Ex-pilot says Bush put in for Vietnam
Bush volunteered for combat, was rejected, ex-guardsman says
BY PETER BACQUE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Feb 13, 2004
A former senior Virginia Air National Guard commander, who served with George W. Bush in the Texas Air Guard, says Bush volunteered for Vietnam combat service but was turned down because he did not have the required flight experience.
William J. Campenni, a retired Air Guard colonel, also said absences such as Bush's from his unit were common in the Air Guard during the period of Bush's service and still are.
He and Bush were young lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the Texas Air Guard from 1970 to 1971, Campenni said, serving under the same flight and squadron commanders, both of whom are now dead.
Campenni, 63, lives in Herndon and has participated in Republican Party politics in Northern Virginia. He retired as an Air Force pilot in 1998, last flying with the 192nd Fighter Wing based at Richmond International Airport.
According to Campenni, Bush inquired about participating in a volunteer program called Palace Alert that used Air National Guard pilots flying in the F-102 Delta Dagger interceptor jet in Vietnam.
The Air Guard advised Bush he did not have the desired 500 hours of flight time as a pilot to qualify for Palace Alert duty, and, in any event, the program was winding down and not accepting more volunteers.
"While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base," Campenni said in a letter to The Washington Times published this week, "we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch."
He said a check of the 1970-71 records of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron "and any other [Air National Guard] squadron" would show "other pilots excused for career obligations and conflicts."
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Air Force Base in May 1968. In May 1972, records show he received permission to perform nonflying duties in Alabama.
"[Excuses] for employment were common then and are now in the Air Guard, as pilots frequently are in career transitions, and most commanders, as I later was, are flexible in letting their charges take care of career affairs until they return or transfer to another unit near their new employment," said Campenni, who spent 33 years in the Air National Guards of three states as his career as an aerospace engineer took him around the country.
Freeing the then-lieutenant from his Texas duties in 1972 was helped, Campenni said, because the Houston unit was changing from an operational fighter squadron to a training squadron with a new airplane, the F-101 Voodoo.
The mission switch "required that more pilots be available for full-time instructor duty rather than part-time, traditional reservists with outside employment," he said. Bush was a part-time Guard member, as most Guard airmen are.
"The winding down of the Vietnam War in 1971 provided a flood of exiting active-duty pilots for these instructor jobs, making part-timers like Lt. Bush and me somewhat superfluous," Campenni said.
"Any pilot could have left the Air Force or the Air Guard with ease after 1972 before his commitment was up," he said, "because there just wasn't room for all of them anymore."
Bush, who was working on a political campaign in Alabama, was assigned temporarily to a unit in Montgomery, Ala. Democrats have charged there is no proof that Bush showed up for Air Guard duty there.
During the Vietnam War era, many men saw joining the National Guard as a means of avoiding combat duty. American political leaders avoided mobilizing the hometown units for duty in the Southeast Asian war.
"There was one big exception to this abusive use of the Guard to avoid the draft," Campenni said, "and that was for those who wanted to fly, as pilots or crew members."
Air Guard pilot duty required up to 2½ years of active-duty service for training, he said. Draftees served for two years, overwhelmingly in the Army.
Air National Guard units began flying supply missions in Vietnam in 1965, and the Air Guard was mobilized twice during the Vietnam War. Guard aviators in five squadrons flying the F-100 Super Sabre fighter-bomber were called up for duty in Vietnam in 1968.
"Avoiding service?" Campenni said. "Yeah, tell that to those guys."
Simply flying tactical military aircraft is dangerous, he said.
"Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions" in the United States, Campenni said.
"Our Texas [Air National Guard] unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt. Bush's tenure, with fatalities," he said.
"Just strapping on one of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one's life."
Contact Peter Bacque at (804) 649-6813 or
pbacque@timesdispatch.com
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