JBC*

 Ok, campers, I'll get to the meaning of the cryptic title to this post in a paragraph or two.  I stumbled upon a source a couple of days ago that brought laughter to my belly and tears to my eyes, but more on that a little later.

First and foremost.  Mrs J had a follow up with her surgeon a week or so ago.  Without going into the gory details, he said she looked free and clear.  But, he also said that he couldn't be very sure until a PET Scan was performed.  (Beans, PET is an acronym for Positron Emission Tomography.)  I'm not a Doctor, nor have I played one on TV, but he led us to believe that those results are very reliable, so "Nothing there" will be very good news.  We'll see.

Recovery wise, she's doing quite well, we even went to Church in my Truck this morning.  She hadn't been able to get up into it since surgery.  I think that capability returned with a view of the underside of a Buck crossing at her car's windshield height from right to left within about a foot off the glass as we drove down the road to our house, a couple of days ago.  She let out a rather loud, "Look Out" as it came into my field of vision.  I was quite excited also.  There might have been a couple of not safe for work words spoken, during and shortly after, by yours truly.  He cleared the vehicle without a scratch and now that I have tested her brakes, I'm very confident they are in good shape.  We also had a discussion of why I liked taller cars.  She had no problem climbing into the truck this morning.

Thank you Lord!

She has been getting quite a bit of nappage daily which leaves me with a bit of time on my hands, and even as good as she's doing, I'd rather be close by to assist if and as needed.  So...I was fooling around the internet, seeing what's out there and got to wondering, what with all the changes in the Air Force (and other branches) lately, if the squadrons I'd belonged to were still around.  

 

Source

The basis for this research project was reading that the 12TFS, which I'd written about here, had been disbanded.  That was a bit of a hard swallow on reading that.  So, I wondered if...

Prior to the 12TFS, I had been an instructor in the 435 TFTS (tactical fighter training squadron) at Holloman AFB, NM.I found out that the squadron is still active and performing the same mission at Randolph AFB in San Antonio.  Good on 'em.

Source

 

The assignment prior to that was to the 69TFS at Moody AFB, GA.  

Source

 

That was an F-4E squadron that was part of President Reagan's early 80s "Rapid Deployment Force".  We were expected to be able to deploy a squadron anywhere in the world on very short notice, (I think it was 48 hours, could be wrong).  And Fight when we got there. Needless to say we did a lot of deploying, quite frequently to Wendover AB, Utah to participate from a bare base in Red Flag Exercises.  Suffice it to say, I was a lot better at doing Fighter Pilot "things" when I PCS'd from that assignment than when I arrived.

Source

 

But, my first operational assignment was a short tour remote to Kunsan AB on the ROK.  Myself and another Pilot (I'll call him "Al") from my F-4 Replacement Training Unit arrived from Luke AFB in the first week of December.  (Yes, Beans, in Korea).  Cold?  Nah, cold is warm compared to the air temp stepping out of the C-141 on the Kunsan ramp in December.  It took me til the end of my 1 year tour to warm back up.

But, I was assigned to the 80TFS.  Also known as "The Juvats".  All the rest of the front seaters in the squadron were Captains and above.  Many had participated in the SEA festivities, so when they talked about how to do things, we listened.  Closely.

Great assignment, no distractions, good flying areas.  Learned a lot about a lot of things in that year.  

Source

 

But, juvat, what did you do for entertainment there.  Well, there was the movie theater with very old movies.  Or there was the Officer's Club.  The Club had two long tables, one for each squadron and a bunch of 4 tops scattered around the rest of the dining room for other folks.  Suffice it to say that if you weren't a member of the Squadron, you didn't sit at "our" table.  Again, learned a lot listening to the stories at the table.

But, "The Juvats" had another aspect of entertainment called the "Juvat Boys Choir".  It was composed of about 15 pilots/WSOs, most of whom were unmarried (you'll understand why shortly).  The Juvat Boys Choir provided the entertainment for official and semi-official dinners.  That entertainment revolved around singing.  Al and I had been on station for about a month when we were invited to become members of the JBC.  We accepted.

We, the choir leadership, generally stole the music from some song we liked and adapted the lyrics so they referred to the reason for the party, people PCS'ing home, or maybe, someone who had done something stupid, on the ground or in the air.  You know, poke a little fun at somebody and they generally try harder not to be mentioned in the next round.  Even the Squadron Commander (at the time his call sign was "JayBird") wasn't safe from being in a song.  

But...we were very careful about that.  He carried a very big sack of bad/not fun things that could be assigned as additional duty for a Fighter Pilot/WSO who had annoyed him.

It was fun, a lot of laughing, and yes, some alcohol was consumed.

Enough background, where are we going with this, juvat?

In my "who's still around" web research, I entered the name of the 80TFS, aka Juvat.

The first response was "The Juvat Boys Choir".  Good to be famous, I guess.

In any case, here's a pretty good and to be expected example of the Fighter Pilot Song genre, even if it is from the "Lawn Dart" generation of Juvats.

 

If you're interested in listening to more Juvat Fighter Pilot songs (note the capital J), here's the site.  A word of caution, many of these songs are "Not safe for Work", "Not safe for Kids", "Not safe for...".  Heck, they were written by Fighter Pilots for Fighter Pilots on a Remote Air Base with not a lot to do for entertainment.  What did you expect?

 Peace Out, y'all!

*Juvat Boys Choir