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Air Warfare

Flightdeck Friday -- The Ties That Bind (II)

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Another Flightdeck Friday and sadly, another memorial – this time for another pillar of the E-2C Community, CAPT Edward C. Geiger, USN, ret. (“Ned”).  Ned passed away suddenly earlier this week just as he was beginning to enjoy a well deserved retirement having wrapped up his post-Navy career.  Services are tentatively slated for Saturday, 31 [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Flightdeck Friday - On Atlas' Mighty Shoulders (Part I)

109D 2-20-1962 ETR14 MA-6 GD-A SDAM ART LeBRUN

Earlier this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbital flight, marking our full entry into the space race with the Soviets.  Signatory of the mission was our first use of an ICBM to launch Glenn into orbit — the previous missions had been suborbital and used the Redstone missile, itself an SRBM [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Centennial Of Naval Aviation - The Shadow Warriors

EA-3B_VQ-1_in_flight_South_China_Sea_1974

We are fast approaching the end of the yearlong celebration of the 100th Anniversary of US Naval Aviation – and what a year it has been.  Between the Heritage paint schemes, celebratory conventions, special programming and dedicated ceremonies, much ground has been covered.  The outside observer may be forgiven, however, if they are led to [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Flightdeck Friday: STS-133 & Last Flight for Shuttle Discovery

The oldest and perhaps most storied of the shuttle fleet, Discovery launched on her final mission today to deliver a final module to the U.S. segment of the International Space Station, the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module, as well as the first humanoid robot to fly in space, Robonaut2. Named for the ships used by Henry [...] [...]

Air Warfare

Naval Aviation Centennial: Neptune’s Atomic Trident (1950)

7 Feb 1950: In a demonstration of carrier long-range attack capabilities, a P2V-3C Neptune, with Commander Thomas Robinson in command, took off from Franklin D. Roosevelt off Jacksonville, Fla., and flew over Charleston, S.C., the Bahamas, the Panama Canal, up the coast of Central America and over Mexico to land next day at the Municipal [...] [...]

Air Warfare

Flightdeck Friday: Of Oxcarts and Old School Ways

Lockheed A-12 Oxcarts

Sometime in April 1958, Lockheed first undertook the study of a replacement for the U-2.  Unlike the U-2, this would be an aircraft able to cruise at Mach 3, with a range of over 4,000 nm at altitudes exceeding 90,000 ft.  It would also have an RCS (radar cross section) smaller than the U-2 and [...] [...]

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 [...] [...]

history lessons

Flightdeck Friday: A Family Remembers a Father, Naval Officer and Former Vigilante B/N

A few days back I received a very nice note regarding an earlier Flightdeck Friday whose subject, the A5A Vigilante, is a favorite of mine.   Now, having been frustrated upon checking into VT-10 (ahem, many years ago) to learn that I’d missed the last class allowed to go Vigi’s, any story about Vigi’s will make [...] [...]

Flightdeck Friday

Flightdeck Friday: Speed and Seaplanes – The Curtiss CR-3 and R3C-2

“Racing,” as the saying goes, “improves the breed.”  And during the Roaring 20′s, the rage of the nation (and the world at large) was airplane racing.  While the sport would reach its ultimate form in the 1930′s with the likes of the Thompson Trophy races, one of the earliest trophy races was the Schneider Trophy, [...] [...]