Good morning everyone!
Posted on 11/03/2003 12:00:27 AM PST by SAMWolf
“Born with aviation fuel in his body instead of blood” is how Richard G. “Dick” Rutan’s mother describes her eldest son who would later co-pilot the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe non-stop, without refueling. Rutan was born in 1938 in Loma Linda, California, and has loved aviation since he was a child.
While in high school, he fell in love with the speed and power of the North American F-100 Super Sabre and got his pilot’s license on his 16th birthday. In 1958, he joined the US Air Force Aviation Cadet Program, became a second lieutenant, earned navigator wings, and was assigned to Iceland to fly the Northrop F-89 Scorpion. He next flew the Douglas C-124 Globemaster and, after logging 1,900 hours as a navigator, entered pilot training. Rutan was the top graduate of his class at Laughlin AFB, Texas, and in 1967 fulfilled his dream to fly the F-100.
He was soon sent to South Vietnam to fly ground attack missions, but quickly volunteered to become a forward air controller (FAC) in the Commando Sabre program. As a “Misty FAC,” he flew 325 F-100 missions over North Vietnam. Rutan was shot down midway through his third tour in 1968.
Returning from Vietnam, he spent the next 10 years stationed in Europe and at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona. He retired in 1978 as a lieutenant colonel and began flight testing and demonstrating at air shows his brother’s high performance home-built aircraft. In 1980, he met Jeana Yeager and a year later, their dream of flying around the world began to take shape. They founded Voyager Aircraft, Inc. and, to raise money and generate publicity, Rutan set several aircraft speed and endurance records.
In 1981, he set a distance record of 4,563 statute miles for an aircraft weighing less than 1,000 kilograms. The following year, he set a closed course speed record for both 500 and 2,000 kilometers. Rutan was awarded the 1982 Louis Blériot Medal for his aviation records. On 1 June 1984, after three years of work, Rutan soloed the Voyager on its maiden flight. Then, on 14 December 1986, after two years refining the Voyager, Rutan and Yeager lifted off from Edwards AFB, California, on their epic flight. Nine days later, they returned to Edwards AFB to complete the first nonstop, unrefueled, around-the-world flight of 26,700 statute miles. Rutan was awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal, the Collier Trophy, the Order of Daedalians Distinguished Achievement Award, and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in July 2002.
He is currently testing the EZ Rocket, a composite experimental aircraft designed to demonstrate commercial uses of rocket-powered aircraft, and is planning to set an altitude world record later this year.
THere were all kinds of restrictions. Certain targets were "off limits", planes were required to fly certain "ait lanes", the air war (even target selection) was pretty much being run by politicians (read Johnston) in Washington.
In 1918, after 123 years of partition, Poland regained its independence. The immediate military task was forming a new national army from soldiers and officers who had fought on both sides--although officers who had served on the side of the Central Powers dominated the new army. In the territorial uncertainty that followed the war, the Red Army pushed westward, aiming to use Poland as a bridge over which to spread socialism into postwar Germany. Pilsudski blocked this advance in 1919; then in 1920 he advanced eastward with the goal of including Ukrainian and Belorussian territory in a new Slavic state. Polish forces were thrown back nearly to Warsaw, where Pilsudski defeated the Soviets and began an effective counterattack that preserved Poland's independence from Soviet domination in the interwar period.
Pilsudski's military and political prominence ensured that the armed forces became an important national institution in the new government. Many Poles saw the army as both the symbol and the guarantor of their country's independence and unity. In 1926, after Poland had experienced several years of political uncertainty and weak leadership, Pilsudski took over the state in a military coup, assuming the posts of minister of defense and general inspector of the army. In the interwar period, military officers held prominent positions in the national government, and their elevated status fostered intense political and personal rivalries as well as high-level corruption. After Pilsudski's death in 1935, Poland was ruled ineffectually by a group of his former subordinates, who remained in power until 1939.
After World War I, Polish national security rested on a military alliance with france, which guaranteed Poland's independence and territorial integrity. Poland was unsuccessful in joining the Little Entente, a french-sponsored alliance of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, because Czechoslovakia suspected Polish territorial ambitions along their mutual border. In protecting its sovereignty during this period, Poland had as its primary concerns maintaining a balance between its two powerful neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union, and avoiding a situation where the two would take concerted action against Poland and divide it once again.
france couldn't ensure her own national security and never had any intention of securing Poland's. Hopefully Poland learned never to trust the french with their security again. Stay out of the EU or lose your soveriegnty.
You got that right!
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