68 years ago today, the US Air Force became its own branch.

[NuclearDem]

September 18, 1947. Happy birthday, Air Force!

[HooptieWagon]

1. And on Sept 19th...

...there were 3 military branches fighting over who got nuclear weapons.

[Renew Deal]

14. That's funny

[Elwood P Dowd]

2. Damn, I'm older than the United States Air Force. (NM)

[Basic LA]

7. Me too!

I was struck by the same thought! At least I'm not older than my branch, the USN.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. I was drafted into the US Army.

Now it would be cool if both of us were still living and older than the US Army and US Navy. The stories we could tell.

[pinboy3niner]

10. My goal in life is to live to be older than the U.S. Army

Wish me luck!

And I was also an Army draftee (1967). But I volunteered for the draft so I could get out in 2 in case I didn't like it.

[Elwood P Dowd]

11. I was just a few months from turning 24 when drafted (1970) and the second oldest guy in my basic

training company. Got lucky after AIT and spent my 2 years in the US.

[pinboy3niner]

13. I'm happy that worked out well for you

i was gung-ho, volunteered for everything when I entered at 18. After Basic, Leadership School and Advanced Infantry Training, I went to Infantry OCS, where I was one of the youngest and littlest guys there. Commissioned at 19.

I remember one very rigorous and physical training day in OCS. When our Tac officer finally brought us back to the company area at chow time, the perverse SOB didn't release us to go to the mess hall; he led us out to an open field where he made us low-crawl to try to reach him as he kept stepping backward before he'd release us individually for chow.

I was totally physically exhausted, but I got the idea in my head to fuck up his spit shine. So I dug deep and low-crawled with a vengeance to to get him. And it was me and Doidge, the two littlest guys in the platoon, who reached him first and were released to go for chow.

And I recently checked the draft lottery numbers and discovered that I would have been drafted anyway a couple of years later.

[Elwood P Dowd]

15. Glad I didn't give in to the pressure to sign up for OCS because I had a degree.

That would have meant an extra year along with 6 months of hell. They did sucker me into that 2-week leadership school. Went into the Army as an E-1, got out an E-5. Some of my friends from high school and college made it out by coming home in a body bag. A high school baseball teammate was there involved in some nasty stuff during TET, came home alive when his tour was up, and then later decided to go back into the Army and become an officer. He was lost when his chopper was shot down while working with an ARVN unit in 1972.

[pinboy3niner]

16. Yeah, I lost a lot of friends

It was many years later when I checked and discovered that more than 60 guys I knew died in Vietnam. I stopped counting then.

A roommate in AIT (when we had a cadre room in the barracks as acting NCOs) was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously and my OCS roommate, who went on to Rucker for flight school to become a chopper pilot, crashed and died.

I didn't even count the guys who suicided afterward, like my first RTO in-country.

After Vietnam I didn't expect to live to see 30. Not that I had any conscious premonition, it was more of a subconscious feeling after seeing so many die so young. It just seemed normal because it was so normal for us there. And maybe a little survivor's guilt, too, expecting to be punished for making it.

I can't believe, and don't know why, I'm still here today. Still crazy after all these years, and still remembering absent friends.

[MineralMan]

3. When my father flew B-17s, it was still the USAAF.

It needed to become a new branch of the military following the war, since its mission and the Army's were very different. By the time I enlisted in the USAF in 1965, that conversion was full-scale complete. Of course, the only airplanes I ever flew in were commercial airliners going from one assignment to another. In fact, there were no planes at any of the bases where I was stationed. Go figure.

[pinboy3niner]

5. And still the Army managed to hang onto its own aviation

Army airmobility became important in the Vietnam War and remains important under its later designation as Air Assault.

The Army still has some fixed-wing elements, but it has BEAUCOUP HELICOPTERS.

[TwilightGardener]

4. ...

[pinboy3niner]

6. U.S. Air Force song (with lyrics)

[hunter]

9. My grandfather was an Army Air Force officer during World War II.

They retired him just before the "birthday" of the Air Force as a separate military branch.

I suspect it had a lot to do with captured Nazi technology and scientists, and nuclear weapons. Suddenly there were a lot of little gods walking around.

After the war anyone who felt a little chafed by the elevation of the Dr. Strangelove types was sent packing. My grandfather worked with a few "eccentric" technical and scientific people during the war, and they were sent packing too.

I'm not pissing on anyone who has served, or serves now, in the Air Force, but I think its creation was a mistake.

The Fundamentalist Christian crowd in the Air Force is just creepy.

[Scuba]

12. This Air Force vet knew that! My Dad was in the Army Air Corp at the time of the change.

As the youngest branch of the military service, the Air Force became known as the "Little Sister" of the Army and the birthplace of many an "instant tradition."

The AF is also distinguished by the fact that officers do (most of) the combat missions while it's the enlisted personnel who remain in the rear with the gear.

Happy Birthday, USAF. Now do something about those crazy evangelicals who have taken over the Academy!