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Flightdeck Friday – XF8U-3 Crusader III
Mach 2+ speeds with a fixed inlet. Push-button cruise control. All weather intercept capability with the AIM-7 Sparrow. A flat-out drag-racing king on the straights and in a climb. All this was the XF8U-3 Crusader III. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o /> Envisioned as a high speed, all weather interceptor follow-on to the already noteworthy…
Project CADILLAC: AEW and the US Navy (Part Three)
1050L 24 Oct 1944. USS St. LO (CVE 63) is under heavy air attack. After successfully fending off the superior surface force of VADM Takeo Kurita’s Center Force, “Taffy 3″ is now defending against a surprise air attack that has lasted some 40 minutes already. One of the features of this attack is the use…
Flightdeck Friday – Fleet Air Arm Edition: Hawker Sea Fury
9 August 1952 The flight of four Hawker Sea Furies were in a loose formation, scanning the terrain below hunting for targets of opportunity – opportunity in this case being trains carrying elements of the Chinese "peoples volunteer" army south to fight UN forces. Battles were still fierce this late in 1952 – even as…
Flightdeck Friday Special — Midway & Marauders: A Shore-Based Strike POV
While Midway was not the combat debut of the B-26 Marauder (that was left to B-26’s of the 22nd Bombardment Group launching attacks against Rabaul two months earlier), Midway was nonetheless the most auspicious of the Marauder’s early actions. Originating from a 1939 Army Air Corps specification for a twin-engined medium bomber (Circular Proposal 39-640),…
Midway: A First Person POV
Update: See also “What do I know, I was 19 years old and saw the whole thing backwards?” (h/t Boris the SLUF driver) On this, the 69th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Midway Roundtable has re-posted the full post-battle letter by CDR Stanhope Ring – Hornet’s CAG. Often called the “Lost…
Flightdeck Friday: Brewster F2A Buffalo
The jet age doesn’t hold a monopoly on goofs, blunders and outright failures where naval aviation is concerned. Indeed, the prop epoch not only had its fair share, but perhaps the posterchild for the genre, the F2A Brewster. Meant to be the Navy’s first foray into the carrier-based monoplane field it was instead shunted ashore,…