Request for assistance re: USMC flight log

[SSI01]

Gentlemen (and ladies as well):

We have a friend of the family down here who was a USMC F-4B/J/S pilot in the mid to late 70s. About 18 months ago he succumbed to cancer, with a lot of attendant issues. His wife had some questions about his flight logbooks a week or so ago and I was privileged to be invited to take a look at them. I figured the aircraft type, BuAer no., flight duration, point of origin and destination etc would be in the log, and was aware they would probably be a little different from civilian logbooks. One thing that stuck out immediately to me was a column in the smaller logbook from the Nov-Dec '73 time frame that listed what amounted to "type flight." This column had entries that included, among others, "1A6," "1A3," "1A7," and "1A2." Shorthand, but for what?

There are other questions she had as well about his flights. The reasons she's curious about what he was doing over there are rather personal (nothing to do with marital affairs) and instead of tying up this forum with this situation I wanted to know if anyone with knowledge or experience would like to reply via PM and let me explain further. I would appreciate their help, as would she.

PS I forgot to explain this all happened before their marriage, and he was pretty closed-mouthed about what he did while in the Marine Corps.

[PhantomTweak]

My condolences for his wife, and yourself. The loss of a real hero.

I worked on those same birds, starting in the late '70's. Maybe even one or two your friend flew

This column had entries that included, among others, "1A6," "1A3," "1A7," and "1A2." Shorthand, but for what?

Nowadays those entries would read something like "1V6," "1V3" etc. In other words, the flights were 1 (the pilot writing the entries) versus 6, etc. They were dogfighting flights, with 1 against however many opponents.
I would wager that there were either entries about bombing missions, and a mix of dogfighting and bombing, as well. The other kinds of missions may have had their own small logbooks, however.

Tell the gentleman's wife "Semper Fi!" from a fellow Marine!
Pat☺

[tgycgijoes]

See if this helps. It looks like this is what you are looking for:

http://www.seawolf.org/assn/flight_purpose_codes.pdf

[SSI01]

My condolences for his wife, and yourself. The loss of a real hero.

I worked on those same birds, starting in the late '70's. Maybe even one or two your friend flew


Nowadays those entries would read something like "1V6," "1V3" etc. In other words, the flights were 1 (the pilot writing the entries) versus 6, etc. They were dogfighting flights, with 1 against however many opponents.
I would wager that there were either entries about bombing missions, and a mix of dogfighting and bombing, as well. The other kinds of missions may have had their own small logbooks, however.

Tell the gentleman's wife "Semper Fi!" from a fellow Marine!
Pat☺

Thanks, I will. More to come later. PS - if you want the BuAer nos I think I can copy them down for you. The flights were out of Okinawa, Iwakuni, and one place in S. Korea. Her question was whether any of the flights took him to the area of North or South Vietnam. I was doubtful of that but then a lot was happening in a very confused and desperate situation in VN back at that time and maybe some things happened that were never meant to be documented. PS I remember one of the squadrons he was a part of was VMFA-232 Red Devils.

[SSI01]

See if this helps. It looks like this is what you are looking for:

http://www.seawolf.org/assn/flight_purpose_codes.pdf

They do help. The Cat 1s I copied down dealt only with a small percentage of the entries. There were quite a few others of that alphanumeric code in the log and I need to get the books actually and run everything he wrote and compare it to what you provided. I think I'm going to ask to get another look at that logbook.

[awstub]

A very close family friend of ours is a ret. USMC MGen with 8,700 flight hours, almost 6000 of which were in the Phantom (400+ SEA combat missions). There is a pretty good chance he knew your friend.
If you PM me with your friends info, I can see if "Lancer" can fill in some blanks for you.

Coincidentally, his son followed him into Marine Corps aviation and he was the CO of VMFA-232 about 6 or so years ago.

Gentlemen (and ladies as well):

We have a friend of the family down here who was a USMC F-4B/J/S pilot in the mid to late 70s. About 18 months ago he succumbed to cancer, with a lot of attendant issues. His wife had some questions about his flight logbooks a week or so ago and I was privileged to be invited to take a look at them. I figured the aircraft type, BuAer no., flight duration, point of origin and destination etc would be in the log, and was aware they would probably be a little different from civilian logbooks. One thing that stuck out immediately to me was a column in the smaller logbook from the Nov-Dec '73 time frame that listed what amounted to "type flight." This column had entries that included, among others, "1A6," "1A3," "1A7," and "1A2." Shorthand, but for what?

There are other questions she had as well about his flights. The reasons she's curious about what he was doing over there are rather personal (nothing to do with marital affairs) and instead of tying up this forum with this situation I wanted to know if anyone with knowledge or experience would like to reply via PM and let me explain further. I would appreciate their help, as would she.

PS I forgot to explain this all happened before their marriage, and he was pretty closed-mouthed about what he did while in the Marine Corps.

[SSI01]

The man's widow will be unavailable until after Christmas (w/family out of town), however, she's going to call me then and we'll make copies of the relevant pages in the logbook so I can have them here. I appreciate the offer of assistance, and I know she does too.

[Victory103]

The code link is probably the best, also was there any "green" ink (combat time) in the logs? If you need anything else I did logs & records in my USN squadron and had to do all the aircrew logbooks, not much has changed.

[SSI01]

Well, there's something else that's interesting - "green ink," hmm? Well, it would stand out and make accounting of combat hours really easy. I don't recall seeing any, though.

She has a small copier in the professional office that is located adjacent to their home. I'll make copies of the logbook pages when she returns post-holiday. Your post reminds me now to note which of them, if any, are in particular colors.

[SSI01]

My condolences for his wife, and yourself. The loss of a real hero.

I worked on those same birds, starting in the late '70's. Maybe even one or two your friend flew


Nowadays those entries would read something like "1V6," "1V3" etc. In other words, the flights were 1 (the pilot writing the entries) versus 6, etc. They were dogfighting flights, with 1 against however many opponents.
I would wager that there were either entries about bombing missions, and a mix of dogfighting and bombing, as well. The other kinds of missions may have had their own small logbooks, however.

Tell the gentleman's wife "Semper Fi!" from a fellow Marine!
Pat☺

Interesting you make that statement re: other small logbooks - he's got a total of three. They include his civilian, pre-USMC flight instruction, most of it in C-150s.