Flightdeck Friday – Fast Carriers and Their Fledglings
Some art and photos from the archives, bound together with a classic score – for your weekend’s pleasure. – SJS — —
Flightdeck Friday: Naval Air and D-Day – 6 Jun 44
So – wrapping up our TDY this week and hopping the (ugh) red-eye back to Occupied Territory for to make it back for a libs this weekend before back to the grind Monday. While we’ve been concentrating on Midway this past week, there is this other event over in the ETO that took place in…
Flightdeck Friday: Prelude to Midway – US Carrier-based Air
Task Force 17 – Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher in Yorktown Task Group 17.5 Carrier Group – CAPT Elliott Buckmaster USS Yorktown (CV-5) CAPT Buckmaster CVG-5 – LCDR Oscar Pederson VS-5 LT Wallace Clark Short, Jr. 19 (17) x SBD-3 VF-3 LCDR John Smith Thach 27 (25) x F4F-4 VB-3 LCDR Maxwell Franklin Leslie 18…
Flightdeck Friday: T-2 Buckeye Memorial Day Edition
Something a little different for Flightdeck Friday this Memorial day weekend. We are working on a project that if luck holds out, we should be able to post over the weekend, provided we don’t have to make an unbidden trip that lurks around the corner…if so, we’ll roll that project to the 4th of July….
Flightdeck Friday – Neptunus Lex Edition
Unless you’ve been blogging under a rock of late, most around these parts know that Lex (aka Neptunus Lex) is headed ashore permanently this week as he retires from active duty. Given the geographic disparity in our locations we, unfortunately, shall not be there in person to wish him the best as he begins his…
Flightdeck Friday: Brewster F2A Buffalo
The jet age doesn’t hold a monopoly on goofs, blunders and outright failures where naval aviation is concerned. Indeed, the prop epoch not only had its fair share, but perhaps the posterchild for the genre, the F2A Brewster. Meant to be the Navy’s first foray into the carrier-based monoplane field it was instead shunted ashore,…
Flightdeck Friday: Torpedos and OOB Thinking
Off today to Norfolk to speak at the winging of the next class of replacement NFO’s at the E-2 FRS (VAW-120) – more on that later. -SJS 1 MAY 1951 Today’s subject – the torpedo attack on the floodgates of the Hwachon Dam, is an example of what today is described as thinking out of…
Flightdeck Friday: Desperate Times = Desperate Measures
(h/t to Southern Air Pirate for the topic suggestion) 29 April 1975. South Vietnam is ceasing to exist as a geopolitical entity – Saigon is falling. Under leaden skies, the assembled ships and aircraft of TF 76, headed by carriers Hancock and Midway begin executing Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of US personnel along with Vietnamese…
Flightdeck Friday: Special Edition – Doolittle Raid 66th Anniversary
Sixty-Six Years Ago… Guts, determination, innovation – courage were defined (and well before Joint was "cool") Conceived in the dark aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the raid had its genesis in the idea of CAPT Frank Lowe, USN who predicted that Army twin-engine bombers could be launched form a carrier under the right…
Flightdeck Friday: Bonus Edition
Every so often one of the good reasons for working in the Nation’s capitol rises above the endless traffic jams, navel-gazing politicians and regurgitation of the police blotter on the 6 o’clock news. Occasionally, you get to step outside your office and see a sight such as this… Oh and Mike — we still say…