Flightdeck Friday – Bonus Edition
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
“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,…
Project Cadillac (Part II) Project Cadillac was more than just a program to develop radar – it would develop an entire AEW system. Radar, IFF, relay equipment, shipboard receivers, and airborne platform. Such an undertaking would be ambitious enough in peacetime, at the height of a critical stage in the war it bordered on a…
This Thursday, 21 October 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the first purpose built AEW aircraft, the E-2 Hawkeye (actually, it was the YW2F-1). Designed around the radar, rather than adapting an existing airframe, the Hawkeye symbolized function over form – from the 24ft “rotodome†prominently perched over the fuselage, to…
*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…
Sixty-five 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…
Twin engines generating over 14,000 lb of total thrust powering the aircraft to a max speed of 710 mph at low altitudes and a service ceiling of 55,000 ft; provisions for a crew of two – one of whom was dedicated to work the powerful air intercept radar that was integrated into a weapons system…