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Ah, yes, the Bush family and their pictures. (Please don't wind me up too tightly.) Here's a sample:

By the official dates, the two photos at left have Barbara at ages 53 and 63, respectively. GHWB at right is ostensibly 20, though he perhaps seems older.

That middle picture is of Barb at GHWB's inaugural address, so there's no mistake! What could possibly have gone on for someone who could always have afforded the best health care and beauty treatments? That person simply is not 63 years old as her official birth date (6/8/25 (to 1/20/1989=63) would suggest). What was going on here!!?!

The implicit proposition for the photo at right is that GHWB's Avenger (?) suffered a 50mm round to one of its four propeller blades and GWHB must be one heck of a pilot to have brought it in at all. Such an unbalanced-weight prop would have shaken and broken any crew's teeth right out of their jaws; the report on that part seems to be missing.

Actually, a blade that could have endured such a strike in flight would have immediately and undoubtedly seen the outer two-thirds of that blade depart the aircraft. The fact that the blade isn't even bent forward by the pulling force of the blades in flight should tell anyone acquainted with physics that this damage was not sustained in flight, but while the plane was stationary on the ground (or a ship's deck, but here, because of the photo's environs, it must have been shot at on the tarmac). Had it happened in flight, with the prop turning, the shell's metal curls would have been asymmetric, bending more toward the trailing edge of the blade, and not symmetric as in the photo.

In other words, an expensive propeller was purposely trashed for this resulting photo opportunity, again to show what a great aviator hero the piloting warrior showed himself to be in the heat of battle.

No such expensive photo op is beyond these DS-types. Think just for a moment of Algore with his canoe (and 4 billion gallons of water were diverted for his "heroic" photo op). Otherwise no canoe could have floated convincingly below the dam.

Whoops! Looter guy photobombs again! If Photoshoppers were as adept back in 2000, maybe Algore could have had the canoe up on sawhorses and saved the taxpayers one huge water bill.

We shouldn't even begin to ask how expensive the establishment of Bush bona fides the event in the following picture cost:

Ah, yes, then there was this Barry-JOBrennan-NTSB-FAA-HI/AG masterstroke on behalf of his LFBC's producer (the cost of this was "ginormous"):

(story)

>> (Please don’t wind me up too tightly.)

Highly interesting. We should wind you up more often.

Are you saying BB is/was older than claimed? The second picture looks considerably older than 63 to me. But a lot depends on individual genetics and sun exposure.

I’ve never seen the hole in the plane prop picture before, but I have read about the very dubious sounding “heroic” exploits of GHWB.

And what was the deal with AlBore in the canoe? I get that they released 4 billion gallons of water for him to have the photo op, but what was “heroic” or important about it? It just looks like a doofus in a canoe, could have been shot on any lake/river/pond. That’s one I don’t remember.

RE: the pic of GHWB and the hole in the prop blade.

I’ve never seen this before.

Yes, GHWB flew a Grumman TBM Avenger. The “F” suffix designated Grumman-built. The “M” suffix denoted Avengers built by Goodyear. Reportedly GHWB was the youngest commissioned naval aviator in WWII at the time.

You’re so right about the prop blade not being able to last one second under engine loading. That blade would have been airmailed across the sky in an instant. And the vibration would have been indescribable. I once got tangled up with a brick curb and broke off one half of a mower blade on my 5 foot Kubota deck. I thought Armageddon was upon me with all the ruckus that cut loose. Holy shmoly!

A 50mm round? That’s about right at 2” in diameter. It’s going to take some creative reconciling based on the hole size in the pic.

The hole is way too perfect to be attributed to maybe a 5”(?) round striking at random. The hole is perfectly centered on the blade chord, and the round hit the blade nearly perpendicularly. What are the odds? This looks to be like a down-time repair shop gag using some skillful shear work and then banana-peeling the prop skin back. It’s all too neat.

The kicker is that the aircraft in this pic is NOT an Avenger. An Avenger had a perfectly circular engine cowling shape when viewed head on. Also, to my knowledge, the Avengers never were equipped with 4-blade props.

This engine cowling is elliptical in shape, and when you marry that to a 4-blade prop, you’re likely looking at a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt IMO which was strictly USAAF issue at the time.

I call BS. Thanks for posting. Fascinating.