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Posted on 10/29/2005 8:58:13 PM PDT by alfa6
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 On the morning of 16 August 1956, Navy personnel at Point Mugu prepared an F6F-5K for its final mission. The aircraft had been painted overall high-visibility red. Red and yellow camera pods were mounted on the wingtips. Radio remote control systems were checked, and the Hellcat took off at 11:34 a.m., climbing out over the Pacific Ocean. As ground controllers attempted to maneuver the drone toward the target area, it became apparent that it was not responding to radio commands. They had a runaway.  Ahead of the unguided drone lay thousands of square miles of ocean into which it could crash. Instead, the old Hellcat made a graceful climbing turn to the southeast, toward the city of Los Angeles. With the threat of a runaway aircraft approaching a major metropolitan area, the Navy called for help. Five miles north of NAS Point Mugu, two F-89D Scorpion twin-jet interceptors of the 437th Fighter Interceptor Squadron were scrambled from Oxnard Air Force Base. The crews were ordered to shoot down the rogue drone before it could cause any harm. Armed with wingtip-mounted rocket pods and no cannon, the Scorpion was typical of the Cold War approach to countering the "Red Menace." Each pod contained 52 Mighty Mouse 2.75-inch rockets. Salvo-launched, the Mighty Mouse did not have to have precision guidance. Large numbers of rockets would be fired into approaching Soviet bomber formations to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. Today, they would be used against a different kind of red menace.  At Oxnard AFB, 1Lt. Hans Einstein and his radar observer, 1Lt. C. D. Murray, leapt into their sleek F-89D. Simultaneously, 1Lt. Richard Hurliman and 1Lt. Walter Hale climbed into a second aircraft. The interceptors roared south after their target. The hunt was on.  Einstein and Hurliman caught up with the Hellcat at 30,000 feet, northeast of Los Angeles. It turned southwest, crossing over the city, then headed northwest. As the Hellcat circled lazily over Santa Paula, the interceptor crews waited impatiently. As soon as it passed over an unpopulated area, they would fire their rockets.  The interceptor crews discussed their options. There were two methods of attack using the fire control system, from a wings level attitude or while in a turn. Since the drone was almost continuously turning, they selected the second mode of attack. In repeated attempts, the rockets failed to fire during these maneuvers. This was later traced to a design fault. The drone turned northeast, passing Fillmore and Frazier Park. It appeared to be heading toward the sparsely populated western end of the Antelope Valley. Suddenly, it turned southeast toward Los Angeles again. Time seemed to be running out. Einstein and Hurliman decided to abandon the automatic modes, and fire manually. Although the aircraft had been delivered with gun sights, they had been removed a month earlier. After all, why would a pilot need a gun sight to fire unguided rockets with an automatic fire control system?  The interceptors made their first attack run as the Hellcat crossed the mountains near Castaic. Murray and Hale set their intervalometers to "ripple fire" the rockets in three salvos. The first crew lined up their target and fired, missing their target completely. The second interceptor unleashed a salvo that passed just below the drone. Rockets blazed through the sky and then plunged earthward to spark brush fires seven miles north of Castaic. They decimated 150 acres above the old Ridge Route near Bouquet Canyon. A second salvo from the two jets also missed the drone, raining rockets near the town of Newhall. One bounced across the ground, leaving a string of fires in its wake between the Oak of the Golden Dream Park and the Placerita Canyon oilfield. The fires ignited several oil sumps and burned 100 acres of brush. For a while the blazes raged out of control, threatening the nearby Bermite Powder Company explosives plant. The rockets also ignited a fire in the vicinity of Soledad Canyon, west of Mt. Gleason, burning over 350 acres of heavy brush.  Meanwhile, the errant drone meandered north toward Palmdale. The Scorpion crews readjusted their intervalometers and each fired a final salvo, expending their remaining rockets. Again, the obsolete, unpiloted, unguided, unarmed, propeller-driven drone evaded the state-of-the-art jet interceptors. In all, the jet crews fired 208 rockets without scoring a single hit. The afternoon calm was shattered as Mighty Mouse rockets fell on downtown Palmdale. Edna Carlson was at home with her six-year-old son William when a chunk of shrapnel burst through her front window, bounced off the ceiling, pierced a wall, and finally came to rest in a pantry cupboard. Another fragment passed through J. R. Hingle's garage and home, nearly hitting Mrs. Lilly Willingham as she sat on the couch. A Leona Valley teenager, Larry Kempton, was driving west on Palmdale Boulevard with his mother in the passenger seat when a rocket exploded on the street in front of him. Fragments blew out his left front tire, and put numerous holes in the radiator, hood, windshield, and even the firewall. Miraculously, no one was injured by any of the falling rockets. Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams later recovered 13 duds in the vicinity of Palmdale. It took 500 firefighters two days to bring the brushfires under control.  Oblivious to the destruction in its wake, the drone passed over the town. Its engine sputtered and died as the fuel supply dwindled. The red Hellcat descended in a loose spiral toward an unpopulated patch of desert eight miles east of Palmdale Airport. Just before impact, the drone sliced through a set of three Southern California Edison power lines along an unpaved section of Avenue P. The camera pod on the airplane's right wingtip dug into the sand and the Hellcat cartwheeled and disintegrated. There was no fire. So ended the epic "Battle" of Palmdale. Educational Resources http://aeroweb.brooklyn.cuny.edu/specs/northrop/f-89j.htm (F-89 Scorpion) http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/15628.html (History News) http://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k.html (X-Hunters)      |
Shouldn't you two be working, instead of lollygaging here?
