I'm launching this thread in the Green Room rather than Techforge since it's not intended for gearheads. Though perhaps a wee bit in some cases. But really it's more a celebration-of-manned-flight thing. I think maybe Forbin -- just a guess -- might find this worth taking part in. Hopefully others too. Or am I the only aerogeek on the board? So let's start with a gorgeous pic (taken in recent days by I-know-not-whom) of the Tatra Mountains, which form a natural border between Poland and Slovakia. Much of northern Europe has had long stretches of high pressure recently. In fact, where I live we're actually having a drought --- barely a drop of rain in almost two months now. But that doesn't mean we've seen a lot of blue sky. The lake makes for humid air, the humidity condenses into water droplets in the cold air, and the high pressure presses the resulting cloud groundward. So from above it's pretty, from below it's shitty.
Can't see the pics from work , but yeah, I'm the guy taking pictures of cloudscapes out the airplane window when we fly. My father the fighter pilot used to tell me it was fun to fly up above the rain clouds, find a hole, and watch all the poor saps running around getting wet down there.
Further to post 1, I found this brief video. Everything --- the airport layout, the mountains and their positions, the sun setting low in the southwest dead ahead --- tells me that this is our local airport in winter, with the same low stratus. Check the difference between the crappy conditions on the ground and the splendid conditions a thousand or so feet higher. https://www.instagram.com/p/BO2i0vRjTwK/
My Dad was actually an aerial photographer in the 50s and early 60s. Unfortunately I don't have any of his photos. He owned a 1939 J3 Cub, and his partner hung out the door wielding the mighty aerial camera:
A 1939 J3 ---- under-powered and eager to spin. They had a similar one at the club I used to belong to. It had, like, three instruments on the panel. And no flaps. Didn't tempt me. On the same field was a helicopter outfit. It sometimes did photo work, mostly for real-estate agents I think. One -- believe it or not -- came under fire from an irate guy who was sunbathing nude with his wife and daughter in the back yard when it began hovering nearby. Went and got his hunting rifle and wounded the pilot so badly he almost lost his leg. The chopper crash-landed. The assailant went to jail, quite rightly. Talk about wound tight.
Oh, Dad loved that cub. He could make it dance. Rotates at 60, cruises at 60, lands at 60. Behold his love letter to the Cub: http://www.inpayne.com/dad/cub_lament.html
Yes, never cross the crotch-straps, let alone leave them loose. And stalls at 59 and a half. Otherwise it would be great. But too many people have got themselves killed spinning it at low altitude. Call it lack of self-confidence, but I never wanted to have anything to do with it. You know, of course, that shortly after the War, Piper came out with the "Super Cub", which had an increasingly powerful engine ... and flaps. That would be fun-flying. In most of North American you can have a good time on a nice day navigating with a compass, map, ruler, pencil and watch. But not in Europe. So a couple of radio-navigation devices along with a modicum of other instrumentation would be my minimum. But that's me.
Well it sounds like your father didn't really need one. He was clearly a talented enough pilot to stay safe in the original Cub. It's all about Energy Management and an instinctive grasp of aerodynamics (since there isn't time to think things through up there --- especially when the chips are down). Unfortunately, these early designs --- not just the Cub, lots of people spun in in Tiger Moths, etc. too, and still occasionally do --- didn't have the life-preserving bells and whistles (not least more powerful engines) of later designs. I doubt the original Cub even had a stall warning.
A friend just posted this pic on FB. She was flying from Paris to Barcelona, so those must be the Pyrenees. Not a whole lot of snow for January. So I figure we may have a widespread drought on our hands.
Yes, check out his site. I've looked at this several times over and I'm now ready to say for certain that he shot it right here. It isn't hard to guess from his site that he's a captain on the Q400 for Luxembourg's airline Luxair. And they fly the Q400 here, so it makes sense. Very nice glory shot, Forbin. I've never got one of those, but then I only started using a camera a few years ago. I'm guessing that was an Embraer 145 you were riding in, or possibly a Canadair RJ.
Going thru Dad's letters home from the service last night, I found this in one from Army Air Base Dover, Delaware, shortly before he shipped out. "A buddy and I rented a couple of Cubs Sunday and went up and practiced dogfighting. Imagine a couple of P-47 jockeys dogfighting Cubs! We had to stop when he cracked a wing and had to set it down in a rye field."
Yes, that's positively begging for trouble. I belonged to a flying club. You called up and reserved a plane, and when you arrived they'd tell you which one you'd been assigned. I would always look at the logbook and, if it had just been flown by a Known Death-Seeker, ask for a different one. But there were a lot of people I just didn't know. So during the "walk-around" check I would always grab each wingtip and give the wing a good shake. One time somebody asked me what the hell I was doing. I replied: "I don't like surprises."
