Random photo montage of enjoyment......

Back to 1943 again - Dad's caption on the back of this was "The wing of what used to be a perfectly good PT-19".
He doesn't cop to having cause its separation from the airplane.
He appears to be wet, which leads me to believe this was taken right after he soloed.

Heavily modified Allen Sumner and Gearing class destroyers laid up in reserve in Taiwan. The ROCN really got their money's worth out of these old American destroyers.

A couple of old Russian Delta I class SSBN's laid up.

Daryl Hall, selling you Carlton smokes out the back of a Checker Marathon.

Used to work with an old fella back in the 1970s who had a Checker Marathon. I didn't know normal people could buy them. Thing was a fucking juggernaut.

My most recent completed kits. USS Hornet CV-8, HMS King George V, the Soviet Battlecruiser Kirov, USS Colahan DD-658, IJN Battleship Mikasa, and the German Destroyers Z-37 and Z-39. Next step, paint.

Ahh, good ol' Kirov. We used to call that bad boy a Navy Cross waiting to happen.

I've been searching forever for a picture of my Dad's P-47N, to get a good look at the details - the way he painted the name, the mission scoreboard on the side, etc - for finally building an accurate model. There's a 318th FG Facebook group now and everyone is posting pictures their fathers took. You wanna see frustrating? Dad's plane was #02. Here's the best ever photo found of #02:



AAAARGH!!!!

Why aren’t you playing World of Warships with me?

a then and now of my neighbourhood...

Cool pics Spaceturkey! Here is a "then and now" of my neighbourhood. Pic on the left is March 2003, right pic is June 2003 . Georgia residents will get the joke.

Heh-we get that, except it cuts down neighbourhoods and puts up condo towers.

I don't have the internet.

Spotted on the freeway on Thursday.



I wish I could’ve followed them to find out what they were going to hang it on.

Hamilton cuffless prop, typical of a P-47D bubbletop.
And various other planes, of course... but I vote Jug.

One of my assignments today took me near the approach path for one of the local Air Force bases where a C-17 was shooting touch-and-go landings. Boeing has a depot-level maintenance facility on the civilian side of the runway and they do lots of work on C-17s.

Back in 1997, I took flying lessons and--though I never finished the training--I did get to the point where I was doing solo practice flights.

On one flight, I had just left the Hayward Airport traffic pattern, was at 2000 feet, heading south toward Fremont, when I heard the controller call me: "November-One-Zero-Two-Niner-Hotel, be advised C17 Heavy at 4,000 feet, your 1 o'clock." I looked up and, yep, sure enough: C17 heading north (about 150 degrees or so from my heading), I presume to Alamada Naval Air Station (which was still open at the time). I took note of him, he was not anywhere near my flight path and I continued on.

Two minutes later, I flew through some very abrupt and (momentarily) alarming turbulence. I realized that it was the C17's wake turbulence: a vortex of air currents that are spawned by big planes moving through the air, and which descends at about 1000 feet per minute. My path intersected the C17's at just the moment his wake turbulence was descending through my altitude. Woke me up pretty good!

Found these on a P-47 Facebook group. After hostilities ended in 1945, the 318th Fighter Group was disbanded, and Dad was transferred to the 414th FG, also on Ie Shima. These are some shots of 414th FG jugs, probably post-war.



Those are some drop tanks! I think they're borrowed 360 gallon P-38 tanks.

Thanks to a fella on the Facebook group for 318thFG families - he found me the page from Dad's graduating cadet class (class 44-C, Moore Field, Texas). This is so amazing to me.

The islands of USS Wasp, CVS 18, and USS Intrepid, CVS 11, as seen from Wasps flight deck.

The Japanese light cruiser Sakawa, disarmed prior to her being expended as a target ship in the Bikini nuclear tests in 1946.

The ex USS Barbel, SS 580, and ex USS Bon Homme Richard, CVA 31, being broken up for scrap in San Petroleum Ca, 1993.

The Road.

A flight of USAAF Northrop A 17A's, late 1930's.

I've seen many, many photographs of the Doolittle raid (the first model kit I ever built was of the Hornet with tiny little B-25s on the deck, so I've always felt a connection to the ship) but I've never seen this one.

Great photo.

Come on, baby, fly...!

"In 1945, the Royal Navy heavy cruiser HMS Sussex was struck by a kamikaze near the Dutch East Indies. The Mitsubishi Ki-51 "Sonia" failed to penetrate the ship's 4.5" belt armor, leaving only a distinct imprint on the hull."



Perfect placement at the waterline.

Also, I suspect the pilot was Wile E. Coyote.

Italian tank, circa 1939 colorized.

After reading a book about the Bachem Natter, I feel a need to give a shout out to this crazy Nazi.
The Bachem Ba 349 Natter was an experimental vertical-launch, rocket-powered interceptor designed by one Erich Bachem in Germany in 1944. The idea was to launch it straight up a pole like an Estes model rocket. The pilot would aim it at a B-17, fire off either a mass of rockets or a mass of 30mm cannon shells mounted in its nosecone, eject the whole nose section, and bail out. The parts of the plane, and the pilot, would parachute down for re-use. Nothing like it had ever been tried before.

So on March 1, 1945, Luftwaffe pilot Lothar Sieber was assigned as the very first test pilot for the very first manned test flight. There had been many tests before with dummies, or with empty planes, but Sieber would be the first pilot to try it. The Natter was launched with four solid rocket boosters, and the main engine was a liquid-fueled rocket, whose fuel could melt human skin.

He climbed up the ladder and crawled in, and they fired it off. Immediately after launch, the canopy was seen to tear off and flutter away. The Natter disappeared into a low cloud. Less than a minute later, 10 miles away, it was seen to dive straight down out the clouds and slam into the ground.

There wasn't enough left of the plane to figure out what happened, nor enough left of Sieber to autopsy. One theory was that when the canopy came loose, the headrest (attached to the canopy) either knocked him out or broke his neck.

Anyway, there were a few more unmanned tests, and the SS was hot to get this thing into combat. But the war ended before the damn thing killed anyone else on either side.

The picture shows Lothar Sieber talking to Erich Bachem moments before getting into his coffin.

So I find this notable because this poor crazy bastard was, technically, the very first human being ever to be launched vertically in a rocket ship.

The live shot location where I was today is near the approach path for one of the Air Force bases here. A C-5 was doing touch-and-gos.

Must be a Navy pilot.

Boy, did I have to stare at that for a while before I saw the wire.

... and the handcuffs!