MKopack

My friend Keith nailed a pretty good shot of the U-2 at the Sacramento airshow. Though some might appreciate... He's at www.kbvp.com

My foul, I'll pay that one. I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of the guys that I grew up hearing / reading about, but that is quite a line up. I've never read Bud Day's book (although his story is legendary) I'll have to pick that one up. Mid 70's at Windsor Locks with F-100F 56-3801 of the CTANG...

Would love an F-4C nose gear door for the wall (for that matter, I'd love about anything for the wall...)

Of all the months to not be in Dayton, Ohio...

How cool is that? As a former maintainer I hate to imagine what kind of damage could have been caused during scheduled maintenance that would have caused her early retirement... I've only been lucky enough to have seen a handful of U-2's but someday when they are retired the world of military aviation will be a much less interesting place.

Walked my son in to his first day of 4th grade today and on the board the teacher had posted the article from the paper and written: My nine year old said, "Wait's that's not right, is it?" With that "One small step", Neil Armstrong changed mankind forever - and I'm told that as an eight month old I was set down in front of the TV to watch.

Years ago we had an engine troop who was HYT'd as an E-4 Sgt at something like sixteen years - couldn't take a test to save his life (spoke Spanish as a first language, and his English was rough at very best) but he could tell you which main bearing on our old F100's was wearing, just by laying his hands on the side of the 16 at idle. Never saw anyone even half as "natural", and he had a list of job offers well before his last day. Of course he was an exception, most HYT's were barely taking up space.

Winston Churchill returns from a wartime trip to America, piloting a flying boat, on 02 Feb 1942. If you are "the Boss" who is going to tell you that you can't go ahead and fly it (and smoke a cigar while you do)? The aircraft is a BOAC Boeing 314 "Berwick" G-AGCA.

I agree that taking away everyone's weapons would stop these senseless shootings - after all, it's worked so well in Toronto... Prior to Friday there have been 147 shootings in Toronto involving 209 victims this year, a 62% increase from 2011. "Two dead and nineteen injured in Toronto mass shooting." http://news.yahoo.com/toronto-shooting-2-dead-19-injured-103720046--abc-news-topstories.html "Toronto gun violence rages as politicians debate solutions." http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/07/21/toronto-shootings.html

While he played the Skipper on the 1960's TV show "McHale's Navy" in real life Gunner's Mate 1st Class Ernest Borgnine was a US Navy WWII Veteran serving from 1935-1945, during the war years aboard USS Lamberton (DD-119). Lamberton served in the Aleutian Campaign and then largely off of the West Coast. He spent a lot of time doing work with Veterans and was also the first person (and one of only roughly 70) to be named as an Honorary Blue Angel.

All flags at half staff in North Carolina today. In a state with a large military presence their sacrifice is high profile news.

Two sides to every story, but...

During the 80's at an airshow, I had the privilege to meet George Gay (1917-1994), a TBD Devastator pilot from Torpedo Squadron 8 on the USS Hornet. Seventy years ago today his entire squadron attacked the Japanese fleet without fighter support. In that one attack every aircraft was lost. Then-Ensign George Gay was the only survivor, recovered from the water over 30 hours later.

At least they didn't force VMFA-122 to go back to what was apparently their original name - The "Candystripers", seen here on one of their F8U, yes, "Crusaders"...

I've got an old VMFA-122 "Crusaders" shirt that I wore on a visit to MCAS Beaufort last year, got a lot of good comments from the squadron members...

Here you go, just don't pack a lunch - I don't think it would fit... (N213TD - my Dad's photo from a Coolidge, AZ fly-in last winter)

The Air Force is undoubably funding, somewhere in the back rooms at DARPA and by their best secret squirrel inventors, the most reflective belt to ever be seen on Earth.

Via CBS Los Angeles: This is the second loss for ATAC this year after a Kfir was lost in the spring. Has to be tough for a small group.

