More "Not Your Father's Air Force"

From the AFA's Daily Report:

Traveling Like an Airman Should: Basic military training graduates heading from Lackland AFB, Tex., to Keesler AFB, Miss., for follow-on technical training will now arrive by chartered commercial airliner and no longer by bus as had been the practice for decades. WLOX TV 13 of Biloxi, Miss., reported that the first crop of airmen to fly in arrived Monday at Keesler and appeared happy to have been spared the 10-hour bus ride of their predecessors. A Keesler spokesman told the Daily Report on Tuesday that Keesler was the last of the Air Force's technical training bases to phase out the busses. (See also Keesler release)

Chartered flights from Lackland to Keesler?  Well, lah-di-dah.  I made that trip from Lackland Hell to Keesler Nirvana (by comparison) in the way-back... in October of 1963.  But I went by train, which was quite pleasant given we had a six hour or so layover in N'Awlins to change trains.  That was my first encounter with The Crescent City and it was MOST pleasant.  We junior birdmen were under strict orders to stay in the train station for the duration of the layover and to refrain from ALL alcoholic beverages.  Heh.  You can imagine how much attention we paid to those instructions, especially since we were only under the supervision of the most senior among us... a BMT grad who had been awarded TWO stripes after basic because he signed a lifetime enlistment agreement or sumthin'.  So... out into the streets we went, in Class A blues, and into the first of many drinking establishments.  It was a sign o' the times that none among us paid for our first round of drinks and quite a few of the next rounds, as well... this being prior to the Vietnam ramp-up and the subsequent ugliness.  We got gloriously inebriated but not so much as to miss our train... just pleasantly tipsy, oiled-up and happy.

I'm thinkin' those chartered flights are a whole helluva lot different than my train ride and not necessarily better, either.  But I will agree flying beats being on a bus for ten hours.  Ah, Today's Modern Air Force.

Today's Pic:  YrHmblScrb about six months after that train ride.  Keesler AFB, 1964.