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Facebook was a basket of fruit this morning.

Good links Eddie. I see you signed your name to one back in 2012 too.

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Awhile back on cable there was a show where actual WWII bombadiers tried to hit a target in the desert. Might have been 909. The conclusion was that currency is everything.
 
As a fan of the creative minds of designers and dreamers, I have started following Jason McDowell's posts on Instagram and Facebook, for the amazing amount of aviation oddities that have been dreamed up over the years.

The current one was interesting in that it was an artist's recreation of a story told, and then one of the readers was able to find an actual photo of the concept.
I'll share Jason's post here :


Sometimes, you hear about aircraft types or aviation-related stories that were never documented with photos.
A friend of mine told me about something he experienced first-hand while serving for the US Army over in Vietnam.
He flew Cessna L-19 Birddogs over there, and described a time when he observed a fellow Birddog pilot taxi out with a Special Forces paratrooper slung underneath each wing.
They'd apparently rigged an addition to their HALO harnesses that enabled them to be attached to the wing's hard points.
The pilot had the ability to release the paratroopers and drop them from the wing, and each paratrooper had the ability to release themselves.
They flew at position of attention, head first, and presumably loved every second.
On takeoff the pilot reportedly snuck a peak out at the right wing's passenger, and said the guy grinned and gave him a little wave. He was apparently enjoying it immensely.
If ever there was an event that should have been documented with a camera, this was it.
Alas, no photos (to my knowledge) were ever taken.
Wanting to share this with you wonderful people, I got together with my artist friend @marc_mpv , and we worked together to recreate the scene.
Special thanks to Marc for his fantastic depiction, I hope you enjoy it.

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An actual photo of my post from this morning! Many thanks to @aaryana76, who found this in a book and sent it to me.

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In the seventies you started hang gliding sitting upright on a swing seat. After a year, someone offered to loan me a prone (superman) harness although my glider was not rigged for it. I could only run so fast, then I threw myself over the bar and hucked it off Mansfield, tallest in Vermont. I'll bet that guy was grinning!
 
I was frustrated trying to get my feet back into the bags when transitioning to prone. Still was damn cool once I was comfortable with it.
 
It began like any other May morning in California. The sky was blue, the sun hot. A slight breeze riffled the glistening waters of San Diego Bay. At the naval airbase on North Island, all was calm.

At 9:45 a.m., Walter Osipoff, a sandy-haired 23-year-old Marine second lieutenant from Akron, Ohio, boarded a DC-2 transport (most likely an R2D-1, given that "DC-2" is a civilian designation--RAC) for a routine parachute jump. Lt. Bill Lowrey, a 34-year-old Navy test pilot from New Orleans, was already putting his observation plane through its paces. And John McCants, a husky 41-year-old aviation chief machinist’s mate from Jordan, Montana, was checking out the aircraft that he was scheduled to fly later. Before the sun was high in the noonday sky, these three men would be linked forever in one of history’s most spectacular midair rescues.

Osipoff was a seasoned parachutist, a former collegiate wrestling and gymnastics star. He had joined the National Guard and then the Marines in 1938. He had already made more than 20 jumps by May 15, 1941.
That morning, his DC-2 took off and headed for Kearney Mesa, where Osipoff would supervise practice jumps by 12 of his men. Three separate canvas cylinders, containing ammunition and rifles, were also to be parachuted overboard as part of the exercise.

Nine of the men had already jumped when Osipoff, standing a few inches from the plane’s door, started to toss out the last cargo container. Somehow the automatic-release cord of his backpack parachute became looped over the cylinder, and his chute was suddenly ripped open. He tried to grab hold of the quickly billowing silk, but the next thing he knew he had been jerked from the plane—sucked out with such force that the impact of his body ripped a 2.5-foot gash in the DC-2’s aluminum fuselage.

Instead of flowing free, Osipoff’s open parachute now wrapped itself around the plane’s tail wheel. The chute’s chest strap and one leg strap had broken; only the second leg strap was still holding—and it had slipped down to Osipoff’s ankle. One by one, 24 of the 28 lines between his precariously attached harness and the parachute snapped. He was now hanging some 12 feet below and 15 feet behind the tail of the plane. Four parachute shroud lines twisted around his left leg were all that kept him from being pitched to the earth.

Dangling there upside down, Osipoff had enough presence of mind to not try to release his emergency parachute. With the plane pulling him one way and the emergency chute pulling him another, he realized that he would be torn in half. Conscious all the while, he knew that he was hanging by one leg, spinning and bouncing—and he was aware that his ribs hurt. He did not know then that two ribs and three vertebrae had been fractured.

Inside the plane, the DC-2 crew struggled to pull Osipoff to safety, but they could not reach him. The aircraft was starting to run low on fuel, but an emergency landing with Osipoff dragging behind would certainly smash him to death. And pilot Harold Johnson had no radio contact with the ground.

To attract attention below, Johnson eased the transport down to 300 feet and started circling North Island. A few people at the base noticed the plane coming by every few minutes, but they assumed that it was towing some sort of target.

