KC-46A Info

[BashiChuni]

i'm loving this more stories please!!! UFB

[Bergman]

Just now, BashiChuni said:

i'm loving this more stories please!!! UFB

We need Azimuth to pipe up here, as he was actually stationed there.

 

I remember drinking beers at Manas and the Deid with Fairchild crews, listening to the stories, and being utterly amazed.  Things like openly threatening to cancel join spouse assignments if someone didn’t cover a TDY.  Then he turned up at OTBH as the OG a couple years later when I was on staff and it was as bad as his reputation.

[Sua Sponte]

27 minutes ago, Bergman said:

We need Azimuth to pipe up here, as he was actually stationed there.

 

I remember drinking beers at Manas and the Deid with Fairchild crews, listening to the stories, and being utterly amazed.  Things like openly threatening to cancel join spouse assignments if someone didn’t cover a TDY.  Then he turned up at OTBH as the OG a couple years later when I was on staff and it was as bad as his reputation.

He was my Sq/CC at Fairchild and Manas. He made a copilot, who just had testicular cancer, talk about it in front of the squadron. He ordered a copilot in from his two weeks time off after a deployment with his family to have a formal promotion ceremony to Captain. It pissed Rat off that the guy was super pissed at him for coming in to have a promotion ceremony. Later on the guy was supposed to assume alpha alert early in the morning. The night prior he felt sorta ill, but thought he’d feel better in the morning. He woke up and felt worse, went to the flight doc and went DNIF. Rhatigan was so mad at him, he gave him an LOC/LOR for dereliction of duty since he thought the guy was trying to get out of alert duty (which was a god send to do, since you were away from the squadron and Rat). The guy is in the Guard now last I heard.

I personally flew with Rat on a deployment sortie when he was my deployed Sq/CC. Since we had three pilots on board, I took my copilot back to the boom pod and let him refuel A-10’s and F-16’s all day. I felt bad for him since the cruise out to the AOR meant Rat was GKing him on all of the various Soviet era airfields between Manas and Bagram. If Rat’s reading this, he was pretty good, but I can’t believe your allowed that to happen being the A-Code!

Oh yeah, one more story. Guy that was a copilot/AC at Fairchild was in Rat’s squadron. He ended up going to Kadena and getting into some “TDY Shenanigans” while on a typhoon evac that got him an Art 15. He ended up deploying soon after when Rat was the new OG at the Deid. Rat sends out an email about his “vision” and about himself as the new OG. Guy in question responds with “Hey, maybe we should lunch sometime dude.” Why? Who the knows? He tells me the next day his crew shows up and the ADO tells him that his crew is off the schedule and that he has a personal meeting with Rat. So, he goes and see Rat in his office during meeting time and Rat says “Hey, ###, come on in. Haven’t seen you in a long time.” He walks in, not thinking defensively, and sits down and Rat immediately stands him at attention yelling at him about how he’s a Colonel and how dare he use lack of email professionalism, how he had the audacity to ask Rat to write him a character reference to the Wing King at Kadena when he got his Art 15, etc. The switches tones and says “yeah, we should do lunch with me and your crew sometime, just let me know!”

Rat was an English major at USAFA and speech writer for the SECAF. We used to have to select 93 ARS/All distrobox, then manually remove his name from a squadron wide email because he “hated spam.” He used to print out emails that people would sent him on various day-to-day issues, order them to his office, and proceed to pull out a red pen and correct their grammar in front of them in the email. He’s Selva’s boy (was his Wing Exec when he was a Wing King). That is most likely the only reason when as far as he did. The people I personally know who he ruined their careers are doing well in the majors. I’m not really surprised that he isn’t flying for the airlines knowing the amount of black lists he’d appear on.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Sua Sponte

[BashiChuni]

i always wonder if dudes like Rat are embarrassed by their behavior when they look back on their careers

[Sua Sponte]

4 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

i always wonder if dudes like Rat are embarrassed by their behavior when they look back on their careers

I’ve known Rat for years. He could honestly give a shit what others thought of him. I know that it probably upsets him that he never climbed into GO status being a HPO throughout his whole career and all. I always laughed at how no community claimed him as “theirs.” The Herk bubbas thought he was a tanker dude, which was impossible since he despised the KC-135 and community. He’s a strat airlift dude (-141/-17) by trade, but they wouldn’t claim him either. 

Dude was a Captain Sobel who got promoted O-6 status. I will say this, he was a really good pilot flying with him a few times. But the -141 apparently flew like the -135 does, which means a 1979 Lincoln Mark VIII. He was also one of the douches who bounced out of town with his MSM in tow on his way to school when Fairchild failed their ASEV in 2010 while Rat’s old DO, who replaced him as CC, was the scapegoat in that and was relieved of command over it. Thankfully that guy, who’s a great dude, was taken care of by some GO’s later on and made O-6 and was the Vance CV a few years ago. 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Sua Sponte

[Scooter14]

Here’s my Rat saga.

