Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 25 February 2001
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| INT: | Yeah. And I suppose you're supporting the people you want to support in that country to maintain a level of control? | |
| PM: | Yeah, destabilize it. | |
| INT: | I mean that came up recently with the whole money going to Columbia, didn't it? | |
| PM: | Right. | |
| INT: | Okay, so you're there in '66. What were your day-to-day duties when you started at Minot? What crew were you on to begin with? | |
| PM: | Oh, I can't remember crew numbers, but I think the first crew was—I could be wrong here, but you initially—they were forming a crew, so they had— | |
| INT: | The way it's been described to me is that they were classified, so there's S, R, E and X. | |
| PM: | N was non-ready. | |
| INT: | Okay. | |
| PM: | And so the crew I was assigned to, if I remember correctly, was a non-ready crew. It had an experienced pilot or co-pilot who was becoming a pilot. I think a brand new co-pilot, a guy who was becoming a...who was new to the radar navigation business and me new to the navigation business, and then we had—I don't remember the EW of that crew, or the gunner, but we trained together as a crew under the supervision of the instructors there at the base, and when we got to the point that they felt we were ready for a check ride, we went through the certification process, flew the ride, briefed the mission to the commander and were certified an E crew, and then we just flew our training missions from then on. | |
| INT: | Okay. But eventually you worked yourself up to S-01? How did that transpire? | |
| PM: | I think I changed crews one time before I became an S crew. I'm sure of that, and it was while I was on that crew that we flew what's called an ORI—Operational Readiness Inspection, and the— | |
| INT: | Was it a big deal? |
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