More Bush military records found
WASHINGTON – President Bush ranked in the middle of his Air National Guard flight class and flew 336 hours in a fighter jet before letting his pilot status lapse and missing a key readiness drill in 1972, according to his flight records belatedly uncovered Tuesday under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Pentagon and Bush’s campaign have claimed for months that all records detailing his fighter pilot career have been made public, but defense officials said they found two dozen new records detailing his training and flight logs after the Associated Press filed a lawsuit and submitted new requests under the public records law.
“Previous requests from other requesters for President Bush’s Individual Flight Records did not lead to the discovery of these records because at the time President Bush left the service, flight records were subject to retention for only 24 months and we understood that neither the Air Force nor the Texas Air National Guard retained such records thereafter,” the Pentagon said.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” the government “searched a file that had been preserved in spite of this policy” and found the Bush records, the letter said.
Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard has become an issue in the presidential campaign as the candidates spar over who is best suited for the role of commander in chief. Supporters of Democratic nominee John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, have criticized Bush for serving stateside in the National Guard. Kerry’s Republican critics claim Kerry did not deserve some of his five medals.
The newly released records show Bush, a lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, ranked No. 22 in a class of 53 pilots when he finished his flight training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969.
Over the next three years, he logged 326.4 hours as a pilot and an additional 9.9 hours as a co-pilot, mostly in a F-102A interceptor jet. Of the 278 hours he flew in the interceptor, about 77 hours were in a TF-102A, the two-seat trainer version of the one-seat fighter jet.
The records show his last flight was in April 1972, which is consistent with pay records indicating Bush had a large lapse of duty between April and October that year. Bush has said he went to Alabama in 1972 to work on an unsuccessful Republican Senate campaign. Bush skipped a required medical exam that cost him his pilot’s status in August that year.
Bush’s 2000 campaign suggested the future president skipped his medical exam in part because the F-102A was nearly obsolete. Records show Bush’s Texas unit flew the F-102A until 1974 and used the jets as part of an air-defense drill during 1972.
The records also show Bush made a grade of 88 on total airmanship and a perfect 100 for flying without navigational instruments, operating a T-38 System and studying applied aerodynamics. Other scores ranged from 89 in flight planning to 98 in aviation physiology.