Military Career
In 1974 he entered the U.S. Navy and completed flight surgeon school in Pensacola, Florida. After serving tours as a flight surgeon with the 1st and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wings, he returned to flight training at Beeville, Texas, and was designated a Naval Aviator on April 28, 1978. He was assigned as the senior medical officer of the USS Forrestal, and in March 1979 completed F-4 training at VMFAT-101 in Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona. He was subsequently reassigned as a fighter pilot, flying F-4 Phantoms with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 333 (VMFA-333) at MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina. In 1981 he completed a nine-month Mediterranean cruise aboard USS Forrestal with VMFA-115. In September 1982 he attended U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) and then served as the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing standardization officer and F-4 combat readiness evaluator at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. He then attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, graduating in June 1984. He has logged 3,000 flying hours and 160 carrier landings.
Read more about this topic: Sonny Carter
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or career:
“The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.”
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)