 

One day I landed at the Died while deployed there and they parked us in an unfamiliar location. Because of this it took us a little longer to get into the chocks and shut down, you know, because we all know taxiing into something after a long day makes bad things happen.

 

While we were gathering all the classified...you know, all the stuff you don’t want to lose after a long day because bad shit happens, a dude from the RegAF squadron at my base pops up the chute and says “hey we are sharing a bus, can you guys hurry up?”

 

Yeah, ok, sure.

 

So I walk over to the bus with all my crap and when I hop on I hear a voice say “Are you guys running the dick around checklist up there???”

 

I don’t recognize the face or voice in the darkness, so I laugh it off.

 

I leave the bus to grab more stuff and when I get back on this guy is legit busting balls. I look closer and it’s the EOG/CC, none other than you know who.

 

We drive over to MX and past the Bones. He proceeds to look at the bombers and says “you tanker guys don’t fly combat sorties, THESE guys fly combat sorties!” And then starts telling stories about all his B-1 time.

 

We go into MX. His jet is code 1. Mine is not. His pilots drop off the forms and get on the bus. I have to spend some time in there. I get back onto the bus and he starts in on me once again for being slow. Not even in a joking way, borderline hostile.

 

I don’t even fcuking know this assclown. Never met him before in my life.

 

The whole bus ride was telling us how inferior the mobility aircraft are. Not exactly the way to inspire your wing that has 6 bombers and 69 tankers and herks.

 

No “where are you guys from.” No “thank you for being out here.” Just really hostile belittling.

 

We get to customs. He prances off the bus with only his helmet bag and proceeds to the line. His crew and my crew gather up all the shit and schlep it to customs as he stands there waiting for his AC (who has the flight orders) with an impatient look on his face.

 

Don’t worry Colonel sir, we will get all the bags.

 

So we get into the customs area and there is some sort of kerfuffle happening between customs, the head shiek, some locals and some OGA types so my crew goes as far away from that as possible to wait it out and use the Wi-Fi to text back home.

 

Rat goes and finds some Marines so he can tell them how awesome he is.

 

When it’s our turn to go to Customs he looks over at us and yells across the room “What are you guys doing, playing Dungeons and Dragons over there?”

 

We clear customs and again he strolls through with only his bag, gets on the bus, and then disappears when we get back to Ops.

 

My entire Rat experience was about 45 minutes, but fcuk that guy. Once we all started talking and hearing the stories Bergman illustrated, it all made sense. I’m a pretty easygoing guy willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but he was by far the WORST O-6 I have ever run across in my life.

 

[Scooter14]

He’s Irish Catholic from New York. He’s literally the walking stereotype of how assholish people can be from the northeast 

I grew up in the Northeast. Spent 36 of my 45 years here.

This guy takes the cake. Top 5 on my list. He’s not #1 but he’s close.

[Right Seat Driver]

God, I forgot about this guy. While I was fortunate enough not to have too much interaction with him, the couple I had were bewildering. He stormed into tanker ops one day pissed that he had a showtime prior to 0700. My crew and I just landed after flying a 14 hour sortie only to see this short dude complaining about having to get to ops at 0700. We had no idea who he was until his crew stepped to their intel brief and Rat parked his ass in the Sq/CC's office and closed the door. The ADO filled us in that the short dude complaining about banker's hours was our warrior OG.

Fast forward a week later and an FCIF drops saying crews can't wear baseball hats. No shit 6-9 days later I'm doing the walk around and across the ramp is a B-1 crew stepping to fly all wearing baseball hats. Rat is with them to fly real combat with the Bones with a baseball hat on as well.

A second hand story I heard was the 340 EARS/CSS troop had to clean his O-6 parking in case the dude showed up to the squadron. Rat would apparently lose his mind if there was any sand on his spotless O-6 sign.

Lead from the front gents.

[Majestik Møøse]

Based on a google search of “Col Patrick Rhatigan” there are a shit ton of results from Wordpress, Medium, Scribd, etc that just contain the text from his official bio. Looks like an unsuccessful attempt to bury his infamous JPQ article in the results.

[Bigred]

I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but could this Rhat dude take someone busting his balls? I’ve met some pretty big assholes in my day and they seem to soften up when you throw shade back at them. 

Of course, this dude does seem to be on a whole different level.

[Bergman]

36 minutes ago, Bigred said:

I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but could this Rhat dude take someone busting his balls? I’ve met some pretty big assholes in my day and they seem to soften up when you throw shade back at them. 

