Posted on 07/25/2021 12:39:31 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Couldn’t have been the old KC-135Q we used in the 1960s.
My cousin was involved with the moving of one from an air force base to a museum at a distance of approximately 25 miles. The local paper wrote a story about how it took longer for the 25 mile transport drive then it took the SR-71 to fly across the United States.
An en fine guy would know, but it was my understanding that the air was pretty much just bypassed around all the usual turbine stuff and rammed into the combustion chamber.
Almost like you could take away all the turbine bits in the high speed mode and it would happily chug along.
Then again, I could well have it all wrong about the bypass plumbing. Have to admit on seeing the real plumbing for the BP lines, they did not look streamlined enough for the airglow volume.
“It was a table cloth that General Jimmy Doolittle’s wife had used over the years, and they were apparently big entertainers,”
Guy I used to work with married one of Doolittle’s granddaughters. He mentioned the big dinners they would have.
LOL! A Baltimore radio talkshow host 20 years back used to say, “Take a newspaper article about a subject of which you have some knowledge. Count the mistakes. Now imagine reading about a subject about which you know nothing. How confident are you that you are getting the straight story?”
I try to remember that whenever the Press is trying particularly hard to ‘push’ a story.
“It was a table cloth that General Jimmy Doolittle’s wife had used over the years..”
Ya know, Jimmy Doolittle wasn’t the kind of guy that let a challenge go unmet. That wife of his was either an angel...or just as stubborn and determined as her husband. =:/)
Okay, you convinced me.
Adding the Dayton museum to my bucket list.
Now You have me thinking I just have to take the time, to take the time.
Thanks.
Jimmy Doolittle, besides being a brilliant pioneering aviator, was...
One.
Sick.
F**k.
There were two stories (besides his part in encouraging the use of 100 octane fuel and the Doolittle Raid) about him that made me admire him as much as I admire anyone (and this is from memory-bear with me if I get some details wrong) :
In 1926, the night before Jimmy Doolittle (then a young Captain) was supposed to do an aerobatic demonstration of Curtiss P-1 in Argentina to convince the Argentinians to purchase the planes, he attended a party, and everyone was smashed. He was demonstrating various handstands and such, and bragged that all young American men were capable of it, that they were all Errol Flynn wannabes.
The Argentinians didn't believe him, so he went outside to a 2nd story balcony and, while drunk, did a handstand on the ledge of the balcony. They all applauded, and he was feeling his oats (he had been a gymnast in college, and couldn't resist really showing off) so while hand-standing on the ledge, he executed a complete horizontal leg split, which caused his admirers to break into raucous applause, and at that moment...the ledge he was hand-standing on crumbled, gave way, and he plummeted to the paved courtyard below, managing to land on his feet but breaking both of his ankles in the process.
They took him to the hospital, where they casted both of his lower extremities, but because he had to do the demo, he signed himself out of the hospital against the advice of the clearly angry doctors. When he took the plane up (with both feet in casts!) he manhandled the plane so violently that he destroyed both of the casts in the process, putting the plane thorough its demonstration.
He landed and went back to the hospital, where they refused to cast his legs again, and he had to find some unlicensed doctor somewhere to cast his feet and he gave specific instructions to the doctor on how to make the cast smaller so he could fly.
He went up the next day, and broke one of the casts, and was unable to push that rudder pedal, so he did the entire show with only using the other rudder pedal, nobody noticed, and the Argentinians bought the planes!
After a few more days, he ended up ripping the casts off himself, IIRC. I think he had to have both of his ankles later re-broken to get them to heal correctly.
First to perform an outside loop, then thought impossible. First to perform an instrument blind takeoff, flight, and landing. Won all the aeronautical trophies. First American to obtain a doctorate in Aeronautical engineering. For his doctoral thesis at MIT, he wrote a brilliant, groundbreaking paper on test flight and handling characteristics.
In WWII, besides planning and flying the Doolittle Raid, he was instrumental in changing fighter doctrine when he was assigned to the Eighth Air Force, breaking the convention that the fighters had to stay with the bombers at all costs, freeing them up to go after the German fighters.
The way the story goes (from Air Force Magazine):
"...In January 1944, the new commander of Eighth Air Force, Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle, was visiting his subordinate commander, Maj. Gen. William A. Kepner, at VIII Fighter Command, when he noticed a slogan on the wall. It read: “The first duty of Eighth Air Force fighters is to bring the bombers back alive.” Kepner said the sign was there when he got there. Doolittle told him to take it down, that it was wrong. A new sign went up: “The first duty of Eighth Air Force fighters is to destroy German fighters...”
And then there was the story about the B-26. When he took over the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, there was a near mutiny going on. Pilots didn't want to fly the B-26, it had a bad reputation of having poor flying characteristics, was unreliable, and was thought of as a deathtrap by many pilots. He had all the pilots assembled next to the runway, and told them there was nothing wrong with the Marauder. He randomly chose a pilot from the group and instructed him to bring him to whatever plane at random that pilot normally flew, and told the group they were going to take it up and demonstrate its superior flying characteristics. He took that B-26 up and flew it like none of them had ever seen, put on a real show with that ungainly looking cigar-shaped twin engine plane. There were no more complaints after that about the B-26!
A real wild man. A boxer, gymnast, world class flier, war hero, pioneer aeronautical engineer, and...Hell raiser!
A real man.
A Real American.
Absolutely! If just to see that big honking B-36 with the wrinkles in its fuselage!
His wife was apparently quite a cook, and her Mexican food was known far and wide.
“A real wild man. A boxer, gymnast, world class flier, war hero, pioneer aeronautical engineer, and...Hell raiser!”
