Clik here to view.
• A Fighter Pilot's Story
The dead chicken was starting to smell. After carrying it for several days, 20-year-old Bruce Carr still hadn't decided how to cook it . . . without the Germans catching him. But, as hungry as he was,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Hunting Hugo
In September of 1989, a NOAA hurricane hunter airplane intercepted Hurricane Hugo as it approached the Caribbean islands, just before Hugo's destructive rampage through the Caribbean and South...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Do One More Roll For Me
Jerry Coffeeby Capt Jerry Coffee, USN (Ret) [a Vietnam POW] One night during a bombing raid on Hanoi, I peeked out of my cell and watched a flight of four F-105s during their bombing run.As they pulled...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Rider on the Storm
by Alan Bellows In the summer of 1959, a pair of F-8 Crusader combat jets were on a routine flight to Beaufort, North Carolina with no particular designs on making history. The late afternoon sunlight...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Human History Ends At Midnight
If Earth's history was placed on a calendar with each day representing about 10 million years, human history so far would begin at 11:59PM and end at midnight tonight.On our Calendar of Earth's Events,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Know Where You're Going When You Volunteer
2011 ended for us on the next to last day of the year with the sale of our Twin Beech. We weren't flying her much for physical, financial, and business reasons, so we were happy to have her go to a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• KA-3B vs AGI
A Vietnam War Story: The Russian "Trawlers" (Russian AGI) with what looked like one thousand "fishing" antennas plied the Gulf of Tonkin on a daily basis...needless to say, it was a cat and mouse game...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• WWI Flight Training Mystery Solved
Working on a blog about WWI flying I finally figured out the mystery about my grandfather Norman Dale's flying.Lots of young men were available...far more than they could train because we couldn't...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Words Fail
Click to enlargeAn Irish Airman Forsees His Death I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hate,Those that I guard I do not love;My country is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
•When I Landed the War Was Over
by Hughes RuddThe idea is simple and sound and goes back at least to the American Civil War: to direct artillery fire intelligently, the higher you are above the target, the better. At ground level...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Falling Through Space
"The needs of the Navy" dictate what assignment you're given after flight school, but grades (mostly) and personal preference (some) figure in. Most of the instructors at VT-10 were A-6 Intruder BNs...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• The Shepherd (A Christmas Tale)
Pour a Christmas pint mates, and settle in for one of the great aviation tales. Written by Frederick Forsyth and published in 1975, this novella tells of a 1950s RAF pilot trying to fly home to England...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Christmas Cheer
by Brian FordThis is reckoned to be true, at least by all who tell it. Goes back quite a few years to the late 50s or early 60s.A bloke from Sydney flies out to the bush to visit a mate. Its around...
View Article• First-hand view of the Dolittle Raid
This is a really excellent firsthand account, by the pilot of aircraft #13, of the Doolittle Raid off the Hornet in 1942. A great piece of history. My name is Edgar McElroy. My friends call me "Mac"....
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Last Flight
He was an old man, suffering from serious depression and an incurable illness. His future, such as it was, looked grim. Just a few weeks earlier he had been diagnosed as having Hodgkin’s disease.In an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Where There's A Will There's A Way
On my first solo flight at K-13, Suwan, Korea, in June 1952, I took off in an F-80 Shooting Star. It was not a combat mission. All I had to do was go up and have fun boring holes in the sky for about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• We're Not happy Until You're Not Happy
Over the years I've been faced with a severe case of what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance."On one hand my experience has been that the folks that work for the FAA are, by and large, earnest,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• T'was The Flight Before Christmas
'Twas the night before Christmas, and out on the rampNot an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.The aircraft were fastened to tie downs with care,In hopes that come morning, they all would be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Thank You Santa
I've been after Skip 'Gunner' King (US Army, ret.) for details of this incident since Christmas. It was worth the wait.Just prior to Christmas 1969, I was one of three people waiting at a remote strip...
View ArticleClik here to view.
• Random Thoughts On Flight Training
None of this is in any particular order, and none of it may be right for you. But, based on almost 50 years of accident- and incident-free flying and about 10,000 hours in the air, this is reality as I...
View Article