Flightdeck Friday – Bonus Edition
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
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Flightdeck Friday – Jetski Edition (Convair XF2Y-1 Sea Dart)
Prologue The concept of seaplane fighters was neither new nor novel – several examples had been put to desultory effect during WW2 and even combining floats with jets (like the British SR.A.1) still failed to overcome the shortcomings of the type. The problem lay in a combination of weight and drag – ruthless enemies where…
National Museum of Naval Aviation – Some Thoughts and A Call to Action
There are 12 “official Navy†museums in the US – and of these, all but one, the US Navy Museum onboard the Washington Navy Yard in Washington DC, are privately funded. This includes the National Museum of Naval Aviation (NMNA) located on NAS Pensacola, FL where I recently spent some time getting re-acquainted with exhibits…
Flightdeck Friday – of Willie Fudds and Stoofs with Roofs
17 December 1956. The icy fog of the mid-December morning had long dissipated when an odd appearing aircraft took the active duty runway. Twin-engines and a shoulder mounted wing marked its lineage to with that of the S-2 family, but a set of twn tails and more importantly, a huge, airfoil-shaped radome that stretched back…
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…
Flightdeck Friday: Time Passages
One week, several decades and many milestones – some significant, some quite obscure. A look at the week of July 13-19 and Naval Aviation across the decades: 14 July 1940 — The initial meeting of what became the National Defense Research Committee’s Division 14, or Radar Division, was attended by Alfred L. Loomis, Ralph Bowen,…
Chronicles of Naval Aviation: Tailcodes
Writing in the latest edition of The Hook (what, you’re not a member? Right this way then — and there’s associate memberships available for those who support tailhook aviation but haven’t experienced it first hand…yet), Boom Powell (“From the Catwalk”) relays a contributor’s lament about squadron tailcodes and callsigns, citing as examples VMA-255’s tail code…