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Flightdeck Friday: Flight of the Truculent Turtle

Fifty-five hours and 18minutes.  11,236.6 nautical miles.  No GPS, no inertial nav, no fly-by-wire, no computers save the biologic ones and the whizwheels.  No movies, no SATCOM, no sleeper seats.  No in-flight refueling – no stops.  No digital weather radar.  Four aircrew, one nine-month old baby ‘roo and 8,592 gallons of AVGAS. Non-stop, Austalia to…

Flightdeck Friday – Fleet Air Arm Edition: Blackburn Buccaneer

August 1977.  Nellis Range – Nevada. The flight lead of a section of F-4E’s is searching in vain for the intruders. Flying CAP, their mission is to intercept ingressing strike aircraft as part of the large scale exercise known as ‘Red Flag.’  Normally an exceptionally challenging environment, meant to replicate the skies over Central Europe,…

Flightdeck Friday: The F6F-3/-5 Hellcat – Scourge of the Pacific

5,156 victories (4797 by carrier-based F6F’s) vs 270 lost in air-to-air combat (19.1:1 kill ratio) 305 Aces 55 per cent of all aircraft destroyed by Navy/Marine aviators for all of WW2 When WW2 began, the US fighter force (land- and sea-based) was woefully inadequate.  Slow in speed and maneuvering, out powered in the climb, often…