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"watch your 6 (or six)"

Posted by TheFallen on November 20, 2002

In Reply to: "Watch your 6 (or six)" posted by guy andrews on November 20, 2002

: heard today on movie G.I Jane the expression, "Be sure and watch your 6 (or six)" Any idea what he was talking about here? Guy

Yes. It's airforce slang, meaning literally keep a look-out behind you, or more figuratively in Demi's case, watch your back - I suppose it may have permeated throughout the military, but I don't know how authentic the dialogue in G.I. Jane is. I presume that the positions of other aircraft in the sky before the days of advanced in-cockpit radar and heads-up displays were described in relation to an imaginary horizontal clockface, with 12 o'clock being directly ahead of the pilot, and 6 o'clock directly behind him. Watch any older WW2-based movie dealing with the airforce, and someone's just *bound* to say "Bandits at six o'clock high!"

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