2006 YAM Air Show

Mark this on your 'to do list'.

wow... good planes.

Thanks for the post. raygun...over here!

I sure loved and miss the El Toro Air Show!

Although we are closer to Selfridge ANG, we are soooooo there!

Ooo, Ooo, can I go? Please?!

Me too!!

Never saw a Lancaster up close and personal

I still think there is a role for an A1 type plane in the modern battlefield

I've always wondered how Rhodesia might have bennifited from having had a dozen of those!!

gotta love the Spads...

I've always wondered how Rhodesia might have bennifited from having had a dozen of those!!

They would have beneffitted immensely but I think so too would the US.

The stinger missles in Afghanistan initially proved to be ineffective. It wasn't until a Russian Hind pilot defected to Pakistan that the Stingers IR seeker could be calibrated to the proper wavelength.

I think a radial engined A1 type close air support plane would have a radically different IR signature from that of a helicopter or jet.

I once worked with a former A1 pilot who told me that the planes 10 hour loiter time was limited by it's oil capacity rather than fuel capacity. Armed with bang-bang (bombs), fire (napalm) and 20 Mike Mike (6 forward firing 20 MM) the A1 would perform admirably in afghanistan and along the border with Iran or Syria.

Hope this helps a little SAM

I wish I was free this weekend :-(

Regards

ping

The most amazing thing about Lancasters and their missions were that they never flew in formation. They all hit the same bomb release point as singular aircraft coming in from different directions and they did it at night with no light on.

Thanks alfa6. Too bad Michigan is too far to go. :-(

I'm sitting beside my RV at Willow Run as I post this.

Sure, rub it in. ;-)

Yankee Air Museum?

What happened to the Confederate Air Force again?

This reminds me of the former Confederate Air Force (CAF) now renamed the "Commemorative Air Force" to please the politically correct offended class.

Confederate Air Force, RIP

by Brian Dunaway

Lew Rockwell’s 1996 article on O.P. Alford, III was inspirational – I would certainly like to have met this man, and hope I’m that productive in my nineties.

I couldn’t help but note Mr. Alford’s involvement in the Confederate Air Force (CAF) – many of my friends here in the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) community derive great joy in the annual air show at Ellington Field, of which the CAF is a major participant.

This was originally going to be a quick note to Lew, to convey my appreciation for the article, but when I realized I was writing with the same manner and speed as I did the other column I wrote for this site regarding aviation, it occurred to me how much aviation had gotten into my blood.

But the aviation infection is easy to get here. An old friend who grew up in the area described it as a neighbor on the street screaming, "Hey y’all, come on, we’re going to build a space ship!" And they did.

(This is not intended as any kind of anarcho-capitalist thesis – God forbid that I have contradictions in my soul!)

Surely the astronauts typify this spirit, and there’s a degree of astronaut worship among some, but that’s not in my nature. But I’ve worked with my share of astronauts, most closely during advanced space suit tests. One of those was Sonny Carter, and if he wasn’t an over-achiever, I don’t know who is.

Sonny was a professional soccer player for the Atlanta Chiefs, a well-decorated Marine, Top Gun pilot, expert SCUBA diver, and a surgeon. He was also very easy to work with, and thorough, and went so far as to attempt surgical knots with the prototype gloves we were testing underwater.

And I certainly had my share of fun as a test subject, including space suit testing at vacuum and on the KC-135, the "Vomit Comet."

It’s not called the "Vomit Comet" for nothing. During two-minute parabolas (the 0-g portion only lasts around 25 seconds), the modified 707 (and its wary contents) undergoes 1-g, 2-g, 1-g, 0-g, 1-g … then over and over and over again. It’s the roller coaster from Hell.

Now it was well known that Sonny was not fond of the KC-135, and he was trying to avoid the tests we had planned for him on it. "Uh, someone needs to try to talk him into it," as they looked at me. "Alright, I’ll do it."

After a friendly chat (I know he knew what was coming), I made my case. Now remember, this is a Top Gun pilot talking, "Brian, I’d rather eat live roaches off the floor than fly on that plane." After that comment I acquiesced, but he lost in the end – the Engineering Director called the Mission Operations Director and that was that.

In the very end, the JSC Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory was named after Sonny, as while he was on NASA business, the passenger plane he was aboard crashed in his home state of Georgia. (Sen. John Tower was also aboard that plane.)

(One more little nugget: All the astronauts that have met their Maker did so while they were doing what they wanted, and were profoundly aware of the risks. Mourning is one thing, whining is another. Their deaths may rip the hearts from some of us, but a tragedy it isn’t.)

To be certain, I could not not get my pilot’s license in this environment. It was ontological.

In fact, my first flight instructor was really into the Zen of flying, and had me read poetry aloud before lessons. He also insisted I read Night Flight, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a metaphysical treatise for aviation if there ever was one. The work was later made into a 1933 film with Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Lionel and John Barrymore. The plane of Saint-Exupéry, who was best known for The Little Prince, disappeared on a reconnaissance flight that left Corsica for the south of France, and was found just this month.

But I digress.

A good thumbnail history of the CAF is found here (be sure to scroll down to see the CAF blood chit!):

The origins of the Confederate Air Force date back to 1951, with the purchase of a surplus Curtiss P-40 Warhawk by Lloyd Nolen, a former World War II Army Air Corps flight instructor. In 1957, Nolen and four friends purchased a P-51 Mustang, each sharing in the $2,500 cost of the aircraft. With the purchase of the Mustang, known as Red Nose, the group was unofficially founded.

