Free Republic

The first time she piloted a plane, Jessica Cox had a memory flash from first grade, when she couldn't swing on the monkey bars or climb the ladders to the tall slides on the playground. She spent most of her time in the sandbox, imagining she was Superwoman flying over the schoolyard and taking her friends one at a time for a flight.. "It shows you the power of the imagination," she says. "The imagination with intention.". Throughout her life, Cox has impressed people with her ability to negotiate without arms. But she has attracted some international fame with her...

Mexican officials say a concrete barrier constructed by the U.S. Border Patrol in a storm-water tunnel beneath Nogales appears to be on Mexican soil and was the main cause of serious flooding July 12 in Nogales, Sonora. The flooding caused about $8 million in damage in Nogales, Sonora, the officials say. The 5-foot-high wall on the floor of the tunnel in front of a gate was put in without notifying the International Boundary and Water Commission, said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the U.S. section of the commission. The commission requests that any agency doing work on the border that could...

The U.S. military tries to keep its distance from the enemy, which is why there is a lot of emphasis now on robots that can disable roadside bombs from a distance. While we know insurgents are everywhere in Iraq, we don't tend to think of soldiers encountering them head on. But they do, as this fascinating Army Times story about a soldier who survived being knifed in the forehead by an insurgent. Doctors estimate that at least four inches of the knife was plunged into his head. The attack occurred at a cordoned-off blast site. What saved him was medical...

For FReepers in the western US (& Hawaii), I have a heads-up for - potentially - a really nice meteor display early this coming Saturday morning. Points east will not be able to see the peak of the display because - at 4:36 AM PDT - twilight or daytime will already have occurred. The best show will be looking to the northeast. There will be a 3/4 full waning moon high in the sky, so if the observer can shield oneself from the moon behind an obstacle (phone pole, house, car, tree, etc.) the viewing will be improved. I was...

A mechanical monster grabs the F-14 fighter jet and chews through one wing and then another, ripping off the Tomcat's appendages before moving on to its guts. Finally, all that's left is a pile of shredded rubble — like the scraps from a Thanksgiving turkey. Within a workday, a $38 million fighter jet that once soared as a showpiece of U.S. air power can be destroyed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, home to the military's "boneyard" for retired aircraft. The Pentagon is paying a contractor at least $900,000 to destroy old F-14s, a jet affectionately nicknamed "the turkey," rather than...

Recently, American F-22 fighters were sent, for the first time, across the Pacific, to Japan, for a training exercise. This would be the first time the aircraft would cross the International Date line, where it is tomorrow, and the aircraft's GPS and navigation software would handle the date change. There were problems. All off a sudden the software that ran the navigation and communications systems wasn't working too well. Being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this was a problem. Some of the pilots were able to reboot their software and make the problem go away, but this did...

The first pieces of the last remaining Japanese Zero fighter to be shot down over Hawaii on December 7, 1941, have reached the new Pacific Aviation Museum, now in its final fund-raising campaign and set to open December 7, 2006. This aircraft had just finished strafing Bellows Field and Kaneohe Naval Air Station when ground fire punctured its belly fuel tank, preventing it from returning to the aircraft carrier Hiryu and forcing it to land on what Japanese planners thought was an abandoned island, Niihau. However, the island's owners, the Robinson family, had heeded the warnings of a possible Japanese...

Some days Bob Bishop works in an office. Some days he straps himself into a 12-foot-long mini-jet, screams across the treetops at nearly 300 mph as paid professional plane killers in military jet fighters try to wax him. "It's like playing a video game," says Bishop, president of Aerial Productions International Inc., which operates out of Marana Regional Airport, 11700 W. Avra Valley Road. His company provides four BeDe 5 mini-jets that pretend to be enemy cruise missiles so U.S. military pilots can practice shooting them down. Bishop says the planes started off in the 1970s as personal commuter planes,...

