Saturday Matinee: US Naval Aviation – the First 100 Years
From the good folks at the Naval Institute:
From the good folks at the Naval Institute:
A feature wherein YHS dips into his photo-locker of some 40+ years. TFOA: Things Falling Off Aircraft Spend enough time in aviation and sooner or later you are going to lose something — a refueling access panel, landing gear door, maybe a drop tank or MER. Other than the odd TWA (Trailing Wire Antenna) drogue…
WEDNESDAY, 3 JUNE 1942 ALASKA: In an attempt to divert forces from the Midway area, a Japanese carrier-based bombers and fighters bomb and strafe Ft Mears and Dutch Harbor in several waves inflicting little damage but killing 52 US personnel. P-40s from Cold Bay trying to intercept them arrive 10 minutes after the last attack…
While your faithful scribe does not hail from the VP community, he still nonetheless has spent time in Kef (and has the arrested field landings to prove it), most notably when E-2Cs replaced E-3’s during the late 1980-spring ’81 timeframe. ’twill be the subject of a future “Reflections.” Last U.S. Servicemembers to Leave Iceland Sept….
Any of us who have spent a fair amount of time at sea become acquainted with the full cycle of life — from the births at home to the passings at sea. For those of us in aviation, that environment afforded more opportunities for the latter, sometimes, unfortunately, exceptionally so. My first encounter was when…
It’s time to return some sanity to the way ships are named. Why? Because the silliness is upon us once again: 111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. CON. RES. 83 Expressing the sense of Congress that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the Navy, either the aircraft carrier designated as CVN-79 or the aircraft carrier designated as…
Fifty-five hours and 18minutes. 11,236.6 nautical miles. No GPS, no inertial nav, no fly-by-wire, no computers save the biologic ones and the whizwheels. No movies, no SATCOM, no sleeper seats. No in-flight refueling – no stops. No digital weather radar. Four aircrew, one nine-month old baby ‘roo and 8,592 gallons of AVGAS. Non-stop, Austalia to…