U.S. Army Spc. Lauren Kostoff and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Tammy Kostoff [SpankenTruppen Recruit] stand together during a visit at Forward Operating Base Warrior, Iraq. Mother and son are both members of the Montana Army National Guard assigned to Task Force Liberty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 3. U.S. Army photo
Skyraiders accounted for at least one MiG in both Korea and Vietnam. The MiG kills usually occured when the MiG pilots would make thew mistake of managing to fly low and slow in front of the Skyraider.
Jet jockeys tend to forget how manuverable a slow moving prop plane is relative to a jet or faster moving aircraft. I recall reading a book by a Swordfish pilot during WW-II. The Swordfish pilots had worked out a manuver routine that when used against a ME-109 or similar aircraft would put the Swordfish on the tail of the enemy A/C most of the time.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Morning, PE. Fine Flag-o-gram today. Inspiring even, Mother and son.
LOL. There are alot of neat little episodes like this from the early part of the Cold War. Thanks for the thread.
I've been reading John Adams by David McCullough. This an excerpt from a letter sent by John Adams to his son, John Quincy Adams:
Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not. A young man should weigh well his plans. Integrity should be preserved in all events, as essential to his happiness, through every stage of his existence. His first maxim should be to place his honor out of reach of all men. In order to do this he must make it a rule never to become dependent on public employments for subsistence. Let him have a trade, a profession, a farm, a shop, something where he can honestly live, and then he may engage in public affairs, if invited, upon independent principles. My advice to my children is to maintain an independent character.
It'd sure be a change if modern statesman believed this way.
Now that is cool! Mother and son...
Giving a homeland for these guys.
Hi miss Feather.
Bittygirl announced her hunger this morning by toting in a bowl and a box of cereal, saying "this" several times.
Oh bless her heart. I can see her doing it. She is so precious.
I couldn't resist the SpankenTruppen angle on this one. LOL
Friday, after the plans had bee issued, I offered to take all my guys out for a beer to relax a bit.
Over the course of the day, one by one, they all begged of for one reason or another. At the same time I decided, hey we're all REALLY tired, pumping beer into us is likely to make somebody fall asleep on the way home. I postponed the celebration for a few days, and was meet with 100% approval.
Cool. They're excellent recruits for the Spankentruppen!
LOL. We actually get to sleep late, eat breakfast and lollygag on Sunday! Yippee. We are open from 11-4 on Sundays and with turning the clocks back last night it nearly feels like a day off!
This week's forcast. :-)
Today
Patchy fog in the morning. Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers. Highs 55 to 60. Southeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Tonight
Rain likely. Lows around 45. Southeast wind 5 to 15 mph.
Monday
Rain. Highs around 60. Southwest wind 15 to 20 mph.
Monday Night
Rain likely. Lows 45 to 50. South wind 5 to 10 mph.
Tuesday
Rain likely. Highs around 60. Southeast wind 5 to 10 mph shifting to the south in the afternoon.
Tuesday Night
Rain. Lows around 45.
Wednesday
Rain likely. Highs 50 to 55.
Wednesday Night
Rain likely. Lows around 45.
Thursday
Rain likely. Highs around 55.
Thursday Night
Showers likely. Lows around 40.
Friday
Showers likely. Highs 45 to 50.
Friday Night
Showers likely. Lows around 40.
Saturday
Showers likely. Highs 45 to 50.
Ah good thinking. Beer is good sometimes and sometimes not so good. Everyone is safe with a clear head due to their and your decision to postpone.
Morning snippy, warm up here in the North East, temps going into the low 60s, woo hoo. Oh, we have sun, too.
Good morning feather. The sun is out here this morning, cool temps.
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