Flightdeck Friday – Bonus Edition
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
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Flightdeck Friday — The Ties That Bind (II): Remembering Ned Geiger
Another Flightdeck Friday and sadly, another memorial – this time for another pillar of the E-2C Community, CAPT Edward C. Geiger, USN, ret. (“Ned”). Ned passed away suddenly earlier this week just as he was beginning to enjoy a well deserved retirement having wrapped up his post-Navy career. Services are tentatively slated for…
Flightdeck Friday: Early Guided Weapons Edition
Before JSOW and JDAM, before Harpoon, SLAM-ER, and Walleye, there was the Pelican, BAT, and Kingfisher/Petrel. All of these saw development that started around 1942 and some even saw action before the end of the war. As we have seen in the development of AEW radar, there was a surprising degree of technological sophistication…
Flightdeck Friday: The YF4H-1 Phantom II – Operations Skyburner and Sageburner
Standby; standby; mark” In the relative cool of the early dawn, remote recording equipment began timing the grey and orange streak that thundered by at 125 ft above the desert floor. The date is 28 August 1961 and a second attempt at the world’s low altitude speed record is underway. Flying a 3km closed…
Flightdeck Friday – The F7U Cutlass
Star-crossed (adj.) Opposed by fate; ill-fated. “Star-crossed“ an apt descriptor for this week’s subject – the F7U Cutlass, also known by such endearing labels as “Gutless Cutlass and “Ensign Eliminator. How bad was it? Try this – shortly after the Cutlass arrived at Pax River in 1949 for flight evals, it was taken up for…
Flightdeck Friday: Vought F6U Pirate
Certain pairings, on the surface, seem to be made for each other – Bogie & Bacall, rum & Coke ®, etc. But balsa wood and afterburners? Almost seems counter-intuitive. This weeks feature is the Vought F6U Pirate, the Navy’s first composite-built and afterburner fighter. By 1944 it was apparent from the reports being returned from…
Flightdeck Friday – The Project Valour-IT Challenge
(Ed: See “Catching Up” for the Valour-IT reference) The B-52 Stratofortress The B-52 (aka “aluminum overcast” or BUFF – Big Ugly Fat Fellow (or cruder term for the 2nd “F”…) has been flying for over 50 years now and by all rights, looks to remain in the inventory until around 2040. Volumes have been (and undoubtedly…