Mustang# 44-63350 does this plane have combat history?

[Jack Cook]

John,
We're just having fun.
We all hope you have many hours of fun
and safe flying ahead of you!!

[Chicoartist]

Yes, that's true. Guess this forum would be pretty quiet if we didn't enjoy talking about all aspects of warbirds past and present, including our preferred "fantasy" paint jobs!

Wade

[Warbirdnerd]

Gentlemen,

I apologize, I'm not sure how the confusion regarding the paint scheme got started. Was it something I said? LOU IV wil stay LOU IV...forever and there was never any doubt. I was merely looking for information on the serial number. But, there were some great suggestions. Thank you all!


Regards,


John

Welcome to the WIX John and congrats on your new ride! Can you tell us where you and Lou IV are going to be based out of? I got to see your bird a few times when it was based here in the midwest...
Thanks

Last edited by Warbirdnerd on Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

[mlenoch]

John:
Congrats on your new Musatng. Lou IV is a very nice flyer. You'll enjoy every flight in her.
Take Care,
Vlado

[mlenoch]

OOppss...........Mustang! (Musta been a little of last night's scotch!)

[Randy Haskin]

OOppss...........Mustang! (Musta been a little of last night's scotch!)

Man, Vlado, you are a "high class" warbird driver! Friday night started out for me with Jeremiah Weed (darn, I hate that stuff), then went to some Guinness, then on to some Jack and Coke...and that's about the last thing I remember. That's as classy as it gets at the Barksdale O'Club.

[mlenoch]

Randy:

Great! What's the history on J. Weed? Didn't some fighter jock start that in the F-4 days or such? And is it only an ACC 'refreshment'? A little story on this squadron tradition is wanting.

You know when you are in deep doo-doo when the wife sez 'I only drink things that are at least 15 years old'............guys, keep your focus.......don't go there!!

VL

[Warbirdnerd]

Randy:

Great! What's the history on J. Weed? Didn't some fighter jock start that in the F-4 days or such? And is it only an ACC 'refreshment'? A little story on this squadron tradition is wanting.

You know when you are in deep doo-doo when the wife sez 'I only drink things that are at least 15 years old'............guys, keep your focus.......don't go there!!

VL

Here is what I found on checksix.com:

'The True Story of Jeremiah Weed'


From 'Sierra Hotel - Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam', by Colonel Clarence Richard "Dick" Anderegg, USAF, (Retired)


Every USAF fighter squadron has a lounge where the pilots sometimes gather for a cold beer after the flying day is over. Every refrigerator in each of those lounges contains a chilled bottle of a 100-proof product called Jeremiah Weed. For special occasions, and sometimes for no reason at all, someone will bring out the Weed, fill a shot glass for each person present, and propose a toast. At the conclusion of the toast, all down their Weed in a single gulp. It is not tasty. To many it seems like drinking kerosene, and it leaves a very strong aftertaste. Be that as it may, few refuse because the downing of a Weed is a ritual deeply imbedded in the fighter pilot culture. That ritual started long before today’s squadron commanders were even in college, and stories abound as to how the custom started. A famous newsman once said, “When there is disagreement between the legend and the truth, always print the legend.” Since I disagree, here is the true story of Jeremiah Weed, and I know it’s true because I was part of it.

On December 1, 1978, I was flying as an instructor in the back seat of a F–4E, tail number 649, on a BFM hop out of the 414th FWSq at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The student in my front seat, Maj. Nort Nelson, was a highly experienced F–4 pilot with hundreds of combat hours. Leading the flight was Capt. Joe Bob Phillips, who had in his back seat Capt. Larry Ernst, an instructor who was just along for the ride. The mission called for Joe Bob to attack Nort in a scripted scenario that gave Nort the opportunity to use his best defensive BFM to defeat Joe Bob’s attacks. The mission did not last long. On the first engagement, Nort managed to put the airplane into a position from which I judged that recovery was impossible (The details are for another story, which I will tell in a future book). I ejected both of us from the jet. Neither of us was injured, and within an hour we were picked up by a helicopter that returned us to Nellis. It probably goes without saying that Nort and I had different views: he thought he could miss the ground; I did not. It was too close to bet my life on. The accident investigators agreed with me. They determined that ejection was the only possibility for survival. Further, they believed that if I had delayed more than a second, one or both of us would have died in the desert seventy miles north of Las Vegas.

A year later, both Joe Bob and Nort were members of the F–16 Multinational Operational Test and Evaluation squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. On the first anniversary of the accident, they were flying to Nellis to participate in Red Flag. As they passed over the crash site, which Joe Bob easily found since he had circled our downed position many times, they sketched some brief road maps on cards in their cockpits and decided to return to the site by car.

