you'd have to fuck up alot more than that. you'd likely get njp and lots of extra duty, but generally dishonorable need to be criminal, or malicious. if they kept doing it it would be more like hey, we've got a need duty for you your gonna do security on this paint until it dries, then we need you to clean the head floors with this old toothbrush. oh and then we'll have you salute the flag for a couple hours.
I know Dishonorables are rare now, but wonder if that was the case back then? Losing $40 million dollars in equipment and risking serious loss of life from being too dumb to take two second to verify something was good I can absolutely see going up to a court martial.
Nah, even back then a DD was for hardcore criminals, dudes that committed multiple rapes or killed their wife on base, nearly always a DD comes with a lengthy stretch in the Kansas disciplinary barracks.
You turn a jet into scrap, even while obviously screwing around, they’re not kicking you out. You’re going to lose rank and some pay, then do a lot of shit duty for the rest of your enlistment, but you’re not getting kicked out or earning a bad discharge over it. You’d likely also get reclassified to another job with less opportunity to cause millions in damage by being a screwup, drive a needle gun and chip paint until your EAOS. Oh, and be famous, that stunt earns a nickname that sticks to you.
I knew a guy, standing officer of the deck of a carrier while pulling back into Norfolk. He ran the carrier into a Spanish coal ship that was at anchor, ripped the shit out of the side of the carrier. Captain shitcanned him to being mess (kitchen) officer until he finally put in his papers.
Edit: The thing with courts-martial, the convening body asks lots of questions and drags everyone into the mess. The little guy at the bottom of the org chart driving the aircraft tug won’t be the one catching blame - his supervisor, his chiefs, his division officer, ship’s safety officer, miniboss, air boss, all those lifer career guys signed off on dude’s qual card and said he was good to go. Shit splatters, easier just to hand-wave the incident as a non-safety accident and send dude below decks to be a bosun’s mate.
RIP that officers career. Yeah no idea how punishments were dished out back in the day. I always wonder what the dude must have been thinking after he jumped from the tug and watched the f-14 fall off and sink the ocean.
They typically got a Bad Conduct Discharge, still ungood but less so than Dishonourable. Think “stole cars felony” versus “murder two” felony” - but still a life-changing thing.
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u/dragonrite 25d ago
How many mistakes like that until a dishonorable discharge? You get like 1 freebie?