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Posted on 12/19/2003 4:10:21 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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 “Nothing is impossible” by Major Ruth Larson U.S. Air Force Public Affairs General Henry “Hap” Arnold, one of the giants of military aviation, received his flight training from the Wright brothers themselves and earned the 29th pilot’s license ever issued. Looking back, Arnold reflected, “More than anyone I have ever known … the Wright brothers gave a sense that nothing is impossible.”  “Nothing is impossible.” Those three words exemplify the history of military aviation. In the century since Kitty Hawk, military aviation has been the crucible for ingenuity and innovation. The quest to own the sky has forged an array of technological advances that have transformed the aviation community.  The airplane itself revolutionized the way wars were fought. For centuries, wars involved bloody battles of attrition, fought between massed ground forces. But Kitty Hawk forever changed modern warfare. With the advent of aircraft, military strategists suddenly saw the possibility of flying over the heads of those ground forces, bypassing their destructive power and selectively striking vital enemy targets. Aircraft allowed aerial forces to strike directly at the heart of a state’s power, destroying its industrial centers and its leaders’ ability to control their forces. Aerial combat also forced the development of new weapons and tactics, designed to take advantage of the airplane’s unique military potential. Fortunately, at every step of the way, there were bold visionaries in uniform, willing to risk their lives in pursuit of “pushing the envelope” -- flying higher, farther, faster. Their individual achievements are etched on the pages of aviation history. The early years Early military aviation was a primitive affair. When Lt. Benjamin Foulois was selected to fly Army Aircraft No. 1 in December 1909, Army officials sent him to Texas with the instruction, “Take plenty of parts and teach yourself to fly.” Incredibly, he gained his basic flight skills in a series of letters with the Wright brothers – flying by correspondence course! He then tried his hand at flying the Army’s Wright A flyer. Foulois succeeded in making his first takeoff, solo flight, landing and crash, all in a single day. As the first military aviator, he went on to fly the first aerial reconnaissance flight, along the Rio Grande. He also was the first to fly an aircraft in combat, assisting General Pershing’s pursuit of the outlaw Pancho Villa in Mexico in August 1916. When Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold began his flying career, pilots transmitted their reports of artillery targets by dropping a weighted card from the plane to artillery units waiting below – an awkward proposition at best. Arnold became the first to use radio transmissions to relay his observations back to ground units, vastly improving aerial communications. Later, he wrote a prophetic article in an infantry journal, outlining his vision for using aircraft for reconnaissance, aerial combat and supply transport. He was destined to help make that vision a reality in the Second World War. World War I World War I introduced a new breed of heroes to the world. These “knights of the air” wore leather jackets and silk scarves, and adopted a cocky, devil-may-care attitude that belied the dangers they faced in the air. It was aviation’s first true baptism of fire.  Knights of the Air Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, a former racecar driver, was the undisputed king of aerial “dogfights” with enemy aircraft. The Army aviator became America’s “Ace of Aces,” downing a record 26 enemy planes. He also had a bird’s-eye view of the war’s dramatic end in November 1918. Rickenbacker, flying over the trenches as the Armistice was announced, saw troops on both sides of “No Man’s Land” tossing helmets in the air, throwing down their weapons and congratulating their former enemies pouring from opposing trenches.  Eddie Rickenbacker Between the wars The decades between the two world wars brought a series of aviation milestones, as flyers used wartime experiences to press for faster, more agile and more rugged aircraft. The era also gave rise some of the most influential military aviators ever to climb into a cockpit. Jimmy Doolittle, who retired from the Air Force in 1959 as a three-star general, compiled an impressive list of aviation firsts early in his career. In 1922, for example, Doolittle was the first to cross the continental United States in a single day, flying 2,100 miles in just over 21 hours. In 1927, he was the first to perform an “outside loop,” a maneuver previously considered impossible.  Jimmy Doolittle But Doolittle’s achievements also encompassed the scientific arena. In 1924, he was one of the first to earn a doctorate in aeronautics from M.I.T. He designed a device that showed pilots their plane’s orientation with respect to the horizon. He went on to pioneer the ability to fly “blind” – using instruments to indicate the plane’s altitude and orientation to the horizon. In 1929, Doolittle became the first aviator to take off, fly a fixed course, and land a plane using instruments alone. (For safety, another flyer went along on the flight.) His achievements have since helped generations of pilots fly in fog and the dark of night. The first solo blind flight was made by Army Air Corps pilot Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger at Wright Field in May 1932. Hegenberger also pioneered techniques for flying the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. In 1927, Hegenberger and a colleague used dead reckoning and celestial navigation to make the first flight from California to Hawaii, in a Fokker TriMotor dubbed “Bird of Paradise.” A 1919 graduate of M.I.T with a degree in aeronautical engineering, Hegenberger developed a fully automatic instrument landing system. This system would eventually become standard equipment in both military and civilian aircraft and airports.  Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger As the Navy’s chief test pilot, Alford J. Williams conceived and perfected the technique of vertical dive-bombing. In the years before World War II, Williams gave thousands of demonstrations of precision flying and the dive-bombing technique. These techniques were widely used by Navy and Marine pilots during World War II.  Alford J. Williams  Navy Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd made a name for himself in the annals of polar exploration by apparently becoming the first to fly over both the North Pole (1926) and the South Pole (1929). However, even Byrd’s own pilot, Floyd Bennett, admitted that they had been well short of the North Pole when they turned back. Nevertheless, Byrd’s efforts paved the way for modern exploration of the poles and charting of trans-arctic air passenger routes.  Rear Adm. Byrd World War II: Airpower goes global America’s entry into the Second World War in December 1941 brought airpower to the forefront of military operations. Never before had aircraft been used in such numbers to unleash such powerful weapons. Air operations were directed by many of the early aviation pioneers, now in charge of Allied air forces in Europe and the Pacific. Foremost among these was Gen. “Hap” Arnold. As chief of the Army Air Force in World War II, Arnold commanded a vast aerial armada. He organized and directed a series of strategic bombing offensives that destroyed the German and Japanese industrial base. Likewise, Jimmy Doolittle had set dozens aviation records before the war, but his exploits in World War II were the stuff of legend. In April 1942, while the nation was still reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Doolittle led a flight of 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers. Launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet, the Doolittle raiders bombed Tokyo and several other targets, the first U.S. counterattacks on the Japanese homeland. While the attacks may have had limited military value, they were unquestionably valuable in boosting American morale at a critical time in the war. Doolittle earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for the raid.  Billy Mitchell and B-25 The war also introduced a whole new cast of heroes, such as Charles “Chuck” Yeager. With his distinctive West Virginian drawl, Yeager came to epitomize “the right stuff,” the cool, steady nerve of the test pilot. As a member of the Army Air Force, Yeager flew 64 combat missions in World War II, shooting down a total of 13 planes, including a German jet. Incredibly, five of those kills came in a single day. The ranks of aviation’s elite were not exclusively male, however. Ann Baumgartner Carl and Jean Hixon were two of the first “WASPs” – Women Airforce Service Pilots. They served as flight instructors, towed targets for gunnery practice, ferried aircraft both here and overseas. In the process, they flew most of the fighters and bombers in the U.S. inventory. Later, at Ohio’s Wright Field, Carl became America’s first female test pilot, flying America’s newest aircraft. She went on to become the first woman to fly the Bell YP-59A “Airacomet,” America’s first jet fighter in October 1944.  Shooting Stars: The Jet Age Aviation rocketed forward – both literally and figuratively – with the advent of jet-powered aircraft. The revolutionary propulsion system set the stage for even more spectacular achievements. Col. Laurence Craigie became the first military jet pilot almost by chance. After observing test flights of the Bell XP-59A at California’s Muroc Army Air Field (later Edwards Air Force Base), Craigie was surprised to be offered a chance to fly the jet. With Craigie’s 20-minute flight on October 2, 1942, the U.S. military entered the jet age.  Col. Laurence Craigie Three years later, on October 12, 1945, Craigie stood on the flight line of Wright Field with his friend, Orville Wright. Just 42 years after he had coaxed a flimsy, fabric-covered craft into the skies over Kitty Hawk, Wright saw his first jet, a Lockheed YP-80 “Shooting Star,” roaring overhead. It was a dramatic illustration of just how far aviation had come in four tumultuous decades. Back at Edwards AFB, another aviation milestone was at hand, and Capt. Chuck Yeager was about to join the ranks of aviation legends. After 64 combat missions in Europe, Yeager had become an Air Force test pilot. One of his first assignments was to test the Bell X-1, a rocket-shaped jet dropped from a B-29 bomber. Many pilots had tried unsuccessfully to cross the so-called “sound barrier,” an invisible wall of compressed air molecules. Breaching the barrier was widely believed to be impossible; aircraft had been so severely buffeted that several pilots had perished in the attempt. Yeager would be flying at the very threshold of the unknown that day.  Yeager in the Bell X=1 On October 14, 1947, Yeager proved that, with sufficient engine power, it was indeed possible to break through the sound barrier and survive. He reached Mach 1.06, or more than 760 miles per hour, as he streaked over the Mojave Desert. That night, Yeager wrote in his diary, “I was almost disappointed that nothing happened.” But in fact, the world of aviation had kicked into afterburner. Five years later, Yeager set a new air speed record of 1,650 miles per hour, or more than twice the speed of sound. Yet not all military aviation pioneers operated in the skies. Dr. John Paul Stapp, for instance, pioneered the effects on the human body of aviation’s increasing speeds using a rocket-powered sled, of all things. As an Air Force researcher, Dr. Stapp became the “fastest man on earth” in December 1954 when the sled rocketed him to 632 miles per hour in just five seconds. He then decelerated to a stop in just 1.4 seconds, simulating a supersonic ejection from an aircraft. The resulting 40 Gs were the equivalent of hitting a brick wall at 60 miles per hour. In nearly two decades of research, Dr. Stapp designed improved safety harnesses and pioneered crash survival techniques that saved the lives of countless aviators forced to “punch out” at high speeds.  