Bush claim to have flown fighter jets?

[billkurtmeyer]

Yesterday, Bush said the following:

"No, I don't. I think him going to Vietnam
was more heroic than my flying fighter jets.
I mean, he was in harm's way and I wasn't."

Am I correct that Bush never flew fighter jets in his brief stint in the TANG? That he actually flew out of date plane that technically was not a fighter jet?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Were his jets ever armed?

Were his jets ever armed?

Did he ever do weapons practice in them?

[mr_hat]

2. The F-102 was an interceptor, designed to get up fast

and splash Soviet bombers at high altitude.

It could be used against other aircraft, but no one but a sloppy liar like Dubya would insist on calling it a fighter.

[Lefty48197]

3. Wasn't the F102 mothballed by the time Dumbyah flew it?

I think it was part of his master plan to fly a plane that he knew damn well wasn't going to go to Vietnam.

[mr_hat]

7. Not mothballed, but withdrawn from frontline service. >

Good overview here:

http://www.seanet.com/~johnco/bush102.htm

[LiveWire]

8. The F-102...

Or the Delta Dagger, was the worlds first supersonic all-weather jet interceptor. It made its initial appearance in 1953. By the time the Vietnam war broke out, the Dagger was well on its way to being moth-balled, which is why many landed in various National Guard units.

Its strange though, because Ive seen many pictures of Bush next to "his" aircraft. The aircraft looks strikingly like the F105, not the F102. But ive seen many pictures of him next to many aircraft, so I could be wrong.

[Willy Mugobeer]

4. Oh, he was trained to fly fighter jets...

...at great cost to the taxpayer, and despite only scoring 25 out of 100 on his pilot aptitude test, and entirely thanks to family friend Sid Adger who called Ben Barnes and got him that training slot over hundreds on the waiting list.

And then he probably flew them for a while; no one's really sure because it seems the dog ate all his flight logs. Must've been a damn hungry dog.

BUT, we know he stopped flying them for good sometime in April 1972; he "cleared this base (Ellington AFB in Houston) May 15th" and was suspended from flying shortly thereafter.

http://www.awolbush.com

[BeatleBoot]

5. In his bath tub

The little toy ones....

Bush: Splash! Broken Arrow! Plane down!!!

Babs: Stay away from that submarine junior, you'll go blind!

[Rick Myers]

6. The planes operated by this 'champagne' unit were OBSOLETE

Even with FRONT LINE interceptor units. It was NOT used in Vietnam after the mid-60's, and even then, only a few of them...