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Project CADILLAC: AEW and the US Navy (Part Three)
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 is the use…
Flightdeck Friday: Update!
Over at Tailhook’s site, Flightdeck Friday is about a little known hybrid fighter, the FR Fireball. ‘Round these parts Southern Air Pirate has graciously offered to host Flightdeck Friday this week while we continue with the remembrances of shipmates lost on this, the 6th anniversary of 9/11. His topic? Spurred by last week’s story of…
Flightdeck Friday – The Project Valour-IT Challenge
(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…
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: Early Guided Weapons Edition
Before JSOW and JDAM, before Harpoon, SLAM-ER, and Walleye, there was the Pelican, BAT, and Kingfisher/Petrel. All of these saw development that started around 1942 and some even saw action before the end of the war. As we have seen in the development of AEW radar, there was a surprising degree of technological sophistication…
“Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is Not A Drill.” *
* Telegraph from Patrol Wing Two Headquarters warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and…