As part of the sea trials coming out of a yard period, you put the ship through its paces to include high speed runs and extreme turns. When we pulled IKE out of the yards on my first at sea period as her ‘gator (navigator) we did the whole nine-yards, including a high speed run…
Sad word today that Neil Armstrong – Naval Aviator, test pilot and first man on the Moon, has passed. Neil Armstrong typified the “quiet professional” whose coolness in extremis events were exemplified in flying the X-15 and especially so on orbit as commander of Gemini VIII when things suddenly went very, very wrong (@ the…
This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the E-2 Hawkeye’s entry into Fleet operations. Â Over the course of those fifty-years the aircraft has radically changed and grown in capabilities and mission focus, while visually remaining much the same as the first E-2A . Â From Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, Â it has been a part…
Part 6 and Part 7 YV-411, airborne SE of Martinique. There is a saying in aviation that if everything seems to be going perfectly, then look out, for something really bad is about happen. These were the thoughts of the Beechcraft’s pilot as the plane was inbound to its illicit rendezvous. Cockpit lights turned so low…
“…everybody’s going to make it.” – Thomas K. Jones, 1982 Counterveil vs. Countervalue… Decapitating strikes… Winning a protracted nuclear war… Nuclear calculus… These, and other topics were points of not just mere discussion, but deep, serious study and analysis in the early 1980’s by, among others, a small cohort of graduate students at the Naval…
