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Vietnam Navy Air War


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I am trying to understand why during the Vietnam war there was a large disparity between the number of cruises many of the squadrons participated in. For example, VF-92 (Silver Kings) served 8 cruises, while say VF-84 (Jolly Rogers) served just one. What was the criteria for selection to a cruise? If anyone has some insight into this I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

Howard

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West coast, east coast. Seventh Fleet AO, versus Fifth Fleet AO and what all was going down in the Middle East between Israel and the Arab countries. I tried like all get-out to get a Med cruise, but was told to forget it...experienced flight deck personnel were needed for Yankee Station ops and could not be let go just to say they had been to the Med. So I pulled three cruises and never made it to the Med.

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Though a few east-coast air wings made deployments to the Vietnam War, it's basically a West Coast war due to basic geography. (I read somewhere where it made it sound as though early-on the east-coast was sort of tricked into lending support for the war ["you know guys, you'll never get to see action and increase in rank unless you join in on the war and so maybe you should send a carrier or two"] but I don't know how accurate that is.) Predominantly, it's west-coast air wings who cover the Pacific and thus who were fighting the war. West Coast aircraft are easily identified by their tailcodes which all begin with an N such as in NK, NL, NH, etc. while all east-coast air wings have tailcodes beginning with an A. You'll also note that other than a very few, the MiG kills all came from the USN's west-coast fighter base Miramar NAS...aka Fightertown. Because the Vietnam War is mostly a west-coast war for the USN, most losses also came from the west coast too (Miramar NAS in San Diego and NAS Lemoore CA for the attack community.) VF-84 served only one deployment I think in 1965 and basically played in the Mediterranean or other places east of the USA the rest of the time.

Edited by StevenJ
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