Flight plan

I've been around ANA Headquarters for a year and a half now. During that time I've learned a lot about the organization and how it is running. The major strength of ANA is, without doubt, its individual squadrons. This may sound like a naive or simple statement to some of you, but in my formative years in the organization, while I was still on active duty and moving hither and yon, I either was not in an area with a squadron or was not aware that one was available to me. Now that I am the President and interacting with you in the squadrons my eyes have been opened. It's at the squadron level where so much is happening.

I believe this issue of WOG is a telling example of what the squadrons are doing for Naval Aviation and the Association. Begin with the Midway article on page 30. ANA squadrons all over the country did a magnificent job of marking the 60th Anniversary of the historic Battle of Midway, which changed the destiny of the Pacific Theater in WWII. These events were so well done that they attracted the press and we had front page coverage of the battle and its veterans in many areas. This was a fine example of how to tell our citizenry about the naval services and their importance to our country and its future.

Then read through the "Squadron News" section on page 48. This gives you a sense of the variety of things our squadrons are doing. From hosting ships, to being part of aviation museums, to honoring Marines, to supporting Service Recruiters, presenting leadership awards, and sponsoring young students visiting the Naval Academy, our squadrons are at the forefront of spreading the word on the naval services.

Squadron influence is also an underlying factor in our list of the first ANA Aces, announced on page 16. The majority of our Aces are in squadrons. They went out and got people to come to their local meetings, stirring up their interests in aviation and demonstrating to them the quality of ANA members and the camaraderie that is always present when aviators and their fans get together. Together, these Aces are responsible for 64 new members of the Association. This new membership is the life blood of ANA's future. I con- gratulate all the Aces, and our records show that several more of you should join the Aces formation in the near future.

Based on this, one of my top priorities is to do some internal reorganization at the headquarters to make us able to give more help to our squadrons. It is a great pleasure for me to hear you recount to me the many services you have received in the past from our extraordinary staff of Zip, Sue, Jackie, and now Laura, who recently replaced Sue. I can't say enough good about how hard they work to help all our membership. But it's a very small staff with much to do, and we need to do more. So one of the things I'm trying to do is make these nasty computers we've spent so much money for this year really become labor saving devices and produce more for you in less time. For those of you who know something about computers, you know this task isn't easy. Because they can do so much, computers have a habit of making you do more, instead of less. They must be programmed correctly so that they will spit out exactly what you need by using very simple procedures. So this is what we are doing now. We are going through our entire data base, updating the information, making it more user friendly, and enabling it to give us reports that are what we, and you, need. Although we are not in combat, I get the feeling we are often in network centric warfare as we fight these blasted machines. So forgive us if we don't respond quickly enough now, or if we call you and ask many silly questions so that we can update our base.. this is all for (I hope) progress and making future service better.

Another use of our new computers is the update to our web site. I hope many of you who are able are visiting that site. We still have much to do to improve it, but it is slowly getting there. One of the priority efforts now is to get major articles about the sea services posted to our "Special Articles" section. We recently posted articles on CNO's new "Sea Power 21"; an update on "Concurrent Receipt" for you veterans with disability pay which is subtracted from your retirement pay; and "Transformation Trends" which sheds some light on this new term with which some of us are having difficulties in our comprehension. In the future we will add many more pictures to the photo section so they will be available to you to download for presentations locally. I often hear that headquarters needs to prepare briefings that you can use to spread the word. You are right, we should be doing this and we're struggling to get there. For a start, we're going to put the information and photos on the web that will enable you to prepare your own briefs.

Copyright Association of Naval Aviation Summer 2002
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