Today in Aviation History in 1933: Alcohol and Aviation and the 21st Amendment to our Constitution

Today in 1933, the 21^st Amendment to our Constitution was ratified repealing the 18th Amendment that prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.  Alcohol was legal again.

“What”, you rightfully ask, “do alcoholic beverages have to do with aviation?”

Well, the answer is, a lot. 

Not too long ago in the USMC, officers were required to be dues-paying members of the officer’s club.  What happened at officer’s clubs back then stayed (for the most part) in officer’s clubs but drinking alcohol was certainly a big part of what happened.  The commanding officer (CO) would have a list of those malcontents who did not pay their dues and these officers were suitably chastised for not being “team players”.  Those days are over.  And as a result, so is the financial viability of military clubs of all ranks along with the comradeship built at them.

Before things got too politically correct, COs used to announce on Friday afternoons what was called a “purple alert”.  This meant, “knock off for the weekend and meet me at the club in 30 minutes for a beer or two”.  We knew attendance was mandatory and roll would be called.  Ladies (wives and girlfriends) were invited later, but not during the purple alert time when comradery, commiserating, brotherhood, and “there I was” stories and a lot of friendly bantering and loosened tongues led, believe it or not, to a lot of learning.

Senior, more experienced pilots would “hold school” at the bar with the junior, less experienced pilots during these purple alerts where many aviation-related stories were told, most of them embellished and lubricated with alcohol, but still vital in teaching lessons.  

Microsoft’s AI-created (Copilot…appropriate, eh?) image of a pilot gesturing at the bar at the officer’s club.  Created by AI at the request of Barry Fetzer on 12/5/25).

I learned a lot at these purple alerts, including never…EVER permit one’s wife or girlfriend to call the club asking for you.  If she did, the bar tender would ring the ship’s bell typically hung over the bar and you were buying a round for everyone at that bar…maybe for as many as 20 or 30 men.

Our Marine Aircraft Group commander, a US Marine Colonel (God rest his soul), was known (as was his wife, but only when not wearing a dress) for being able to drink a beer at the MCAS New River officers’ club…while standing on his (or her) head.  He had mastered a technique whereby if a glass was placed at his lips while standing on his head, he could maneuver his mouth to grasp the edge of the glass with his lips and slowly tip it backwards, draining the glass without spilling a drop.  I never learned that feat, but the colonel (and his wife) was famous for it.

I don’t know if a colonel and CO performing like this at the officer’s club would be permitted…or whether his career could survive such antics…today.  Perhaps we’re taking ourselves too seriously these days.  But back then, when men like him had experienced, first-hand, the terror, fear, horror, and grief of close combat and had lost many fellow Marines, squadron mates, and buddies and learned how tenuous our hold on life really is?  Well, infused with alcohol, we permitted ourselves to lower our guards a little, even, perhaps, at the risk of one’s career.

But I digress.  Back to purple alerts.  During a purple alert I called when I was the CO of the “Flying Tigers” (Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM-262) Reinforced) in Okinawa, Japan, a couple of my squadron “mates” (and I use this term “mates” loosely for this particular occasion) called my wife, Arlene, who was a recently married (to me 😊) military wife and did not understand (nor did I—mistakenly—take the time to explain to her the finer details of) officer club etiquette and the rules of this road.   These Marine Corps officers gave her the telephone number of the club’s bar telephone (this was before cell phones) and asked her to call that number and ask for me because I needed to talk with her.

Being the dutiful military wife and assuming Marine officers were always on the up and up, she naively made the call.  Yes, the bell was wrung when Arlene called asking for me and I bought a round of alcoholic beverage of their choice for every member of my officer corps at the bar that day…around 50 officers…more men than normal because my standard 12-aircraft and 25 or 26-officer squadron had been reinforced with 6-AV-8B Harriers, 4-CH-5E’s, 3-UH-1N’s, 4-AH-1W’s and Air Command and Control assets, blah, blah, blah.  Fifty, three-dollar or so apiece drinks (plus bar tips) set me back around $200.00, to the gleeful hoots and howls of my fellow officers and squadron “mates”.

