B29 Overheard

[fried1765]

Used to live on the east coast across the bay from Ft Monmouth in NJ and every Armed Forces Day they did very low level flyovers in the C5 (from McGuire AFB) and it was like a solar eclipes and an earthquake at the same time, incredible.

Ah yes!
In the aviation world, the C5 is commonly referred to as ....."FRED"
F---ing Ridiculous Expebditure of Dollars!

 

[fried1765]

We have an annual small air show in my town. Same guys bring their warbirds out and fly them around. Absolutely fascinated with the WW-II Vought Corsair fighter. It has an enormous radial engine that sounds incredible.
The pilot flies it overhead like ~200 ft over your head, nice & slow and the sound of the radial engine literally thumps your chest. He will do a few of the fly overs, then mash the stick, pick up speed and climb over the tree line.
Doesn’t sound amazing the way I’m describing, but to be there and see it in its Marine Corps paint fly low over you with a 2000HP radial engine is something I can’t describe.

View attachment 705548

Good friend of mine (now deceased) flew the USN Corsair.
A tail dragger, that you could not see over the nose to taxi.
Fantastic airplane in it's time.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Good friend of mine (now deceased) flew the USN Corsair.
A tail dragger, that you could not see over the nose to taxi.
Fantastic airplane in it's time.

There's a book out there, written by the test pilot who helped in the development of the Bent Wing Bird...it's called "Whistling Death", the name given to it by the Japanese. If you're a WWII warbird buff, I recommend it (Reach for the Sky is a good book also; the story of the English legless Spitfire pilot; Douglas Bader).

 

[MossRoad]

Nice interview with a Corsair pilot.

 

[BravoXray]

And Midway was not a place you wanted to be on Palm Sunday, 1965...

My family was at a neighbors house when the tornadoes hit. We headed to the basement until it passed, hearing the house creak and groan. They lost some roofing and had a couple of cracked walls. Dad had a nearly new Buick Electra in their driveway, and there was a grain silo from across the road lying in their yard about 10 feet from it.
The mobile home park on SR 15 was hit too, several trailers demolished, but no one killed it I remember correctly. Injured people was taken across the street to the restaurant where I worked and laid out on tables in the dining room.
Someone came in and said they could see a couple more tornadoes to the west and we went out an watched them go across to the north and east. Those were the ones that hit the Midway trailer park.
Dad was on the volunteer FD, just a house from where we had been, so he went to the station and they were called to respond to missing people at SR15 and US 20. I rode along to man the radio, and when we got to 15 & 20 all that was left of the truck stop/restaurant were a few bar stools left on the concrete slab. everything else was gone. A couple of houses nearby were gone too, several occupants were found in the fields nearby, all dead.
The Sunnyside addition, across US33 from the Concord Mall was almost entirely leveled by the twisters. I remember when LBJ made a visit to the area to survey the damage. There are some vacant lots there still, homes that were never rebuilt.
When we got home, the neighbor's new patio awning was gone and there was a dinner plate smashed through our front storm door that came from the farm house to the north that had it's roof torn off and interior gutted.
I hope I never see anything like that again.

 

[MossRoad]

My father worked in Elkhart, and took a lot of pictures of the aftermath. He said everywhere you looked was a dead chicken, as it apparently hit a chicken farm or egg farm. He had pictures of trucks twisted up around trees and a straw driven through a pole. Super scary stuff there.

 

[oldballs]

Ah yes!
In the aviation world, the C5 is commonly referred to as ....."FRED"
F---ing Ridiculous Expebditure of Dollars!

Seems like, around here they called that a "Gooneybird"...IIRC.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[PILOON]

During my aviation days I worked on Grumman Goose,(making it into a flying camper).
Also probably on the only 3 engine Beech 18,(P&W test bed) ,
Modified 5 crop dusters to ferry trans Atlantic (had to add fuel capacity* and full IFR capabilities c/w HF radio) oh, and my fun jobs were the 25 or so light AC that I rigged (fully approved) for trans Atlantic ferries.
Also once serviced a DH Mosquito.

*when the project was offered I immediately decided the hopper would be the reserve fuel tank.
That worked, next was to convert to full IFR which was the main challenge due to confined space and structural limitations. That called for very specific sized instruments and making new panels.
We did it! and all within 30 days.
My approach was to certify the first AC and do exactly the same for the other 4 and they OK'd that approach. So we basically had a 5 of production line.
This was all B4 SatNav & GPS so HF and Loran C was the rule of the day.

Still miss all those wild and weird challenges and the purr (roar) of AC engines.

 

[fried1765]

Seems like, around here they called that a "Gooneybird"...IIRC.

Cheers,
Mike

The "Gooney Bird" is the DC-3.
Much smaller, and many years older than FRED!

 

[Ford850]

We drove over to Toledo yesterday to ride bike trails, and had F16's flying over us all morning. Later in the afternoon while sitting outside at home, we heard a distinct engine sound flying overhead so I checked flight radar. B-25J directly over us. Pretty cool day to see and hear both of those.