Of course, this dude does seem to be on a whole different level.

I love giving people grief but Rhat was an entire extra level of petty and vindictive.  The old adage “we only make fun of people we like” is pretty true with him IMHO.  

Edited April 23, 2019 by Bergman

[Sua Sponte]

35 minutes ago, Bigred said:

I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but could this Rhat dude take someone busting his balls? I’ve met some pretty big assholes in my day and they seem to soften up when you throw shade back at them. 

Of course, this dude does seem to be on a whole different level.

Depends on your rank. Same rank? Sure. Outrank him? No problem. Don’t outrank him? Expect paperwork.

We had a prior Boom that was a newer copilot when I was at Fairchild. Under the radar he was seeing an AFE girl, which became public once they got married after she separated. She was pregnant and Rat did math backwards. He ended up tanking the dude on his OPR and sending him to be an AMLO with the Army in Ft. Riley. I guess on the way out of the door he said something shitty like “enjoy seeing your future kid working with the Army.” He ended up getting out, joining a reserve KC-10 unit, teaching UPT as a reserve unit, now back at KC-10 unit. Great dude, Rat totally boned him, but even I can attest when Mother Blue gives you a bad deal, your an still succeed.

[Sua Sponte]

3 minutes ago, Bergman said:

I love giving people grief but Rhat was an entire extra level of petty and vindictive.  The old adage “we only make fun of people we like” is pretty true with him IMHO.  

My favorite was the “Fear the Rat” that was etched on every shitter on Manas, even the one in OG building.

[Majestik Møøse]

I’d support honoring Mr. Rat with his own dedicated, Google-indexed thread, just saying...

[Scooter14]

https://www.google.com/search?q=jqp+rhatigan&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

If you search JQP Rhatigan it turns out much better.

[Scooter14]

I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but could this Rhat dude take someone busting his balls? I’ve met some pretty big assholes in my day and they seem to soften up when you throw shade back at them. 
Of course, this dude does seem to be on a whole different level.

I hear ya, but when you’re an O-6 EOG/CC riding the bus back in with two tired crews that you have never met and you shit all over them, their aircraft, their mission the whole bus ride and then call them out in a crowded room...

O-6

Full bird colonel

Commander

There’s a certain way you’ve gotta conduct yourself. This ain’t it.

Even if he was kidding, you’re not “one of the bros” anymore when you first meet someone as the O-6 EOG/CC.

Of course once we got the rest of the story it all checked out.

Totally appropriate he was bros with the Bone guys, flying his combat missions and wearing his baseball hat. No offense to the Bone guys and I’m truly sorry you had to fly his wanna be bomber pilot butt around for 6 months. I bet he got up before 7 AM to go fly with them and pad his air medal stats.

Captain Sobel reincarnated and erroneously promoted. The dude ruined a lot of careers and put a lot of people through unnecessary stress and heartache because he wrote good speeches and was fast tracked to “leadership.”

[pawnman]

Bone dude checking in, and we hated him as well.  That hat thing only applied to him... If he caught a crew wearing baseball caps and he wasn't on it, there was still hell to pay.  And he never missed an opportunity to correct someone with their sleeves pushed up.  Plus, we had to supply his exec and share a building with that asshole.

Briefing him on strikes was always hit-or-miss as well.  You could give him all the standard information, then he'd ask some off-the-wall question that had never been asked in any other strike, and treat you like a retard if you couldn't answer it from the top of your head.

He may have loved flying the jet, but I don't think he liked Bone crews anymore than he liked tanker crews.  

[Gazmo]

What a douche. I wonder how his MAX sales are doing right now.

[Day Man]

 

🤐

 

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by Day Man

[MooseAg03]

The stabilized approach criteria that will soon be added to their Vol 3 just writes itself...


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[ImNotARobot]

Wild is one word to describe it. Hope nobody in charge gets ruffled feathers over that HD video.

[Scooter14]

Its a good thing we haven’t had like a hundred “Stabilized Approach Criteria” and “Airmanship and Flight Discipline” Special Interest Items over the past 4 years from AMC.

 

[Sim]

It was part of initial operational testing and eval...to get crew to off station location and then Q3'em all. 

[Danger41]

That’s really Q3-able? Damn, AMC keeps living up to the stereotype.

[DirkDiggler]

41 minutes ago, Danger41 said:

That’s really Q3-able? Damn, AMC keeps living up to the stereotype.

I thought the same thing after watching the video and seeing the comments.  Didn’t seem like anything to get worked up over, probably just a debrief item after the full stop.  All those stabilized approach calls I read in an AMC SII seemed like way overkill; the way I read it all the mandatory  calls made it seem like the NFP was jabbering non-stop the during the entire approach.