And then there were alcohol-greased “carrier quals” (tables lined up at the club like an aircraft carrier’s deck and aviators running and leaping onto the tables like they were aircraft to see how far they could slide; the winner handed another beer “on the house”.  Who could forget the “Kangaroo Kourts” held at the o’clubs where goof-ups and mistakes (either airborne or on terra-firma) were mercilessly told, overstated and judged with appropriate punishments applied and aviators’ call-signs were assigned amongst multiple pitchers of beer littering the tables. 

At one Marine Corps Air Station, there once was a locked room surreptitiously hidden next to the bar area where after the more gentile customers and ladies had called it a night, aviators could let off some steam and “break some glass” by throwing beer bottles at bulls-eyed images of the Ayatollah and Saddam Hussein painted on the wall, all in good fun, but oiled by alcohol.  I haven’t been back there for years, so that room may have become a fallen victim of political correctness.

Alcohol-related terms like, “Eight hours bottle to throttle” were mnemonic devices (rhyming memory aids) for rules with which we had to comply.  We were not permitted to fly within eight hours of having consumed our last alcoholic beverage.  Pilots were (and are) expected to self-manage that mnemonic that became less mnemonic when the rule was changed to “eight hours bottle to brief”, thereby encompassing the pre-brief and pre-flight activities into the eight-hour “no alcohol” rule.   

If you haven’t figured it out by now, being assigned to an aircraft squadron meant that you were, effectively, acting in very similar fashion to the way you acted in college, especially when you and your squadron mates (or frat brothers) were loosened-up by alcohol.  There was a lot of “bustin’ balls” (as we called it), kidding or fooling around, competitive and rambunctious behavior—when not in the cockpit.  Perhaps such culture could have been (and could still be) forgiven due to the risks taken by aviators every time they strap on their “steed” (or their aircraft) and fly off into the “wild blue (and often unforgiving) yonder”.

Let’s “reverse thrust” and back up almost 50 years to August of 1977.  That’s the month and year when I received an “up” (as opposed to a “down” or a failure) and passed my final check ride and then soloed my aircraft at NAS Whiting Field in Pensacola, Florida, an event that led to my being awarded my naval aviator “Wings of Gold”.  Where did we celebrate such a raucous event?  Where else but at the NAS Whiting Officer’s Club?  In addition to having our uniform ties cut off by a knife wielded by our primary instructor (symbolizing the student’s independence from their instructor, a practice that stems from early open-cockpit training where instructors would physically tug on students’ ties or shirts for attention), we had a drinking contest to see who of this class of about a dozen soon-to-be winged aviators could be the “fastest drinker at the bar.”

While I had been known to “shoot beers” once in a while in college (that’s when you turn the can upside down against your lips that sealed the can, suck out all the air in your mouth creating a mini-vacuum, and then pull the tab to “shoot” the contents of the can down your throat in just a couple of seconds), I was not a champion beer-drinker in any way, shape, or form.  In fact, I was pretty much a “light weight”.  

Somehow though, regardless of my relative inexperience in chugging beer, I won that contest and got to keep the large mug that I “got lucky” enough to drain faster than my competitors.

Fetzer family photo of Whiting Field’s “Fastest drinker at the bar” mug.

We competed at everything, including beer-chugging contests.  Competition, like alcohol, drove our culture, whether it was in flying abilities, sports, or physical fitness, “o’club carrier quals, field meet tug-o-wars (fueled by kegs of beer and charcoal-grilled hotdogs), or playing dice and arm wrestling at the o’club bar. 

If we overdid it a bit on a Friday night, our wives, girl fiends, or a sober squadron mate would peel us off the floor and get us home, where the next morning we might wake up with a “slight” headache.  But we were ready the following Friday to do it all over again.

Were there problems with this culture?  Sure.  Nothing’s perfect.  Marines got DUI’s that may have been overlooked to a degree in the past but now end their careers.  People and relationships were (and are) hurt by alcoholism.  People have killed and been killed by alcohol.  Stupidity comes out in spades when too much imbibing occurs.

But comradery was enhanced, too, a brotherly closeness that allowed us to know each other…our strengths and weaknesses…when we both worked hard and played hard together.  And we learned not to take each other and ourselves so seriously.

So yes.  Right or wrong and undoubtedly, the 21^st Amendment that repealed the 18^th Amendment to our Constitution is connected to aviation history.

Onward and upward!

Sources:  Microsoft’s Copilot AI