Ribbon rack when I had a little over 4 years active duty and nametag issued in basic. When I pulled alerts, we had to pass a two day evaluation by the wings best folks, standardization evaluators, aka "standboard". If you failed one of these evals, you got to stand tall in front of the Deputy Commander for Operations, a full bird colonel, with your Commander and the evalutors explaining what a dumbo you were and why they rated you unqualified. Then the instructors would pipe in and explain how they would retrain you. Then you had to get retrained, rechecked, and recertified before you could pull alert again. The two-day eval consisted of one portion on the Missile Procedures Trainers, where evaluators sat in a booth with one way glad watching as they presented scenarios, including launch, holds, hazards, malfunctions, donning emergency breathing apparatus from memory, blah blah blah, anything and everything for 5-6 hours. Busting was the kiss of death for an officer. Although the saying is "there are those who have, and those who will", you didn't want it to be you. Then another full day on the missile complex handing day to day activities and anything that might happen. Anything. Everything. Once you had your initial, or upgrade eval, you had to have your first recurring eval within 6 months. After that, you had to be evaluated a minimum of once a year. Due to changes between crew members, you normally got hit a couple times a year. These evals could be scheduled, but normally were "no notice", evaluators just showed up. The missile procedures trainer could only present so many scenarios and we were well trained on them, but anything could happen on site. If you got a "highly qualified", you were issued a pin to wear on your ascot. Once you got 5 highly qualified ratings consisting of 10 two-part evaluations with no critical or major errors, maybe a few minors, and no busts in the last year, you earned the 8th Air Force Crew Member Excellence award, a real badge of honor. Ten years I got checked 17 times, 16 Highly Qualifieds, one Qualified, never busted
My only major error was during my first recurring evaluation, only qualified one month. On site had a malfunction of the guidance system that had just had one component replaced with we got on site. Maintenance technicians left, replacing the easiest part. Standboard hit the gate and it cropped up again, downmoding from Ready to Align 7, loosing acquisition. This malfunction required multiple voltage readings with a 400 hz special meter that I had never used on site before, PIA. Although I troubleshot it correctly, had the correct end item and readiness status, Staff Sergeant "Fast Eddie" Rennick awarded me a major error for not downmoding the guidance system to Heat. The Wing Command Post wouldn't call us off alert. Job Control wouldn't give me a Job Control Number for an off alert end item. I had arrived at a maintenance procedure in the -2-4-8 Technical Order that I was not trained in, nor was there even a copy on site, this was a maintenance procedure with 3 possible downstreams, one of which, a drawer, had been replaced. The standboard commander Capt Monte Givens had to get on the Wing Command Post Wire direct line and tell them we were off alert and they better get someone out there to fix it before they would respond correctly to Airman First Class Ferguson. To this day, in my opinion I had not reached a solid black box end item and downloading to Heat was not required as there was still troubleshooting required that I did not know what that entailed, maybe the guidance system needed to be up to do this, but the error stood when we took it to the DO. All three end items were "Cat 2", Readiness could be maintained if there was an average of 4 hours between downloads. Was downloading every 15 minutes or so, we were Off Alert. Later the DO told my commander he had to stick by his evaluators as he had reversed some errors which caused some hard feelings. HQ pins with the 3, 9, and 10 are ones I managed to keep over the years for HQ ratings and my 8th Air Force Crew member excellence patch for 5 HQs. Higher numbers were rare as most folks never got that many HQs, for crew officers it was a 4 years tour so they never got checked as much. Don't remember getting given pins after number 10 and it wasn't important anyway. Leather nametag shows master missileman badge (10 years ICBMs) with operations designator denoting Mission Ready Combat Crew time. Only Atlas and Titan had enlisted crew members, Minuteman and Peacekeeper were officer only, a little more rare for an enlisted guy to have ops experience considering Titan IIs were deactivated in 1987.
For wooden Wednesday, this fine little GEC 83 in ebony is getting some serious pocket time now that I have reprofiled and stropped it to a razor edge. Wish GEC would make some 83s in SS.
