Steeljaw Scribe

The missile warning lit up again.  Jake checked the strobe indicator on the missile detection gear, which told him the radar was at five o’clock.  He swung hard, maintaining his altitude, and searched the blackness.  Two missiles were in flight, and a third lifted off as he watched.  The missile light flashed and the aural [...]

Fifty-five hours and 18minutes.  11,236.6 nautical miles.  No GPS, no inertial nav, no fly-by-wire, no computers save the biologic ones and the whizwheels.  No movies, no SATCOM, no sleeper seats.  No in-flight refueling - no stops.  No digital weather radar.  Four aircrew, one nine-month old baby ‘roo and 8,592 gallons of AVGAS.

Non-stop, Austalia to the [...]

Taking a break from VTC h*ll (ed: 8+ hours yesterday alone, how the h*ll did Nimitz & Ike win a war without  it? - don’t answer, that was a rhetorical question… - SJS) & following up on the comments   to a previous Flightdeck Friday (Phlightdeck Phriday: Phabulous Phantom Edition).  Some have offered their guess [...]

(ed.  OK, so it’s not Friday - we were otherwise engaged this weekend and the coming week looks like it is going to be fairly busy - so consider this either a delayed post from Friday past or a downpaymet on the coming Friday… - SJS)

“Vergeltungswaffe” - literally translated it means “compensation weapon” and in [...]

OK, so a bit of a cop out but it serves in a pinch, especially after this kind of week…Up first, Phoreign Phantoms doing their thing to a bit of Wagner.  Some vintage footage, and for those of us who spent a wee bit of time in Kef working with our RAF counterparts across the [...]

It is late 1960 in America - 13 December to be exact. Across the country the mood is reflective and restive. The prosperity of the fifties had netted Americans a bewildering array of choices in everything from products for the home to the cars they drove and sealed American dominion across the globe. [...]

One week, several decades and many milestones - some significant, some quite obscure.  A look at the week of July 13-19 and Naval Aviation across the decades:

14 July 1940 – The initial meeting of what became the National Defense Research Committee’s Division 14, or Radar Division, was attended by Alfred L. Loomis, Ralph Bowen, E. [...]

Real world exigencies being what they are, we had pondered passing on this week’s edition, except…
…except that there are some great write-ups out there for the reading, such as:

Southern Air Pirate’s write-up on the history of Navy’s EW effort (Part 1   and Part 2  )

Meanwhile, over at Tailhook’s blog 0, a very excellent [...]

August 1977.  Nellis Range - Nevada. The flight lead of a section of F-4E’s is searching in vain for the intruders. Flying CAP, their mission is to intercept ingressing strike aircraft as part of the large scale exercise known as ‘Red Flag.’  Normally an exceptionally challenging environment, meant to replicate the skies over Central Europe, [...]

5,156 victories (4797 by carrier-based F6F’s) vs 270 lost in air-to-air combat (19.1:1 kill ratio)

305 Aces

55 per cent of all aircraft destroyed by Navy/Marine aviators for all of WW2

When WW2 began, the US fighter force (land- and sea-based) was woefully inadequate.  Slow in speed and maneuvering, out powered in the climb, often times out-gunned and [...]