The Race for Space In the late 1950s, aviation’s final frontier beckoned, and the race to space was on. The sky, it seemed, was no longer the limit to man’s dreams. The physical, mental and technological demands of space flight called for a special breed of pioneers. A new term entered the American vocabulary –- astronaut. The first astronauts were drawn from the ranks of military test pilots, who had already proven their ability to keep their cool in high-pressure situations. Chuck Yeager, who pioneered supersonic flight, also played a pivotal role in training the early astronaut corps. After commanding Air Force units in Europe and Korea, Yeager returned to Edwards to head the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilots School, where he supervised development of the space simulator and other technologies that would help launch the age of space exploration. Ultimately, nearly half the astronauts in the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs were graduates of Yeager’s school. In 1962, Air Force Maj. Robert M. White became one of a handful of so-called “winged astronauts” who reached space in something other than a conventional spacecraft. White earned his astronaut wings by piloting his North American X-15 to the edge of space, nearly 60 miles above the earth’s surface. The experimental, high-altitude craft was a joint project of the Air Force, Navy and NASA. In November 1961, White had become the first man to fly a winged craft at six times the speed of sound. But the moment that truly captured the world’s attention came in July 1969. Two American astronauts realized one of man’s oldest dreams – voyaging to another world. Neil Armstrong, commander of the lunar module, Eagle, was a Navy flyer who had flown 78 combat missions in Korea from the aircraft carrier Essex. Later, Armstrong became an experienced civilian test pilot, and was widely considered the best “stick” in the astronaut corps. Armstrong, while quietly confident of his flying abilities, had agonized over what to say on such a historic occasion. Late on the night of July 20, Armstrong stepped onto the powdery surface of the moon’s Sea of Tranquility and radioed back to earth, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” Next out the hatch was Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who described what he saw as the “magnificent desolation” of the lunar landscape. Aldrin was an Air Force fighter pilot and test pilot. He had followed in the footsteps of his father, an aviation pioneer who studied with rocket developer Robert Goddard. “Buzz” Aldrin had earned a doctorate in astronautics from M.I.T. in the early 1960s. His doctoral research in orbital mechanics had focused on manned space rendezvous and docking techniques, many of which were critical in subsequent NASA space missions. Far above Tranquility Base, Lt. Col. Michael Collins orbited in the command module Columbia. Collins, an Air Force fighter pilot and test pilot, had been the 17th American in space, flying aboard the Gemini 10 mission that tested the rendezvous and docking techniques that would be essential to a successful lunar mission. Ironically, Collins was one of the few humans who did not hear Armstrong’s famous remark as he set foot on the moon, since he was out of radio contact at the time.  Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin The trio of astronauts, safely reunited aboard Columbia, returned safely to earth eight days after they’d rocketed into space. Their journey of nearly 1 million miles had truly proven that nothing is impossible, and that man’s destiny is limited only by his imagination. From Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base and beyond More than 30 years have passed since Apollo 11’s momentous mission. Scores of astronauts have continued the pioneering tradition, rocketing into space aboard America’s space shuttle fleet. They have launched the Hubble telescope, enabling astronomers to peer into the furthest reaches of the universe and capture stunning images of distant galaxies. Astronauts also have begun building the International Space Station, one of the largest construction projects in history. From Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base and beyond, America’s military has played a pivotal role in advancing aviation. In this century of flight, “born of dreams, inspired by freedom,” we celebrate the Wright Brothers’ legacy of ingenuity and innovation. America’s men and women in uniform have inherited that legacy, pioneering cutting-edge technology in the quest to own the sky. While we celebrate historical achievements, we also continue to “push the envelope,” soaring ever higher and faster. Imagine what today’s entrepreneurs and inventors might achieve in the century ahead! Perhaps hypersonic flight – more than Mach 5 – will become routine. Perhaps new propulsion technologies will enable manned flights to even more distant worlds. The dream of flight is an enduring one. The quest to conquer new frontiers is not merely our legacy – it is our future. After all, generations of aviators have shown us that nothing is impossible.      |
The weaterh's been nice the last few days here in SW O.K. but there's rain in the forcast for monday.
How's it going where you are?
We've come a long way baby!!
LOL. Your right and it probably would blow up. Heck, there are people who think we didn't go to the moon and some confuse our moon trip to Mars. *chuckle*
We've come a long way baby!!
In only 100 years. We sure have!
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