Sully

Steven Day / AP File

These days, I am rather jaded when it comes to driving to the cineplex to see a movie. I don’t really need some screenwriter’s social message or a recycled comic book hero.

There are a couple of exceptions – if it is made by Ron Howard, or has Clint Eastwood on either side of the camera, it automatically passes my filter test. Tom Hanks in any movie usually guarantees a decent movie.

This movie, directed by Eastwood and starring Tom Hanks took a subject that just about everyone not living in a cave the last 10 years is familiar – and made it into a movie both thoroughly entertaining and informative. In fact at the end the audience in the nearly packed theater applauded.

Her final voyage: Navy’s first super-carrier USS Forrestal begins journey to the scrapyard after being sold for ONE CENT

Having served in Independence and Ranger, this does tug at the heart strings a bit. I did serve in those years with men who were aboard Forrestal during the tragedy of 1967.

The Navy has paid one cent under a contract to have the 60-year-old vessel dismantled by All Star Metals in the Gulf port of Brownsville.

The decommissioned aircraft carrier Ex-USS Forrestal, pictured in 2010, is now on its final voyage to the scrap heap in Texas

Tugboat Alex McAllister pushes the USS Forrestal into the Delaware River on the aircraft carrier’s final voyage from Navy Shipyard in south Philadelphia

The times are indeed a changin……………………………

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2551771/Scrapped-penny-USS-Forr-estal-Navys-supercarrier-begins-final-voyage-scrapyard.html#ixzz2sRPB09tQ

Hopes high that restored B-29 ‘Doc’ will fly in 2014 Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/01/01/3206432/hopes-high-that-restored-b-29.html#storylink=cpy

The Wichita-built vintage Boeing B-29 Superfortress under restoration inside a Boeing hangar may fly as soon as this summer, volunteers on the project say.

Beautiful Climber | History of Flight | Air & Space Magazine

Beautiful Climber | History of Flight | Air & Space Magazine.

In the summer of ’58, nothing was faster to 50,000 feet.

Beautiful Jet!

How Do You Name an Aircraft Carrier? | The Daily Planet

Interesting piece……………………………………………..”Which brings us to carriers. The Navy’s first carrier (a converted collier), the USSLangley, was named for aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley, the inventor of theAerodrome, and the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. When the Navy was compelled to stop building battle cruisers after 1923, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby decided that new construction aircraft carriers (CVs) should be named after “historic Naval Vessels or battles” (think Lexington, Saratoga,Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp, andHornet). Once World War II began, the convention was modified to “famous old ships and important battles of our history and present world war”—and includedIndependence-class light fleet carriers (CVLs).”

How Do You Name an Aircraft Carrier? | The Daily Planet.

 

Dual 1,000th ‘Traps’ Achieved Aboard USS Nimitz

From the Navy Website. I am proud that one of these Aviators, Cmdr. Robert Loughran is the Commanding Officer of VFA-147, The Argonauts! I served in the Argonauts when they were VA-147 operating the venerable and dependable LTV A-7E Corsair II. The tradition remains. It is one of only three commands that I served in that still is in service……………………………………..

1,000 traps is a big deal. Bank on it. Ask some of our Lexicans that are Aviators and NFOs about that.

Dual 1,000th ‘Traps’ Achieved Aboard USS Nimitz.

via Dual 1,000th ‘Traps’ Achieved Aboard USS Nimitz.

My Uncle Denis, pilot of the plane time forgot: First pictures of the man who crash-landed his plane in the Sahara and then walked off across the sands to his death

• The Mail On Sunday has found the nephew of Kittyhawk P-40 pilot who is thought to have survived crash but died trying to escape the desert on foot
• Pictures from the family collection show a proud 24-year-old Flight Sergeant Denis Copping just days before crash
• Aircraft was found almost perfectly preserved, unseen and untouched, after it came down in 1942
• Historian describes find as ‘an incredible time capsule’ and ‘the aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun’s Tomb’

This is the follow on in The Daily Mail concerning Flight Sergeant Copping.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2143592/My-Uncle-Denis-pilot-plane-time-forgot-First-pictures-man-crash-landed-plane-Sahara-walked-sands-death.html#ixzz1ulcf6XoE