Flightdeck Friday – A Look Back in Time
Taking a break from the series on the Tu-22/Tu-22M — fear not, we’ll hit it again next week. Instead, YHS has been busy working down the boxes of slides accumulated over the last several decades via a nifty little device that makes it easy to digitize them. Today’s selection hails from the period 1980 –…
Sunday Cinema: The Romance of Naval Aviation (1970)
Quite a review of the types present in Naval Air in 1970…although they are missing one major player…
Of Skyhawks, ‘Saders and Sea Stories – TINS
If, like your humble scribe, you spent anytime turning the pages of the Tailhook Association’s quarterly pub, The Hook, between 1991 and 2011, you undoubtedly paused for Jack Woodul’s column “The Further Adventures of Youthly Puresome” drawn from his deep reservoir of stories from his time flying the A-4 and F-8 Â – and other sundry…
“Commander’s Moon”
Easy folks — completely SFW here 😉 So Scribe — what exactly do they mean by a “Commander’s Moon” ? Well, strictly defined, a “commander’s moon” is: “A night lighting condition with clear skies and a large (late phase) moon, to provide optimum lighting condition for night flights, and especially night traps. Favored by, and…
This Date in Naval Aviaiton History: Sept 18, 1962 – Changing Designators
Quick – F4H or F-110? Depending on the markings and the date, it could have been either – or none. Despite the fact that 15 years earlier, the Department of Defense (and departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force) were created by the National Security Act of 1947, the three Services continued with their…
Naval Aviation Centennial: One Astronaut, A Future Astronaut and Reaching for New Heights
Forty-nine years ago – within one day of each other, one astronaut headed for orbit as America’s first to circle the Earth and a future astronaut opened a series of record attempts in the McDonell F4H Phantom: Images Courtesy Rex Features & NASA 20 Feb 1962: Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn. USMC, in Mercury spacecraft…
U.S. Naval Aviation – 100 Years
18 January 1911: At 11:01 a.m., Eugene Ely, flying the same Curtiss pusher used to take off from Birmingham (CL 2), landed on a specially built platform aboard the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (Armored cruiser No. 4) at anchor in San Francisco Bay. At 11:58 he took off and returned to Selfridge Field, San Francisco, completing…
Project CADILLAC: The Beginning of AEW in the US Navy
Project CADILLAC (Part I) Ed note: Everything has a beginning and that beginning is usually quite humble compared to present conditions. Consider, a small spring at the headwaters of the Madison River in Montana is the source of the mighty Missouri River which itself empties into ol’ man river — the Mississippi, all of which…
Flightdeck Friday – MIA Edition: WWII Navy Aircrew Returns Home
Last year, a small group of us spent the better part of the summer and fall writing on the Solomons Campaign. That drawnout slugfest in the southwest Pacific receives little notice beyond Guadalcanal and some discussions regarding Santa Cruz. The purpose of that exercise (here and over at USNI’s blog) was to surface the larger…