Warbird Information Exchange

A buddy of mine from work and I were talking today. As we are unfamiliar with the NavAir side of the house we got to wondering. I was reading up on the 1979-1980 deployment of the USS Kittyhawk CV-63. VF-111 had a F-14A Buno. 160666 NL 200. Now on display at the Western Aerospace Museum. This bird (200) was designated for the Commander Air Group (CAG). If I'm not mistaken the CAG is in charge of all the Aircraft wings on the carrier. And all wings have a CAG aircraft, always the 1st modex (X00). Would the CAG and the CO of VF-111 be 2 different people? If so would the next modex be for the CO NL 201? Which would have been BuNo. 160668, now residing in Davis-Montham AFB since 1995. Thanks for any clarification

Shay

Thanks Rob

That had me curious. Seemed a lil odd that a fighter wing would deploy with an extra F-14 just to be used part time by the CAG. The reason this all came about was because back in 1979-1980 my uncle was CO of VF-111. F-14A BuNo. 160666 was NL200 at the time. This confirms that this is another of his aircraft preserved in a museum. The 1st being an F-8J BuNo. 150904, now preserved in the Kalamazoo Air History Museum. Although not his personal ride he did have hours onboard this bird. My family heard another rumor through his freinds that another of his F-8 aircraft was on display at NAS Miramar, but I'm waiting to get copies of his log book to see for sure. OK now here is another question. If the CAG and CO share the same aircraft. When the CAG flies who is the RIO? Thanks again.

Shay

Here's a photo of BuNo. 160666






http://www.cloudnet.com/~djohnson/150904.htm[/url]

While an Aircraft has a pilots name on it, it is not "their" aircraft. They fly what is up and ready to go, or outfitted for a specific mission. Some aircraft never leave the Hanger bay, the good old hanger queen or spare parts bird. Everything gets robbed off of her.

One of our CAGs loved the 312 bird, not the 300. Why I don't know. But I think the airwing I was in Cag was 300, Co was 301, XO was 302. I’d have to check on that but that rings a bell, then the JO had one side of an a/c.

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so who's the guy in triple nutts kites ?

I always thought that Triple Nutts were the CAG's a/c, the Double Nutts the Squadron CO's and the "01" ships the XO's


hmmmm
Martin

To answer the first question, the CAG is the commander of the Air Wing assigned to a particular carrier. In that wing are the various squadrons which make it up. Back in the good old days when there were A-6s, there were 2 F-14, 2 A-7 or F-18, 1 A-6, 1 EA-6, 1 E-2, 1 S-3 and 1 SH-3 or SH-60 squadron. The one exception was the USS Midway which could not operate F-14 so there had 2 A-6 and 3 A-7 then F-18 squadrons. Navy tradition (the Navy's full of it!) dictates that each squadron have one aircraft painted has the CAGs bird with his name and the squadron modex followed by 00. On what side, well that would be dictated by whether he was a pilot or NFO. Were these aircraft reserved for the CAG to fly? No of course that's not realistic plus he's won't fly aircraft he's not qualified in. A Hummer pilot wouldn't be flying the fast movers and vice versa. Also the aircraft assigned to the CAG besides numbered 00 would also display all the colors of the other squadrons in the air wing (oh-the good ole days!). So in our squadron the CAG bird is #500, the CO is #501, XO is #502 and so on and so on. In scheduling flights the aircrew flew what ever bird was available for that particular event. One other person had their name on the bird, the plane captain along with their home town usually on the port nose gear door. One last thing, the CAG is now a Captain's billet instead of a CDR so the correct term is now Super CAG.

While an Aircraft has a pilots name on it, it is not "their" aircraft. They fly what is up and ready to go, or outfitted for a specific mission. Some aircraft never leave the Hanger bay, the good old hanger queen or spare parts bird. Everything gets robbed off of her.

I think the hanger queen could only sit about 30 to 45 days? ( It's been a while) then we would pull one in and strip it and get the hanger queen flying. Someting about readyness.

I worked on this A/C in the early eighties. There were no "reserved" aircraft. 00 or "nuts" at times was used by nearly every pilot in the squadron. The CAG could have been an A-7 pilot and not even qualified to fly an F-14. You used whatever bird was up at the time. I don't EVER remember the CAG's name on Nuts. It had the squadron CO's name on the canopy.

Dave Guard
Former AE2, and Flight Deck Troubleshooter.

The statements about the Modex are all true. All depended on the CAG himself., there was no hard and fast rule. Today the CAG bird is also known as the "Show bird" as it is the only one painted in anything other then the current day tactical scheme.


The Hangar Queens were only down for about 100 days. If the bird was down for 120 days or more then the paperwork and inspections associated with getting the bird back up was overwhelming and certainly did not look good on the MO's FitRep.