Close call.....

Bob, we're still waiting for a book of your memoirs. It would be fabulous!

 

I'm still finishing it, Jim, a lot of artwork has kept me busy. I noticed that some "purity cop" blanked out my description of the small careful steps that I was taking on the catwalk. I used an old term relating to little ***** cats, not any off-color description.

 

Oh, you meant...


p*
u*
s*
s*
y*


foot and cats?

 

Yes, it has been in use for years and means just small kitty steps. I'll have to be careful from now on.

 

video is down, any other links?

 

Another.

Noted in this clip is the sound of an audible(abort/break off) warning not previously audible in the first video.


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcLiAAVeYhk[/ame]

 

Anybody know how many AWACS that NATO has? If I remember they are based in Luxembourg?

 

I read that book last year and I found quite a few errors and old folk's tails but overall it is a good read. Having bunked in the same barrack with many guys at Langley Field and Keesler who flew in the 8th,15th,and 20th, I got to see and hear straight stuff. One comment in the book that the B-24 was built like a tank is simply off the track. It could fold up like a wet paper bag.

 

I got out my copy of the 451st. Bomb Group history and re-read some of it. They were a 15th Air Force group operating out of Castelluccia , Italy and my close friend, Lew Morse, was a pilot in the 726th bomb squadron. I wish that everyone could read this account because it tells the real story of the birth and life of this group and the hell that they endured in the campaign to kill the oil industry of the German's. They did it but without the ballyhoo of the Hollywood 8th Air Force. The 451st lived in tents without much heat or any other amenities of the brick and mortar facilities in England. They flew long missions into heavy defenses of flak and FW-190's, hitting places like Ploesti, Vienna, Weiner- Neustadt, and Regensberg,etc. They lost a lot of planes and a lot of men but did a huge job successfully. Going through the book I recognized the names of men that I knew in 1945 and some that I met later. I was at Langley Field with Leo Stoutsenberger, the kid/man who photographed the flaming demise of Extra Joker, a B-24 that was being shot up by FW-190's as it flew next to Leo's airplane. I was fortunate to meet many others in my barrack who at the time were still going in to get their dressings changed that covered slow healing wounds. I bunked next to a kid who, as a tail gunner, road the tail of his B-17 down 12,800 feet and survived the impact when it reached the earth. Joe Frank Jones was 19 years old.
So when one reads a book, written in good faith, by someone who may not have gathered everything completely, he has to take in to account that too much is and has been lost over the years by those who were there and who are now gone. Lately I have realized that almost all of my old friends have passed on. Even three of my wartime buddies who were with me at Hondo were working at Boeing without my knowing it until recently in the past 10 years. I was amazed at how old they had gotten. I should add that this forum is about the only place for an old goat to chat about things that are no longer relevant to anyone that you know but may be interesting to some. And that is why it's invigorating.
Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything about the book, it's good, and I probably shouldn't have rambled on but it was nice going over names and photos.

 

I heard from my tanker pilot friend who watched this video. His comments were. " When there is an emergency disconnect the call is ' Break Away, Break Away.' Then the receiver airplane moves DOWN AND BACK to the proper connecting point of the boom." It is obvious that the receiver in this incident did the opposite and almost hit the tanker.