekend warrior" in the Texas Air National Guard out of Ellington AFB near Houston | |||
3 Nov '70 | Promoted to 1st Lieutenant | by Brig. General Rose | |
Jun '70 - May '71 |
Credited with 46 days of flight duty | ||
Year 4 | |||
Jun '71 - May '72 |
Credited with only 22 flight duty days | 14 days short of the minimum 36 days owed the Guard for that year | |
Apr '72 | Flew for the last time in the cockpit of an F-102 |
All the overseas and stateside military services
began subjecting a small random sample in their ranks to
substance abuse testing for alcohol and drugs.
Pentagon had announced its intention to do so back on December 31, 1969 |
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Year 5 | |||
15 May '72 | "cleared this base" according to a written report by one of his two Squadron supervising officers, Lt. Col. William D. Harris Jr. | ||
24 May '72 | Requested in writing a six-month transfer to an inactive postal Reserve unit in Alabama | If Bush had been temporarily transferred there, he would not have continued flying until he returned to Texas, because the Alabama unit had no airplanes | |
31 May '72 | Transfer request was denied by National Guard Bureau headquarters |
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Aug '72 | Scheduled physical | Could have been subject to selection for a random substance abuse test | |
either:
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Release of Bush's military service record would resolve issue. | ||
1 Aug '72 |
Suspended and grounded from flying duty on
verbal order of the TX 147th Group's Commanding Officer for
"his failure to accomplish annual medical
examination."
Two years left of remaining National Guard service. See the Document |
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Country at the height of the Vietnam (air) War |
5 Sep '72 | Ordered to start serving three months in an active but non-flying administrative Guard unit, the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Alabama, for four certain duty days in October and November | ||
29 Sep '72 | In memo to the Secretaries of the Army and Air Force, Major General Francis Greenleaf, then Chief of the National Guard Bureau in Washington DC, confirmed the suspension of 1st Lt. George W. Bush from flying status. | ||
Oct/Nov '72 |
No official notation in his service record that
Bush ever showed up for this assigned duty in Montgomery,
Alabama.
Bush: "I was there on temporary assignment and fulfilled my weekends at one period of time. I made up some missed weekends. I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't flying because they didn't have the same airplanes. I fulfilled my obligations." The Bush campaign conducted its own search of Bush's military records, and could not find evidence that Bush performed any duty in Alabama. |
General William Turnipseed and Lt. Col. Kenneth Lott, who commanded the Montgomery, Alabama, base at the time said that Bush never appeared. "To my knowledge, he never showed up," Turnipseed said. | |
Nov '72 - fall '73 |
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Year 6 | |||
May '73 |
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22 May '73 - 30 Jul '73 |
Bush was credited with 35 "gratuitous" inactive Air Force Reserve points -- in other words, non-attendance inactive Reserve credit time | No one in the Texas Air Guard at the time, has stepped forward to say they saw Bush in person on a single day between May 22 and July 30, 1973 | |
1 Oct'73 | Prematurely discharged with honors from the Texas Air Guard. | This leaves Bush without a single legitimate Texas Air National Guard service day for his fifth and sixth years of service to his Texas Air National Guard discharge. | |
26 May '74 | Scheduled discharge. | ||
Nov '74 | Final inactive Reserve discharge with honors. | Bush was attending Harvard Business School as a full-time student by that time |