I hadn’t realized he was a gymnast or a boxer but he had the attitude for both. The boxer wants to physically punish his opponent using strength, speed, conditioning and superior tactics.
The gymnast is constantly seeking perfection of form and strength.
I knew Doolittle cut the fighters loose from the bombers. He wanted to shoot down so many German planes none could rise to harass the bombers. That couldn’t happen if the fighters were playing nursemaid.
Jimmy Doolittle kept up his hellraising well after the war. He and his surviving Raiders had a reunion every year after the war. The toll on man and property was ferocious for years until MRS Doolittle stepped in and invited the wives to the reunions. The fellas kept drinking hard but property was safe with the watchful Josephine “Joe” Doolittle keeping the ringleader in line.
Jimmy and “Joe” were married on 12/24/1917 and stayed married for exactly 71 years until Joe’s death on 12/24 1988.
The Aviators?
Gonna have to get that book.
I highly recommend the book, if you are an aviation enthusiast as I am, it is one of the best.
Also...after reading it, I understood wholly why Eddie Rickenbacker was an American Hero to generations.
He was a stud.
It’s not so much aviation, which I do think is great, but the people who played such a big part in history.
Rickenbacker did something unheard of and unbelievable at that time. It was bigger than the first moon landing back then. Many people considered it a suicide run. That makes him interesting.
He deserved the credit he got.
Doolittle led a ballsy mission that was considered a suicide mission by the men who flew it and the people who sent them. His accomplishments before the war could have kept him stateside or behind a desk but he gladly commanded the raid.
That makes him interesting.
My fascination with the PEOPLE of history led me to read up on George Patton.
I found out his father had a strange idea about education. A father should read the classics to a child from birth until the child was older than normal age to start school. I think that explains Pattons belief in reincarnation. The vivid imagination of a bright child could easily convince the child he had actually LIVED those lives.
When Patton did start school he could recite entire chapters of the classic literature but couldn’t read a lick.
That also explains his life long problems with spelling.
The people behind the public personas are just so fascinating. I can’t help myself.
“...hey casted both of his lower extremities, ... he signed himself out of the hospital against the advice of the clearly angry doctors. ... he manhandled the plane so violently that he destroyed both of the casts in the process, putting the plane thorough its demonstration...” [rlmorel, post 49}
In a recent bio published on the back page of Air Force Magazine, Carl Spaatz suffered the broken ankles and pulled off the demo.
I do think they are mistaken on that count, since I have read from several sources it was James Doolittle down there in Argentina doing the handstand and breaking his ankles...I never heard of Spaatz doing that! And Spaatz was no drunken gymnast!
If you haven't read that book "The Aviators" I recommend it, as it outlines Rickenbacker's life and speaks at length about his experiences in Eastern Airline (and the crash he was in on a DC3 in Atlanta which was both horrible yet fascinating) and his unbelievable recovery only to spend (about a year after the "should have been life-ending accident"!) 24 days adrift in the Pacific after another crash. That guy was an insane, masculine stud.
And Patton. Man, that guy is amazing. He got kicked in in the head playing polo, and then something like a week later, sailed a boat with his family from California to Hawaii and had no idea or memory of how he did it since he was still in a severely concussed state, IIRC.
I feel the same way...it is the people...the doers that make history go around, and make it interesting.
“...I never heard of Spaatz doing that! And Spaatz was no drunken gymnast!” [rlmorel, post 56]
My memory might be at fault. Been a long time since I read any of the histories of the period.
After posting my first comment, I began wondering if the demo pilot was Ira Eaker.
USAAF leaders were a singularly daring bunch. And lucky. The interwar years brought many challenges, technical, bureaucratic, political, and PA-wise.
They sure were an intrepid bunch, no doubt!
Another great bio to read is about Curtis LeMay. He has, IMO, been unfairly ridiculed and pilloried.
He made a lot of hard decisions that turned out to be exactly the right ones, especially the decision to begin bombing Japan at 8,000-10,000 feet instead of 20,000-30,000 feet.
They thought Lemay was sending them on suicide missions at that lower altitude. But he was right, and got the job done.
I remember watching the movie about Rickenbacker drifting in the ocean. IIRC he snagged a seagull and snacked on it to stay alive.
That took determination.
When he took the role of George Patton for the movie George C Scott read everything he could find out about the man. He even talked to officers and men that served under Patton.
Scott didn’t think much of their military advisor, Omar Bradley. Bradley was constantly saying Patton never cared for the lives of the men under his command. Scott finally had enough and during the scene where Patton is discussing the situation on Sicily and demands that General Truscott push his men harder Scott would only do the scene laying down. That was Scott’s way of making the scene unbelievable.
I enjoyed finding out how General Jack Pershing got the nickname “Black” Jack Pershing. It had nothing to do with cards.
Speaking of aviation, I had recorded a show from the history channel that explained the early days of commercial aviation. Fascinating.
I didn’t know that William Boeing, founder of Boeing Aircraft had no experience in aircraft design. He had made millions in the timber industry but was relatively unknown.
Always fascinated by airplanes he went to an air show and tried to get a ride on an airplane. Because he was unknown he was snubbed.
Boeing used that snub to propel himself first to flight school, then to designing and building planes. The rest is history.
Donald douglas started his airplane design company in the back room of a barbershop with a couple of likeminded designers.
The Douglass Aircraft company made many great planes but to me the DC-3 and the C-47 were two of their most enduring.
Donald Douglas retired in 1957 after attending a meeting and there were no pilots in attendance, just executives and accountants.
History is made by determined people doing what they love.
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