Precious few photographers make a living doing that, though possibly a couple do. It's more pilots taking cameras with them, now that everything is so small, light and high-performance. Just one of thousands of examples --- check out this snap taken by an airline pilot named Santiago Borjas at night over the Pacific:
Well, not a cloudscape, but Dad told me he took this pic of an Okinawan fishing boat from the cockpit of a P-47N, using a Kodak Speedgraphic, while flying the plane with his knees. I sometimes wonder how I got born.
I ...uhh.. dare to doubt the veracity of that particular claim. This on the grounds of technical impossibility: the requisite shutter speed didn't exist, and probably still doesn't. Also, where's the wing, dragging through the water? Or was he flying it upside down? Not that people don't do some damn-fool things, like these two guys (though possibly this is faked -- the cameraman flinches but the guy on the centreline remains standing, rather than doing cartwheels in the wake turbulence):
@Forbin has posted that boat photo before and while I'm also a bit dubious of the circumstances of how the photo was made, a Speed Graphic certainly has a high enough shutter speed to freeze action.
Did this device exist in the 1940s, when the shot was supposedly made? Nor does it account for the lack of an inconvenient wing blocking the boat. Also, the P-47 is a big, noisy, scary-looking airplane when it's coming virtually straight at you. The failure of the boat's occupants to be reflexively ducking for dear life makes me suspicious.
The Speed Graphic existed before the war, certainly. As for the lack of a wing, it could've been cropped out during the print. Or the pilot could've dipped the wing out of frame. As I said, I'm dubious about the story behind the photo (to me it looks more like it was shot from another boat) but it was certainly technologically possible to make it.
And lived to bring the film home? Theoretically possible, of course. But I beg leave to doubt it strongly. That's also how it looks to me. One of my earliest clear memories is of being at my Uncle Herb's place on a summer evening. I wasn't used to being awake in darkness away from home. During the day, you could see a water tower on a distant hill from his house. Now I looked out but couldn't see it. I asked Uncle Herb why the water tower wasn't there. He replied, "Oh, they take it down during the night." That was good enough for me.
Hey now, let's not call my Dad a liar. I'd imagine by July or August 1945 when this was taken, Okinawans were fairly used to p-47s buzzing their boats. And fighter pilots were WELL practiced at low-level hijinks. Lojinks? There's a famous story from Dad's unit that was published in a couple of places: After a raid on a Japanese target, they were heading home at hedgetop level. One of our guys had a Jap fighter on his tail, and he was desperately trying to shake it. They were so low that he had to pull up over trees and hills, then duck back down into the next hollow. The P-47 pilot came over one hill and was suddenly over the runway of a Jap airfield, with a Betty bomber taking off right in front of him. He reflexively ducked his plane under the Betty, and the Zero behind him slammed into the Betty. It was witnessed by squadronmates, but I don't know if he was credited with two kills. That's printed in both the official 318th FG history, and in the 7th AF history book "One Damned Island After Another."
Well, I was doing my best. My Uncle Herb wasn't a liar either, he just liked to pull your leg. Sure. So I wouldn't rule it out absolutely... But for the reasons set out above, I doubt it. And if you're used to P-47s screaming past, I bet you're equally used to lying face down in your boat. That would sure as hell be my position. I'm sure these things happened. Altitude is everything in an air-to-air fight, and when you run out there's nothing for it but to hug the train at full throttle. So you have to know how to know how to do that (all the more so if radar is a factor). Forbin, you might enjoy Terror in the starboard seat by Dave McIntosh (https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Starboard-Seat-Dave-McIntosh/dp/0773730893). He did a tour as a navigator in the de Havilland Mosquito in WWII (many "Mozzie" videos on youtube). Now that was a plane that moved. McIntosh, who became an eminent journalist and published books on several subjects, is adept at using himself and his fear as the butt of many jokes, though I don't doubt he was scared shitless, as any sane person would be. A fine writer in any case. The book is no longer in print but available from amazon for 30 bucks.
After a two-month drought, we're at last having a major snowfall here this evening. Just started about 10 p.m. This Turkish Airlines 737 was already on final approach when I guess they waved him off so they could plough the lone runway here. Now it and another plane are bumping around a holding pattern waiting for them to finish.
@Forbin may enjoy this. It's often been said that complete mastery of a very difficult thing means making it look easy. This is sort of a variation on that. Obviously what he's doing here requires absolutely flawless skill. I'm not surprised to hear that they've mounted an even-more-powerful engine in this Super Cub, to squeeze that extra smidgeon of magic out of the show.
About 2 hours north of me in New York state is a place called Olde Rhinebeck Aerodrome. It's a "living" collection of WWI replica aircraft and restored 1930s planes. Every summer weekend they fly an airshow - WWI dogfights on Saturday, and 1930s barnstorming on Sunday. Part of the airshow for the last 40 or 50 years has always been the "Flying farmer" routine, where they do the above, under the pretense of a local farmer running onto the field and demanding a ride, then stealing the Cub. http://oldrhinebeck.org/ Here's an interesting perspective on it: :O