The next day, a Friday, they drove out of Las Vegas with a friend, Pete Mock, intending to find the site and camp out in the crater that the crashing airplane had gouged in the high desert. However, it was dark by the time they got to the dirt road they thought would lead them to the site. After a couple of aborted attempts to drive up dirt roads to nowhere, they decided to go back to a roadside café they had passed to ask directions.

They entered the Paranaghat Bar and found no customers, only a bearded bartender who looked a lot like Grizzly Adams. When they told the bartender what they were up to, he was delighted to tell them he had seen the fire from the crashing airplane the day of the accident. Further, he was very pleased that he had three real fighter pilots in his bar. He had heard that fighter pilots knew many bar games (true), and he wanted to play games for drinks. When they balked at the idea, he persisted, and after much cajoling asked them if they knew the game “horses.” They shook their heads no (not true). Over the next several minutes, the bartender “taught” them horses, finally saying that whoever lost had to buy a round of drinks. After three games of horses, the bartender had bought all three rounds. And after three rounds the pilots were a little less stressed to get to the crash site.

Joe Bob asked the bartender if he knew how to do afterburners. No, the bartender said, he had never heard of that game. So, Joe Bob explained to him how a shot of brandy in a shot glass is ignited so that the alcohol on top burns, and then the drinker throws down the flaming shot. If done correctly, all the brandy is emptied from the shot glass, so that when the drinker puts the glass down, a small, blue flame still burns in the bottom. The bartender was eager to play but said he had no brandy. Nort suggested that any high-proof booze might work, and the bartender fumbled around under the bar for a moment. He straightened up and plopped a tall, brown bottle with a brown and green label on the bar, and said, “I’ve got this here stuff—it’s 100 proof.” The brand name on the green label proclaimed that it was Jeremiah Weed. The three fighter pilots filled their shot glasses and demonstrated, all three glasses returning to the bar empty except for a small blue flame flickering at the bottom.

The bartender immediately poured one for himself and lit the top. Now, these were no ordinary twentieth-century shot glasses. Joe Bob thought they might be from the 1800s because the glass was very thick, and the bottom was probably
an inch of heavy glass. When the bartender picked his up, he held it by the bottom while he licked and smoothed the mustache of his thick beard out of the line of fire. He took several moments on his grooming, not realizing that as he held the thick glass at the bottom, the top near the fire was heating quickly. By the time he tilted his head back and put the glass to his lips…..well, Joe Bob says you could probably hear the s-s-s-s-sizzle of the hot glass barbecuing the bartender’s lips halfway to Las Vegas. Then the bartender made his second mistake and flinched. The flaming Weed went all over his beard, and by the time Joe Bob, Nort, and Pete could beat out the flames, the bar was filled with the smell of cooked lips and singed hair.

As soon as things calmed down a bit, the trio, feeling badly that they had not paid for a drink all night and greatly embarrassed that they had nearly immolated their new friend, bought another bottle of Weed from him and left again for the crash site, this time guided by one of the bartender’s friends who had entered the bar just in time to witness and smell the blistering. The friend showed them the correct dirt road, and the trio found the crash crater, where they spent the rest of the night camped out and drinking the entire bottle of Weed.

The next morning they dragged themselves out of the crater, gathered a few souvenirs from the parts still lying around, and headed straight for the Nellis Air Force Base Officers’ Club. There they found the manager, showed her the empty bottle, and strongly suggested she add it to the bar stock. She did. Soon, the Nellis fighter pilots were downing shots of Weed (nonflaming) for no good reason except it was different, and it was a good excuse to toast “fallen comrades.” As
Red Flags came through the Nellis club, they saw the weapons school guys doing it, so they did it, too.

And that is the true story of how Jeremiah Weed started. I have a bottle in my freezer.

[oscardeuce]

They just locked th bar at the USAF Academy. Oh, the stories we'll miss.

[Randy Haskin]

Lucky Anderegg, the guy who wrote the Jeremiah Weed story, was also the Ops Group Commander at Seymour Johnson AFB when the first F-15E group went operational in 1990. I believe that he is now the AF historian.

[Randy Haskin]

They just locked th bar at the USAF Academy. Oh, the stories we'll miss.

Military flying traditions, unfortunately, are slowly slipping away because they are not PC.

[TimAPNY]

They just locked th bar at the USAF Academy. Oh, the stories we'll miss.

Military flying traditions, unfortunately, are slowly slipping away because they are not PC.

So is the Navy, if they aren't all gone already. There seemed very few left while I got out 10 years ago So sad really. I love Traditions!

Tim