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 jets are for kids. Right Buck?

Washington Post , Friday 11 April 2008

As three World War II-era planes flew over the towering steel spires of the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, retired Air Force Col. Robert Vickers arched his neck just like everybody else in the crowd. The planes stood out starkly in the cloudless blue sky, reflected in his Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, and his thoughts drifted back six decades.

"It was two Mustang fighters that saved me and my crew from the Luftwaffe," recalled Vickers, 84, a bomber pilot during the war. "I was flying a B-24 Liberator, and there was the co-pilot, the navigator and six gunners. We were flying a mission to bomb an oil refinery north of Dresden on January 16, 1945."

For 10 minutes yesterday afternoon, that day seemed not so far in the past as the airspace between Andrews Air Force Base and the Pentagon was closed to allow a vintage B-17 Flying Fortress, a P-40 Kittyhawk and a P-51 Mustang to soar overhead. The flyover was to honor the 30,000 American airmen who gave their lives flying from British bases during World War II.