Meanwhile, Bill Lowrey had landed his plane and was walking toward his office when he glanced upward. He and John McCants, who was working nearby, saw at the same time the figure dangling from the plane. As the DC-2 circled once again, Lowrey yelled to McCants, “There’s a man hanging on that line. Do you suppose we can get him?” McCants answered grimly, “We can try.”
Lowrey shouted to his mechanics to get his plane ready for takeoff. It was an SOC-1, a two-seat, open-cockpit observation plane, less than 27 feet long. Recalled Lowrey afterward, “I didn’t even know how much fuel it had.” Turning to McCants, he said, “Let’s go!”

Lowrey and McCants had never flown together before, but the two men seemed to take it for granted that they were going to attempt the impossible. “There was only one decision to be made,” Lowrey later said quietly, “and that was to go get him. How, we didn’t know. We had no time to plan.”
Nor was there time to get through to their commanding officer and request permission for the flight. Lowrey simply told the tower, “Give me a green light. I’m taking off.” At the last moment, a Marine ran out to the plane with a hunting knife—for cutting Osipoff loose—and dumped it in McCants’s lap.

As the SOC-1 roared aloft, all activity around San Diego seemed to stop. Civilians crowded rooftops, children stopped playing at recess, and the men of North Island strained their eyes upward. With murmured prayers and pounding hearts, the watchers agonized through every move in the impossible mission.

Within minutes, Lowrey and McCants were under the transport, flying at 300 feet. They made five approaches, but the air proved too bumpy to try for a rescue. Since radio communication between the two planes was impossible, Lowrey hand-signaled Johnson to head out over the Pacific, where the air would be smoother, and they climbed to 3,000 feet. Johnson held his plane on a straight course and reduced speed to that of the smaller plane—100 miles an hour.

Lowrey flew back and away from Osipoff, but level with him. McCants, who was in the open seat in back of Lowrey, saw that Osipoff was hanging by one foot and that blood was dripping from his helmet. Lowrey edged the plane closer with such precision that his maneuvers jibed with the swings of Osipoff’s inert body. His timing had to be exact so that Osipoff did not smash into the SOC-1’s propeller.

Finally, Lowrey slipped his upper left wing under Osipoff’s shroud lines, and McCants, standing upright in the rear cockpit—with the plane still going 100 miles an hour 3,000 feet above the sea—lunged for Osipoff. He grabbed him at the waist, and Osipoff flung his arms around McCants’s shoulders in a death grip.
McCants pulled Osipoff into the plane, but since it was only a two-seater, the next problem was where to put him. As Lowrey eased the SOC-1 forward to get some slack in the chute lines, McCants managed to stretch Osipoff’s body across the top of the fuselage, with Osipoff’s head in his lap.

Because McCants was using both hands to hold Osipoff in a vise, there was no way for him to cut the cords that still attached Osipoff to the DC-2. Lowrey then nosed his plane inch by inch closer to the transport and, with incredible precision, used his propeller to cut the shroud lines. After hanging for 33 minutes between life and death, Osipoff was finally free.

Lowrey had flown so close to the transport that he’d nicked a 12-inch gash in its tail. But now the parachute, abruptly detached along with the shroud lines, drifted downward and wrapped itself around Lowrey’s rudder. That meant that Lowrey had to fly the SOC-1 without being able to control it properly and with most of Osipoff’s body still on the outside. Yet, five minutes later, Lowrey somehow managed to touch down at North Island, and the little plane rolled to a stop. Osipoff finally lost consciousness—but not before he heard sailors applauding the landing.

Later on, after lunch, Lowrey and McCants went back to their usual duties.

Three weeks later, both men were flown to Washington, DC, where Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox awarded them the Distinguished Flying Cross for executing “one of the most brilliant and daring rescues in naval history.”

Osipoff spent the next six months in the hospital. The following January, completely recovered and newly promoted to first lieutenant, he went back to parachute jumping. The morning he was to make his first jump after the accident, he was cool and laconic, as usual. His friends, though, were nervous. One after another, they went up to reassure him. Each volunteered to jump first so he could follow.

Osipoff grinned and shook his head. “The hell with that!” he said as he fastened his parachute. “I know damn well I’m going to make it.” And he did.

This article originally appeared in the May 1975 edition of "Reader’s Digest."


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Glenn I only get to the stick and rudder group, not to a post. What were you looking at?


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From the warbird group, apparently.


This a story about a vivid memory of a P-51 and its pilot, by a fellow who was 12 years old in Canada in 1967.
They said it had flown in during the night from some U.S. Airport, the pilot had been tired.

I marveled at the size of the plane dwarfing the Pipers and Canucks tied down by her. It was much larger than in the movies. She glistened in the sun like a bulwark of security from days gone by.

The pilot arrived by cab, paid the driver, and then stepped into the pilot's lounge. He was an older man; his wavy hair was gray and tossed. It looked like it might have been combed, say, around the turn of the century. His flight jacket was checked, creased and worn -- it smelled old and genuine. Old Glory was prominently sewn to its shoulders. He projected a quiet air of proficiency and pride devoid of arrogance. He filed a quick flight plan to Montreal (Expo-67, Air Show) then walked across the tarmac.

