Last couple of weeks we have been serenaded by Brood 2 offspring of the 1996 round of 17-year cicadas. With a background noise like a bad 50’s special effects soundtrack, they’ve been pretty constant but this weekend, overcome at times by the sound of Merlin and Wright piston engines as the CAF brought a P-51,…
♫♬…When the Drone is Called Up Yonder I’ll be There…♬♫ (with apologies to James M. Black) 😀 First the news and a congratulatory note to the Navy-Industry team behind today’s launch of the X-47B off the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77): Of course, as any end-of-deployment flyoff crew knows, it is a heck of…
1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. 2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord…
(re-posted from last year) I lost a friend today. We have lost a friend, a father, husband — a comrade in arms. Fellow aviator and blogger-at-arms, Neptunus Lex, was killed earlier today when the F-21 Kfir he was flying in support of Top Gun’s adversary squadron crashed at NAS Fallon. No word on the cause…
Christmas comes at a time of year where we, perforce, count our blessings, tally our losses and generally reflect on the year past. We find this action common across national boundaries and racial divides and, all too commonly, it ends there. The accountant’s take of the past year and if the blessings outweigh the losses,…
BREAKING NEWS…Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Ray Mabus has just announced that the next Ford Class Carrier, CVN-80 will be named USS Enterprise during his speech at the inactivation ceremony for CVN-65. Long live the name Enterprise! The USS Enterprise (CVN 65) is slated for decommissioning tomorrow in a ceremony at NOB Norfolk, bringing…
At the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month…the guns fell silent along what was known then as the Western Front as the Allies and Germany observed the agreement to end this “War to End All Wars.” While fighting continued sporadically elsewhere, in what were fast becoming the former empires of Russia…
I remember, a sky so blue it burned your eyes to look up . . .and smoke that scarred your lungs; I remember shipmates . . . and a piece of notebook paper listing for whom the bell had tolled; We remember that for one brief moment it wasn’t New Yorkers, or Washingtonians, or businessmen…
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…
A common thread about life at sea and flying from/working on an aircraft carrier is ‘hurry-up-and-wait;’ mostly because your time, your life is run by others. Whether it is Marshall trying to get everyone checked in for the last night recovery (only to wait until the ship finally turned into the wind) or stopping by…
