Squadron interaction

[Guest Dirt Beater]

At bases with more than one operational squadron of the same jet, how often, and what kind of interaction happens? Aviano and SJ come to mind...

[Hacker]

At Seymour the 335th and 336th share the same building. There is lots of interaction between the squadrons. I was in the 336th, and flew with the 335th on many occasions when they needed a pilot, and we "hired" guys from their squadron when we needed people.

We have a similar situation at Moody with the two IFF squadrons, too.

[Toro]

At Seymour the 333rd and 334th don't share a building like the 335th and 336th, but we occassionally swap pilots like Hacker was talking about (I'm flying with the 334th today). For the most part, it's just interaction at the business level, then back over to our own squadron. We rarely walk over there just to BS with somebody because the squadron is down the street from us.

Lakenheath has a consolidated building for the two Strike Eagle squadrons, then a separate one for the C models. The two E model squadrons interacted a good deal, but we rarely did anything with the C models.

On Fridays you'll see everybody mingling together at the O'Club.

So I would say that if squadrons are physically located together, they seem to interact a lot more.

[Bergman]

Ditto that for the heavy world. With 3 squadrons manning every jet on every sortie (that has since changed. Used to be pilots/navs from 38th, EWOs from 343d, and comm guys from 97th) on the RC-135, everyone pretty much knew each other and got along well (except for PAB) but other than TDY drinking binges or the occasional party (college world series!!) we didn't hang out with "them" all that much due to the squadrons being a mile apart.

[Guest Rainman A-10]

At Alconbury we hung out at the club but not much other than that. The squadron commanders didn't like each other much and that trickled down. There were always guys from the different squadrons getting together at the bro level but very little squadron interaction.

At Pope we hung with the C-130 guys when we went TDY but rarely saw them at home station. The 75th A-10 and 74th F-16 guys did a lot together initally since we both had CAS DOCs and over half of the F-16 guys had flown the A-10 (most from Eielson when they converted the 18th TFS) including their commander. We did less together over time, especially after the leadership changed.

The 355th amd 18th shared a building at Eielson (they don't anymore) but we didn't do much together. I think that was because the squadron commanders hated each other. We would get together at the bro level and hang out at the club but that was about it.

Nellis was the best place I've ever seen it work. Many of the guys worked hard together and hung out together. There were lots of combined parties and everyone respected each other. I think much of that was due to the leadership.

Big picture, it depends. I think it will cycle over time and the base is less important than the leadership at the squadron and OG level. I think that if the leadership (or the LPA) from the different squadrons get along the guys will get along. If the leadership fight with each other all the time the guys won't get together much.