Didn’t our Great-grandfather get his Army Air Corps wings at Kelly?
So he was Navy. I made up the Army Air Corps thing for sure…
Not sure, but Kelly sounds right. Of course, that was right before the first days of the Air Mail service, which brought its own set of harrowing flying circumstances and mortality rates for the pilots who were almost literally figuring it out as they went.
Check out this web site (americanairmuseum.com) for all things about WWII air war in Europe.
There is a search function so you can look for information concerning relatives, acquaintances, etc. My brother found this a few years ago. It has pictures and detailed information on many of the American airmen. Our dad flew P-51’s out of Wormingford and Raydon. The site had details of each of his kills - date, place, type of aircraft.
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The term, “fly by the seat of your pants” comes from those early days. There were no instruments to let pilots know their relative attitude, pitch, roll, etc., or, any instruments they did have were incredibly rudimentary/crude, so they relied on physiological cues which can be deadly/catastrophic as your body can fool you, especially in clouds or low visibility.
In flight school, both in flight training and ground school, trusting your instruments and not flying by the seat of your pants was a constant theme. One demonstration of how your senses could betray you was particularly effective. Each student pilot took turns being seated in what looked like a barber’s chair on a circular platform that allowed the chair to be spun. The student was blindfolded and instructed to indicate which way the chair was spinning by pointing his thumb. The chair was spun to the right and the student pointed his thumb right, then after a minute or so, pointing up indicating the chair had stopped and then pointing left indicating that the chair was spinning left, all the while the chair was still spinning right and at a pretty good clip. When the blindfold was removed, you were sitting in the chair spinning right with your thumb pointing left. That made a lasting impression.
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I remember in flight school during instrument training, getting mighty disoriented one time while flying under the use of training “foggles” that blocked your view of the outside so all one can see are instruments. I thought I was in a turn, but was straight and level. We were always told to not listen to your body’s cues, and trust your instruments.
I never asked, but I’m pretty sure my granddad would have rather been in a plane than an infantryman at Chosin.
War is Hell, we should avoid it at all costs.
WTF is about to happen in Ukraine?
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My maternal grandmother worked for Boeing during the war . That is the closest to aviation I get.
My uncle would have rather been up in the air than in Bataan, he survived the march, and spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese POW camp. Murder and cruelty were the daily fare. The Japanese hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of POWs. They hated the American’s for not fighting to their death, like good Japanese soldiers were trained to do. The guards would rather have been fighting instead. They resented having to keep prisoners at all and as a result treated the POWs inhumanely.
He hated the “Japs” 'til the day he died. He always gave me a hard time for owning a “Jap” car. The only story he ever told me about the war was, “they were so stupid we were able to keep a clock the whole time.” Apparently they guards would search some part of the POW barrack each day, they would never search the same place twice in row, so the POW’s would would always move the clock to the place the the guards last looked.
My mom told me he weighed 220 before the war but a buck forty when he came home from it.
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That’s a great and sad story. I’ll never understand how the Japanese people got so desensitized to treat humans like they did.
Remind me to tell you about the time “The Nazi Came to Christmas Dinner” and what my Great Uncle did.
Ukraine is about to cease to exist. Putin is putting the old Soviet band back together.
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The only thing the Poles and Czechs etc… hate more than the (historical) Germans are the Russians. This is gonna get bad.
At what point does NATO do anything?
Probably not until he tries something with a NATO member. But Belarus better watch its ass. They’re next.
I hope that they have plans for completely fucking up the Russian supply depots once the tanks roll across the border.
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Belarus doesn’t have to watch anything, they are exactly what Putin wants Ukraine to become. I doubt very much that Putin will take control of the totality of Ukraine. If he does, that means the world is far more fucked up than I had imagined.
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Belarus has been a Russian lackey for years.
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It was more of a comment about non-NATO nations bordering Russia than analysis of Belarus’s current political climate. But point taken.
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I’m drinking Garrison Bros and watching 1883 with my mom in one ear (who I just sort of taught how to use the her new Roku) and discussing geopolitics and potential WWIII in the other ear. I’m sorry if I’m halfass distracted while I think and type.
My childhood friend Jeff is an extra in 1883 in episode 6, when they cross the Red River at Doan’s Crossing. He said they had better toys than when we were cowboys.
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