Have good Memorial Day

[ChalkRocker]

Safe and all.

We've all got those we'll remember.

Hope the memories are mostly fond. Best wishes. Peace, out.

[pdub]

A plus thread.

[Sparko]

Been to Kansas and back. Special week.

[Shirley]

A day for deep reflection and appreciation.

My father was a farm boy from Assaria Ks when WWII began. So he joined the navy and became a naval aviator. He flew Corsair fighters off the decks of the Yorktown and Enterprise aircraft carriers, which included missions over Japan. He loved flying and he loved the navy and when the war ended he was planning to stay in Ca. and become a naval flight instructor, but his father became ill and there was a crop to bring in so he had to turn down the opportunity and move back home. I know there were times later when he would wonder, "what if?".

I knew he was dying ~ 9 mo before he did, so I had the luxury of the opportunity to attempt to get in my thank-yous as subtly as possible, and give one last try to getting him to open up about the missions themselves rather than the poker games and practical jokes that had dominated all his navy stories for the 3 decades of my life.

Like: What was it like to land a plane on the deck of a ship that's heaving and pitching in the ocean, especially at night? (I never breached subjects like what was it like to have Japanese planes and anti-aircraft guns shooting at you?) But, he would only say things to the effect of: "It's just what we did. We had a job to do and we did it." He didn't take the opportunity to glamorize, it all. Which was in contradistinction to his stories about boxing in the navy as a light heavyweight with a record of 11-1, including beating the guy who cost him his one loss, in a rematch.

Which is all to say, thank you to him and all the others who have fought and sacrificed for the freedom we currently enjoy.

[japhy]

A day for deep reflection and appreciation.

It will be good to see you again in a month.

[Sparko]

Landing an F4U on an Essex Class carrier is a rare skill. A fighter pilot has to rely solely on oneself for navigation, power settings and mundane things like engine sound anomalies.
My father served at the end of the Korean War and worked to clean up the Trinity site and other contaminated areas as an engineer. He could not wait to farm again. Unfortunately he acquired an exotic cancer from his Army time and we lost him when I was in high school. Changed everything about my life. There is nothing small about military service. Both of my Great Great grandfathers served throughout the civil war in the Union infantry. And my family goes back beyond the Battle of Largs serving. Lucky to be here. We are all lucky. What a country! Diverse and free.

[Shirley]

A day for deep reflection and appreciation.

It will be good to see you again in a month.

Thanks, it'll be good to see you, too.

[Shirley]

https://twitter.com/deAdder/status/1662 ... wsrc%5Etfw

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

https://twitter.com/deAdder/status/1662 ... wsrc%5Etfw

I took this photo a few days ago.

[Shirley]

It's not like any other place I've ever been, Gutter.

[TDub]

A day for deep reflection and appreciation.

My father was a farm boy from Assaria Ks when WWII began. So he joined the navy and became a naval aviator. He flew Corsair fighters off the decks of the Yorktown and Enterprise aircraft carriers, which included missions over Japan. He loved flying and he loved the navy and when the war ended he was planning to stay in Ca. and become a naval flight instructor, but his father became ill and there was a crop to bring in so he had to turn down the opportunity and move back home. I know there were times later when he would wonder, "what if?".

I knew he was dying ~ 9 mo before he did, so I had the luxury of the opportunity to attempt to get in my thank-yous as subtly as possible, and give one last try to getting him to open up about the missions themselves rather than the poker games and practical jokes that had dominated all his navy stories for the 3 decades of my life.

Like: What was it like to land a plane on the deck of a ship that's heaving and pitching in the ocean, especially at night? (I never breached subjects like what was it like to have Japanese planes and anti-aircraft guns shooting at you?) But, he would only say things to the effect of: "It's just what we did. We had a job to do and we did it." He didn't take the opportunity to glamorize, it all. Which was in contradistinction to his stories about boxing in the navy as a light heavyweight with a record of 11-1, including beating the guy who cost him his one loss, in a rematch.

Which is all to say, thank you to him and all the others who have fought and sacrificed for the freedom we currently enjoy.

Its interesting isn't it. Those that have actually seen war....dont talk about it. The ones that talk about it lot and say crazy things, that demand discounts, that talk about how brave they were......you often find out later they never left base, never shipped out.

Both my grandfathers (and Oklahoma farm boy and a kansas farm boy) were overseas in WWII. They both refused to talk about other than similar sorts of things....the non combat activities....one of them was also an accomplished boxer.

I never got the stories at all from one of them. The other....when he died. We found out had written a sort of memoir for the family, not just of the war but of his whole life. Amazingly fun to get that insight into his journey. In that journal he opened up about the war more than he ever was able to in reality. Even then, it was just the tip of the iceberg. The things they saw, the things they had to deal with......just...crazy. We should all be thankful for those people....our prosperity, regardless of how much complaining there is about it....is possible due to them. We should all be grateful.

