I don't want to let the month of May pass without some mention of the fact that it is Military Appreciation Month. Having spent more than half of my adult life in the military, it seems kinda self-serving for me to trumpet my appreciation of the military. But there are some folks in the service who don't usually get special mention. This article isn't about them. This article is dedicated to one group of military men who probably get one heck of a lot of mention...and I think they deserve it...even if they can cause my Tourette's to flare at times.

We call them "Zoomies" and make fun of their quirks and character traits...but what is a Zoomie? They are the daring young men in those flying machines who sit down on top of a roman candle and flash through the air at unbelievable speed. Air goes in the front, flame shoots out the back and as long as they can keep those two factors in order, they present an immense threat to any enemy.

They descend from the flyboys of WWI, who strapped into their Sopwith Camels and Nieuports and Spads to fly against the Albatrosses and Fokkers of the other side. Paper wings, canvas seat, twenty-five gallon gas tank right behind them, no parachutes (in the early days they carried a pistol along in case they caught fire...), .30 caliber machineguns and a leather flying-helmet...the whole thing weighed in at about 1500 lbs, flew a startling 116 mph, and could climb to 10,000 feet in about ten minutes. The special types of men it took to fly these machines established the foundation of the reputation of the wild and wooly: the flying under bridges, landing behind enemy lines, dropping bottles of champagne on the enemy's airfields, and all that.

From the beginning, far-sighted leaders like Billy Mitchell (who insisted an airplane could sink a battleship and proved it), Ira Eaker (who executed the first air-to-air refueling in a biplane...he walked out on the wing and handed a five gallon gas can to a wing walker in another plane), Hap Arnold, and Jimmy Doolittle envisioned battles where the difference wouldn't be who had the biggest guns or the fastest tanks but who had the best- trained pilots, the best airplanes, and the most bombs. World War II proved for all time that you have to own the sky if you want to win a war. Owning the sky is the job of the Zoomies.

I learned about some of the errant behavior when I visited a Gasthaus in a little town near Ramstein AFB in Germany. It was a hangout for the fighter pilots who were assigned at Ramstein. The tradition goes that if you are in the Gasthaus and a zoomie walks in and declares, "If you can't tap dance yer queer!"...everyone has to jump up and start dancing...if you don't, the others will pounce on you and pound on your arms and back. However, if someone has already declared a dance and you walk in and declare a dance ...everyone jumps on you and pounds on you. If you need further examples, I suggest you watch "The Great Santini" for insight into the lives of Naval and Marine Aviators (for some reason, Navy and Marine pilots don't want to be called pilots) or read "The Right Stuff" for a look at the Air Force (drinkin' and drivin' and drivin' and drinkin').

The planes have changed...the F-18 weighs in combat-loaded at almost 37,000 lbs...with in-flight refueling (provided by a huge airliner-sized fuel tanker...not a gas can) it has a limitless range...can climb at 50,000 ft per MINUTE... top speed is an advertised 1.8 times the speed of sound (which means it is probably a lot faster than that)...and it can carry four times the bomb load of a B-17!! But it still needs one of those young men to strap them on and make them zoom.

Zoomies sweep the sky clear of the enemy; they drop the bombs and provide the air cover that makes it possible for the ground troops to advance. They zoom in and beat up the bad guys when the ground guys get in trouble. And because of that, we put up with their silliness and wildness...because of that we make allowances for their devil-may-care attitudes...because of that we thank them and salute them and thank the Good Lord that we have them.