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Naval Aviation Centennial: Neptune’s Atomic Trident (1950)

7 Feb 1950: In a demonstration of carrier long-range attack capabilities, a P2V-3C Neptune, with Commander Thomas Robinson in command, took off from Franklin D. Roosevelt off Jacksonville, Fla., and flew over Charleston, S.C., the Bahamas, the Panama Canal, up the coast of Central America and over Mexico to land next day at the Municipal…

Flightdeck Friday: Of Oxcarts and Old School Ways
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Flightdeck Friday: Of Oxcarts and Old School Ways

Sometime in April 1958, Lockheed first undertook the study of a replacement for the U-2.  Unlike the U-2, this would be an aircraft able to cruise at Mach 3, with a range of over 4,000 nm at altitudes exceeding 90,000 ft.  It would also have an RCS (radar cross section) smaller than the U-2 and…

Flightdeck Friday – MIA Edition: WWII Navy Aircrew Returns Home
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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…

Flightdeck Friday: A Family Remembers a Father, Naval Officer and Former Vigilante B/N

A few days back I received a very nice note regarding an earlier Flightdeck Friday whose subject, the A5A Vigilante, is a favorite of mine.   Now, having been frustrated upon checking into VT-10 (ahem, many years ago) to learn that I’d missed the last class allowed to go Vigi’s, any story about Vigi’s will make…

Flightdeck Friday: Speed and Seaplanes – The Curtiss CR-3 and R3C-2

“Racing,” as the saying goes, “improves the breed.”  And during the Roaring 20’s, the rage of the nation (and the world at large) was airplane racing.  While the sport would reach its ultimate form in the 1930’s with the likes of the Thompson Trophy races, one of the earliest trophy races was the Schneider Trophy,…

Flightdeck Friday: USS MACON Added to National Register of Historical Places

…though you might need a little more exotic kit than walking shoes and sunscreen to visit. (full story here) For those of short memory, the story of the USS Macon and her brood was the subject of an earlier Flightdeck Friday: “Gasbags and Hookers”

Flightdeck Friday: 23 October 1972 and The End of Linebacker I

23 October: The U.S. ended all tactical air sorties into NVN above the 20th parallel and brought to a close Linebacker I operations. This gesture of good will in terminating the bombing in NVN above the 20th parallel was designed to help promote the peace negotiations being held in Paris. During May through October the…

Flightdeck Friday: Smoke and the Battle of Midway

Checking in from the SJS-family’s TAD site this weekend (and yes, we still are in the pre-internet age back at the homeport, still awaiting the service visit by the provider…), where the lead Scriblet is tying the matrimonial knot (and once again, the weather-guessers appear to be winning as we contemplate low ceilings and fits…

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Flightdeck Friday (Independence Day Edition): B-17F Flight Log

Tomorrow we will have our Independence Day post up and in the busy comings goings of a three-day weekend, we encourage one and all to pause and ponder those words — mere words in some folks’ opinion; that our forefathers penned in Philadelphia that hot summer of 1776.  Men had already died in the cause…