Back from the dead? Who would have seen this coming - maybe it's not all about the budget, or even capability (because if you can get less capability for more cost, how can you not just jump all over that). New recommendations will stop the USAF from retiring the Block 30 Global Hawks and the C-27J's. Also will provide additional funding for: - 17 C-27J's (to a total of 38) - a continuation of the C-130 AMP program - 1 C-130J, 2 HC-130J's and 2 MC-130J's - 12 MQ-9 Reapers - 10 Black Hawks (National Guard) - 3 EADS Light Utility Helos (Lakota's? - National Guard) - 11 additional F/A-18 Super Hornets (to 37 from 26) - 1 additional V-22 Opsrey, one Bell UH-1Y helicopter, one Bell AH-1Z helicopter, five Sikorsky MH-60R helicopters and two Lockheed Martin KC-130J tanker transports - PAC-3 Patriot missiles and launch systems - $$ to keep the M1 Abrams production line open from a planned temporary shutdown - Upgrades to Bradley fighting vehicles - Army NG Humvee modernization - 1 additional Navy DDG-51 destroyer and $$ to retain three cruisers And $$ for a Raptor "back up" oxygen system and $500 million in cuts to the F-35 program.

Even back in my time in, this was one of those "third rail" issues - really tough to "untouch" it once it's done. We had a guy on base that said much the same thing about Reagan in uniform to the media as his second term was coming to an end. Can remember sitting there in the dorm watching it live on the news - was like watching a car crash. "Dude, dude, stop... don't go there... Owwwww, that's gonna hurt."

I was a fourteen year old high school student with a National Geographic map full of stick pins on my wall and the shortwave radio tuned to the BBC long after I was supposed to be in bed... It was a year later when I met the crew of one of the Black Buck missions along with their Vulcan at an airshow up in Canada. When I asked about the mission, I was told, "We didn't hit much of anything, but it was worth it just to see those bastards running and diving into any hole they could find." How do you say, "What the @#$% was that and where did it come from", in Spanish? Prior to the training for the mission, as I recall, the Vulcans hadn't air-to-air refueled in years, and many no longer even had probes installed. I do know that an RAF crew "acquired" a refueling probe during the deployment from a Vulcan on static display at Castle AFB museum in California. The Nimrod ASW / sea surveillance aircraft had never been air-to-air refueling capable until an emergency mod mounted a probe above the cockpit - which was "plumbed" straight through the sealed cockpit escape hatch, down to the floor, and the pipe ran straight down the cabin walkway to the wing. Early in the deployment the normally land-based RAF Harrier GR.3's that were onboard carriers for the first time, found the hard way that the INS's wouldn't align on a moving boat. Victor tankers, Nimrod patrol aircraft and a pair of Harrier GR.3's at Ascension Island during the conflict. The war would have been considerably different had the British not retired the last of their conventional aircraft carriers (HMS Ark Royal in 1979). While the Harriers proved their worth, Phantoms and Buccaneers would have been an entirely different ballgame.

I spent several years working the P-3's at the Lockheed Martin depot a decade ago, even then the Orions were tired. Probably half of the aircraft that we brought in had major wing spar cracking, fore and aft, we were seeing more and more wing plank cracking around the nacelles, and it had gotten to the point where we could no longer remove all of the corrosion from the aircraft structure because guys were grinding straight through. Great aircraft, fast and powerful (loved doing engine runs on them), but they've suffered from a lot of flying through the salt spray down on the deck over the water (MAD runs, etc.). It'll be interesting to see in the future how the "thin walled" P-8 / 737 fares flying in the same conditions.

Yesterday a pilot and his ATAC F-21 Kfir were lost in a crash at NAS Fallon, Nevada. The pilot was Carroll LeFon, a retired Navy Captain, fighter pilot, and military blogger - better known by his "nom de plume" - Neptunus Lex. I've read his blog for years, and had corresponded with him several times. Naval Aviation may have never had a better friend. Godspeed, Lex... From http://www.neptunuslex.com/

Amazing just how much times have changed. Almost reads like bad fiction today - who'd believe it? From an enlisted perspective, all of the exercises from our "deployed location" ended with a nuke elephant walk and we knew, "real world", in that scenario our LGPOS's were never coming back. Not only that, but we were told, by number, the Soviet airborne regiment that was assigned to drop on our location along with the timing. Once our birds were gone, our part in the show was over.

Perhaps a second look by someone less inclined to "overlook" or minimize potential contributing factors (like a lack of O2) will result in a different conclusion.