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Reflections

“Commander’s Moon”

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Easy folks — completely SFW here So Scribe — what exactly do they mean by a “Commander’s Moon” ? Well, strictly defined, a “commander’s moon” is: “A night lighting condition with clear skies and a large (late phase) moon, to provide optimum lighting condition for night flights, and especially night traps. Favored by, and planned [...] [...]

history lessons

This Date in Naval Aviaiton History: Sept 18, 1962 – Changing Designators

Quick – F4H or F-110? Depending on the markings and the date, it could have been either – or none.  Despite the fact that 15 years earlier, the Department of Defense (and departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force) were created by the National Security Act of 1947, the three Services continued with their [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Naval Aviation Centennial: One Astronaut, A Future Astronaut and Reaching for New Heights

Forty-nine years ago – within one day of each other, one astronaut headed for orbit as America’s first to circle the Earth and a future astronaut opened a series of record attempts in the McDonell F4H Phantom: Images Courtesy Rex Features & NASA 20 Feb 1962: Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn. USMC, in Mercury spacecraft [...] [...]

history lessons

U.S. Naval Aviation – 100 Years

18 January 1911: At 11:01 a.m., Eugene Ely, flying the same Curtiss pusher used to take off from Birmingham (CL 2), landed on a specially built platform aboard the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (Armored cruiser No. 4) at anchor in San Francisco Bay. At 11:58 he took off and returned to Selfridge Field, San Francisco, completing [...] [...]

Air Warfare

Project CADILLAC: The Beginning of AEW in the US Navy

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Project CADILLAC (Part I) Ed note: Everything has a beginning and that beginning is usually quite humble compared to present conditions.  Consider, a small spring at the headwaters of the Madison River in Montana is the source of the mighty Missouri River which itself empties into ol’ man river — the Mississippi, all of which [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Flightdeck Friday – MIA Edition: WWII Navy Aircrew Returns Home

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Last year, a small group of us spent the better part of the summer and fall writing on the Solomons Campaign.  That drawnout slugfest in the southwest Pacific receives little notice beyond Guadalcanal and some discussions regarding Santa Cruz.  The purpose of that exercise (here and over at USNI’s blog) was to surface the larger [...] [...]

Naval Aviation Centenary

USS Enterprise (CVAN/CVN-65) At Fifty

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“Whenever the Enterprise roams in the traditional freedom of the seas, she is the sovereign of the United States, a mighty symbol of our determination to preserve liberty and justice and a clear sign of our nation’s ability to do so.” – ADM Arleigh Burke, 24 Sept 1960 This Friday (24 Sept) marks the 50th [...] [...]

Reflections

Angles and Dangles . . . CVN-style

As part of the sea trials coming out of a yard period, you put the ship through its paces to include high speed runs and extreme turns.  When we pulled IKE out of the yards on my first at sea period as her ‘gator (navigator) we did  the whole nine-yards, including a high speed run [...] [...]

Naval Aviation Centenary

Aircraft Carriers and Civil Assistance: Then and Now

17 Jan 1930.   USS Lexington (CV-2)  completed a 30-day period in which she furnished electricity to the city of Tacoma, Wash., in an emergency arising from a failure of the city’s power supply. The electricity supplied by the carrier totalled 4,251,160 kilowatt-hours.  From Historylink.org: In the 1920s, Tacoma received most of its electrical energy from [...] [...]