Last week we went big – big planes, big ships, big nukes, big hair (no wait, that’s another story…). This week we go to the other end of the spectrum. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o /> Arms Race – 1950 1950 and the nuclear arms race is well and truly underway. The Soviets had surprised…
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas… NORAD Tracks Santa
Inspired Genius It is 1947 and Ed Heinemann of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation is perplexed. Charged with leading the team that is designing Douglas’ entry in the Navy’s heavy attack aircraft competition, he is trying to figure out how to accomplish this feat in an airframe that would weigh in at less than 68,000 lbs,…
Folks – Mike has posted his half of the Valour-IT Navy-Air Force blog challenge and has executed a superb write-up on the F4F. Take a few minutes to head over and check it out — you’ll learn some new things along the way. BZ Mike!– SJS
(Ed: See “Catching Up” for the Valour-IT reference) The B-52 Stratofortress The B-52 (aka “aluminum overcast” or BUFF – Big Ugly Fat Fellow (or cruder term for the 2nd “F”…) has been flying for over 50 years now and by all rights, looks to remain in the inventory until around 2040. Volumes have been (and undoubtedly…
Project Valour-IT Update Mike over at No Angst Zone has picked up the gauntlet and dares to think the Junior Service can prevail. Ha! He even tries to resurrect that phony test off VA Capes. Remember that? The one where not only the targets were, well, you know, “fixed”. Afterall, when they had to go…
(a little early, but it fits the subject –SJS) Eighty-four Years Ago — The First Tailhooker! On October 26, 1922 LCDR Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, USN made the first arrested landing aboard the USS Langley, a converted coal collier (ex-USS Jupiter) and the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, underway off Cape Henry, VA. Already an accomplished aviator…
Well, a little different this week — Happy 231st Birthday Navy!
Project Cadillac (Part III) 1050L 24 Oct 1944. USS St. Lo (CVE-63) is under heavy air attack. After successfully fending off the superior surface force of VADM Takeo Kurita’s Center Force, “Taffy 3†is now defending against a surprise air attack that has lasted some 40 minutes already. One of the features of this attack…
Project Cadillac (Part II) Project Cadillac was more than just a program to develop radar – it would develop an entire AEW system. Radar, IFF, relay equipment, shipboard receivers, and airborne platform. Such an undertaking would be ambitious enough in peacetime, at the height of a critical stage in the war it bordered on a…