On September 6, 1961, the CAF was chartered as a nonprofit Texas corporation in order to restore and preserve World War II-era combat aircraft. In 1965, the first museum building consisting of 26,000 square feet was completed at old Rebel Field, Mercedes, Texas. The CAF created a new Rebel Field at Harlingen, Texas, when they moved there in 1968, occupying three large buildings. The CAF fleet continued to grow and included medium and heavy bombers such as the B-29, B-25, B-17 and B-24.

Today, the CAF is comprised of over 11,000 members, several hundred of whom serve as pilots and flight or maintenance crew members committed to preserving World War II American aviation heritage. The CAF is responsible for operating a fleet of more than 140 airplanes known as the Ghost Squadron.

The dynamic and patriotic O.P. Alford III died in 1996, and I'm glad he didn't live to see the CAF lose its name.

Not long after 9-11, the name change was announced at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) annual banquet across the street from JSC. I was really looking forward to the guest speaker from the Confederate Air Force, but my fragile mood had already been made sullen by a military officer at my table that seemed to be looking forward to kicking some towel-headed ass.

And at the end of the very entertaining CAF presentation, the announcement: Because the word "Confederate" is offensive to some, after fifty years, the CAF was to change its name within the next few days. I know it wasn’t just the evil eye I cast in his direction, the presenter knew this wasn’t right, as cowardice was written all over his face.

So if you want to link to them in all their cowardly glory, the old URL for the CAF still works, but it now takes you to the home page of the "Commemorative" Air Force.

But don’t look for the word "Confederate" in the "Commemorative Air Force History" page, or anywhere else on the site. You won’t find it. In their defense, what would they say? "Because the collective huevos of the CAF are the same as that of a little girl, in the year 2002 the word ‘Confederate’ was removed from the name of the organization."

To hear the old CAF lore, long ago a group of South Texans chose the name Confederate Air Force as kind of a joke. Well, it’s no joke now.

May 1, 2004

Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dunaway/dunaway27.html

About the Confederate Air Force

The origins of the Confederate Air Force date back to 1951, with the purchase of a surplus Curtiss P-40 Warhawk by Lloyd Nolen, a former World War II Army Air Corps flight instructor. In 1957, Nolen and four friends purchased a P-51 Mustang, each sharing in the $2,500 cost of the aircraft. With the purchase of the Mustang, known as Red Nose, the group was unofficially founded.

On September 6, 1961, the CAF was chartered as a nonprofit Texas corporation in order to restore and preserve World War II-era combat aircraft. In 1965, the first museum building consisting of 26,000 square feet was completed at old Rebel Field, Mercedes, Texas. The CAF created a new Rebel Field at Harlingen, Texas, when they moved there in 1968, occupying three large buildings. The CAF fleet continued to grow and included medium and heavy bombers such as the B-29, B-25, B-17 and B-24.

Today, the CAF is comprised of over 11,000 members, several hundred of whom serve as pilots and flight or maintenance crew members committed to preserving World War II American aviation heritage. The CAF is responsible for operating a fleet of more than 140 airplanes known as the Ghost Squadron.

The organization was originally known as the "Confederate Air Force." Following a membership vote in 2001 and made effective on January 1, 2002, the organization is now known as the Commemorative Air Force.

http://commemorativeairforce.org/

Yankee Air Museum Destroyed In Fire
Unique YOV-10A prototype lost, but many other planes saved
By Mike Whaley
10 Oct 2004

...the Yankee Air Museum facility burned to the ground, just months after the museum began a fund-raising effort for improvements to the aging facility to include a planned fire-suppression system. Most importantly, nobody was hurt in the blaze, which started for unknown reasons in a storage room, but the one-of-a-kind ex-NASA YOV-10A Bronco prototype (152881) was inside the hangar and was destroyed along with several other aircraft. OBA Member Richard "Chief" Rice and his crew had put many thousands of hours into the almost-finished restoration of this historic Bronco. The museum lost several other aircraft (all non-flyable and undergoing restoration) including a very rare WACO CG-4A combat glider, a rare F-105 "Thud" fighter which once flew with the USAF Thunderbirds, an HM-293 "Flying Flea", a Bensen gyrocopter, a homebuilt biplane, an L-60 Lockheed Lodestar, L-39, parts of their AT-11, trainers and simulators, uniforms, photographs, as well as all of the WWI, WW II, and Korea displays on the second floor. They also lost many of the spare parts for the flyable aircraft. One of the problems in fighting the fire was the lack of nearby fire hydrants. The facility's 50,000 square foot wooden hangar at the Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti (about 25 miles west of Detroit) was originally built by Ford in 1941 to build B-24 bombers, and also contained the Museum's library collection which was lost as well. The fast-moving fire was reported at 6:30PM by a B-25 crew that had just returned to the museum after a flight, and the whole building was soon completely engulfed with little chance for the fire department to do anything to stop it. The rest of the frame collapsed by 7:45PM.

Yankee Air Museum president Jon Stevens put the preliminary losses at between $5 and $7 million, saying that the contents of the hangar and the museum's library were a total loss. Fortunately, approximately 20 of the museum's planes were on display outside and were not damaged, and the B-25 crew that discovered the fire managed to pull the B-25D (Yankee Warrior), a B-17G (Yankee Lady), and a C-47 (Yankee Doodle Dandy) outside to safety, and their beautiful Stinson was in another town.

read more about this disaster at freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1243610/posts...