Im not pro military rah rah, and I dont go around saying thanks probably as much as I should. But I often think about my grandfathers, and those many many like them, what they had to do...what they saw...and then how they came home and stuffed it away in there chests and went back to work so they could raise families....

the shit we complain about now.........phew. Is, quite frankly embarrassing in comparison.

[Back2Lawrence]

It's not like any other place I've ever been, Gutter.

go at night if you haven't been

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

It's not like any other place I've ever been, Gutter.

Agreed. I've been there numerous times.
Watched 4 veterans who looked tough as hell stand together and placed their hands together over one of their fellow veteran's name. One said, "That's the only time I have touched another man's hands and cried".

Also visited the Korean and WWII memorials this past weekend.
Several years back there were veterans at the WWII memorial that asked me to take their photo together. Said they were involved together in the D Day invasion. They thanked me, I thanked them and told them I was honored. I will never forget that moment.
When I was about 13 years old my father took me to the Statue of Liberty. As we were on the ferry my father told me to take a look around. There was a large group of Asians (seemingly Japanese) standing all around us. My father said, "If someone had been in a coma for 30 years and woke up on this boat they would have thought we lost the war". He in NO WAY meant that to be racist. He said it as someone who explained to me that when he was 13 (the same age as me) he lived through the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and WWII) not knowing if he would be living in a "free" country ever again.

Back to Viet Nam and Memorial Day.....

https://twitter.com/UncleLonny63/status ... 9412977670

[Shirley]

https://youtu.be/xnmzl2CIqaQ

[twocoach]

A day for deep reflection and appreciation.

My father was a farm boy from Assaria Ks when WWII began. So he joined the navy and became a naval aviator. He flew Corsair fighters off the decks of the Yorktown and Enterprise aircraft carriers, which included missions over Japan. He loved flying and he loved the navy and when the war ended he was planning to stay in Ca. and become a naval flight instructor, but his father became ill and there was a crop to bring in so he had to turn down the opportunity and move back home. I know there were times later when he would wonder, "what if?".

I knew he was dying ~ 9 mo before he did, so I had the luxury of the opportunity to attempt to get in my thank-yous as subtly as possible, and give one last try to getting him to open up about the missions themselves rather than the poker games and practical jokes that had dominated all his navy stories for the 3 decades of my life.

Like: What was it like to land a plane on the deck of a ship that's heaving and pitching in the ocean, especially at night? (I never breached subjects like what was it like to have Japanese planes and anti-aircraft guns shooting at you?) But, he would only say things to the effect of: "It's just what we did. We had a job to do and we did it." He didn't take the opportunity to glamorize, it all. Which was in contradistinction to his stories about boxing in the navy as a light heavyweight with a record of 11-1, including beating the guy who cost him his one loss, in a rematch.

Which is all to say, thank you to him and all the others who have fought and sacrificed for the freedom we currently enjoy.

Memorial Day is always a weird one for me. My grandfather was from a small coal mining area in Southern Illinois and served in the Naval Reserve as a pilot. He enlisted in 1941 so the government would put him through college so he could provide for his family. He was stationed at Whidbey Island in Washington state and was a test pilot who tested planes and how they would perform in various bombing runs. Apparently his last test in March of 1945 "successfully" proved that his plane could not handle the stress of a particularly steep dive on a bombing run and the plane tore apart and crashed into the water and his body was never recovered. The best planes were sent overseas to the pilots who were in the fight. Test pilots got whatever scraps of parts were left.

He died when my Mom was 3 months old.

As "thanks" for his service, the US Government paid for both my grandmother and my mother to go to college, an opportunity I question whether either of them would have had if my grandfather had not died in service to the country thanks to shoddy equipment and a treatment of test pilots as nothing more than crash test dummies that was doomed to fail eventually. In the long run, he did provide for his family but they would have rather had him back. So many mixed feelings about that day and about what service to our nation has cost so many families across America.

[Sparko]

Twocoach: Operational aircraft are different from test aircraft. The best operational types did go into service, but generally test aircraft were newer types like the Fireball or Bearcat. I thought maybe he was a Patuxent test flier based on your description, but since he was at Ault Field, it sounds like he was doing functional test flights with Dauntlesses. The Navy was working on the absolute critical "do not exceed" dive angles on SBDs for use in the XBT2D Skyraider program, where they decided to fit a ventral brake vice dive brakes like on the Dauntless. 70-degrees was the critical angle apparently. They were flying SBDs at Ault Field at the time IIRC, which is why I guessed the reason for dive testing. They also had a small contingent of fighters which were beginning to assume the role of the dive bombers.
The country lost thousands of pilots to accidents during the war. Wheezer from the Little Rascals died in an AT-6 at about the same time in CA. The risk was acute flying in that era. I really appreciate their service.

[Shirley]

Very sorry about your family's loss, twocoach.

Damn Sparko, from whence comes your insight, if you don't mind saying?

[Sparko]

I have studied aviation history a long time. . .