After taking several minutes to perform his walk-around check the pilot returned to the flight lounge to ask if anyone would be available to stand by with fire extinguishers while he "flashed the old bird up, just to be safe."
Though only 12 at the time I was allowed to stand by with an extinguisher after brief instruction on its use -- "If you see a fire, point, then pull this lever!" I later became a firefighter, but that's another story. The air around the exhaust manifolds shimmered like a mirror from fuel fumes as the huge prop started to rotate. One manifold, then another, and yet another barked -- I stepped back with the others. In moments the Packard-built Merlin engine came to life with a thunderous roar, blue flames knifed from her manifolds. I looked at the others' faces, there was no concern. I lowered the bell of my extinguisher. One of the guys signaled to walk back to the lounge. We did.

Several minutes later we could hear the pilot doing his pre-flight run-up. He taxied to the end of runway 19, out of sight. All went quiet for several seconds; we raced from the lounge to the second story deck to see if we could catch a glimpse of the P-51 as she started down the runway. We could not. There we stood, eyes fixed to a spot half way down 19. Then a roar ripped across the field, much louder than before, like a furious hell spawn set loose---something mighty this way was coming. "Listen to that thing!" said the controller.

In seconds, the Mustang burst into our line of sight. Its tail was already off and it was moving faster than anything I'd ever seen by that point on 19. Two-thirds the way down 19 the Mustang was airborne with her gear going up. The prop tips were supersonic; we clasped our ears as the Mustang climbed hellish fast into the circuit to be eaten up by the
dog-day haze.

We stood for a few moments in stunned silence trying to digest what we'd just seen. The radio controller rushed by me to the radio.
"
Kingston tower calling Mustang?" He looked back to us as he waited for an acknowledgment.
The radio crackled, "Go ahead Kingston .."

"Roger Mustang. Kingston tower would like to advise the circuit is clear for a low level pass." I stood in shock because the controller had, more or less, just asked the pilot to return for an impromptu air show!
The controller looked at us. "What?" He asked. "I can't let that guy go without asking. I couldn't forgive myself!"

The radio crackled once again,
" Kingston, do I have permission for a low level pass, east to west, across the field?"

"Roger Mustang, the circuit is clear for an east to west pass."

"Roger, Kingston, I'm coming out of 3000 feet, stand by."
We rushed back onto the second-story deck, eyes fixed toward the eastern haze. The sound was subtle at first, a high-pitched whine, a muffled screech, a distant scream.

Moments later the P-51 burst through the haze. Her airframe straining against positive Gs and gravity, wing tips spilling contrails of condensed air, prop-tips again supersonic as the burnished bird blasted across the eastern margin of the field shredding and tearing the air.

At about 500 mph and 50 yards from where we stood she passed with the old American pilot saluting. Imagine. A salute! I felt like laughing, I felt like crying, she glistened, she screamed, the building shook, my heart pounded.

Then the old pilot pulled her up and rolled, and rolled, and rolled out of sight into the broken clouds and indelibly into my memory. I've never wanted to be an American more than on that day. It was a time when many nations in the world looked to America as their big brother, a steady and even-handed beacon of security who navigated difficult political water with grace and style; not unlike the pilot who'd just flown into my memory. He was proud, not arrogant, humble, not a braggart, old and honest, projecting an aura of America at its best. That America will return one day, I know it will. Until that time, I'll just send off this story; call it a reciprocal salute, to the old American pilot who wove a memory for a young Canadian that's lasted a lifetime.


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I knew a professor at Yale who flew like that. He had an F8F-2 Bearcat. I remember every time I saw him fly. He had 2500 hours in Corsairs in WWII. PHDs from Oxford and Cambridge. Extraordinarily gifted Renaissance man. Only professor I ever actually talked to. Flew his Bearcat into a hill near Cornell.
 
I knew a professor at Yale who flew like that. He had an F8F-2 Bearcat. I remember every time I saw him fly. He had 2500 hours in Corsairs in WWII. PHDs from Oxford and Cambridge. Extraordinarily gifted Renaissance man. Only professor I ever actually talked to. Flew his Bearcat into a hill near Cornell.
I remember him. Didn't he used to make regular "low approaches" to Yale bowl with the Bearcat? Scud running in upstate NY with a fast airplane did him in.
 
Yes. Norwood Russell Hanson. He would buzz the Yale Bowl during football games, but the university administration put a stop to it. Professor Hanson thought his airplane was the epitome of industrial art, and it was his place in life to educate us about it. I can remember the sound of rolling thunder as the plane approached. The hair on my arms still stands on end.
 
If you want to know more about Prof. Russ Hanson, google yaleaviation.org and click on “Yale Aviation History by Hank Galpin”.
 
If you want to know more about Prof. Russ Hanson, google yaleaviation.org and click on “Yale Aviation History by Hank Galpin”.
The first name mentioned is [FONT=&quot]F. Trubee Davison. I wonder what his relationship would be to Cotty Davison, also of Yale? I checked out Cotty in his new Twin Bee and took his 185 on amphibs in trade. Prior to that he owned a PBY.[/FONT]
 
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