A former Navy Top Gun with decades of flying experience forgot to put his plane's landing gear down during an air show practice run in Tucson in March, the Federal Aviation Administration found. Retired Capt. Dale "Snort" Snodgrass, a seasoned pro on the military air-show circuit, was piloting a Korean War-era F-86 Sabre that scraped to a stop and caught fire in the March 4 mishap at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Snodgrass, 57, was given counseling as "corrective action," according to the FAA report, obtained by the Arizona Daily Star under the Freedom of Information Act. The pilot was unhurt...

Strengthening relations between wartime allies basis for naming latest US Virginia class after British Princess. A long, black submarine lurks beneath the ocean waves, carrying a full arsenal of ship-killing weapons. No other class of warship can find it, fight it, or even defend against it. If current US military planners have their way, the latest of these fearsome weapons will be named the USS Princess Diana. "We have a destroyer named after Winston Churchill, and the 72nd Secretary of the Navy was named England (Gordon England), why can't we honor the late Princess Diana with the power and majesty...

............... After leaving COLUMBUS, I reported to the Pentagon, where I learned a new combat skill: PowerPoint warfare... I soon had my best view of the Pentagon – in my rear view mirror – and ... .............. Now some of you may think NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NOT TRUE. We never did settle on what the acronym NATO really denotes, but here were some of the contenders: - Not At The Office - Not After Two O’clock - No Action Talk Only, and my personal favorite: - Need Alcohol To Operate All accurately describe NATO operations....

The head neurosurgeon at Highland Hospital [Oakland CA] has been suspended and charged with a misdemeanor following what authorities called a drunken altercation with sheriff's deputies in an operating room at the hospital, officials said today. Although the deputies believe Dr. Federico Castro-Moure, 45, was intoxicated during the scuffle earlier this week, they lacked the evidence to substantiate that claim and prosecutors charged him only with interfering with a peace officer. "The deputies felt that he was behaving in an aggressive manner," said Alameda County Sheriff's Capt. William Eskridge. "He was yelling and put a fist in the face of...

BALATA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Israeli troops on Thursday killed five Palestinians, including a top militant who said just a day earlier that he would never be caught, in Israel's largest military sweep since pulling out from the Gaza Strip last summer. Three of the dead were gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades — a violent offshoot of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party — killed during a shootout in their hide-out in the Balata refugee camp. The deaths brought to eight the number of Palestinians killed by army fire since the Balata sweep began Monday. The military...

Tucson, Arizona [Pima] County officials plan to hold a closed meeting Tuesday to talk about the state open-meetings law. The ironic closed session is scheduled for the Board of Supervisors' Jan. 3 meeting in order to brief members on the legal fine points of open meetings. "We're an elected body and we need to set the example for open government," said Supervisor Ann Day, justifying the need for the closed session. "It's a refresher, a preventive thing, so we set the example and don't make any mistakes," she said. The open-meetings law says all meetings of any public body must...

A 1940s-era seaplane that lost a wing during takeoff and crashed within sight of the beach, killing all 20 people aboard, had undetected cracks in its airframe that apparently caused the aircraft to break up, federal investigators said Wednesday. After the discovery was disclosed, Chalk's Ocean Airways voluntarily grounded its fleet of four planes for inspection. All four planes are the same model as the one that crashed. The cracks were found in the main support beam of a wing that fell off the seaplane shortly after it took off for the Bahamas on Monday. As salvage crews and divers...

The note below is from one such friend who did West Point, retired after 23 years as an Army infantry officer (06) and then taught math at the Academy for several years. It's a weapons and tactics assessment note from a Marine Gunnie friend of my friend. I found it interesting and useful and trust you will too. - Dan Hello to all my fellow gunners, military buffs, veterans and interested guys. A couple of weekends ago I got to spend time with my son Jordan, who was on his first leave since returning from Iraq. He is well (a...

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va(Aug. 22, 2005) -- Throughout the annals of Marine Corps history, inspired quotations have framed the heroics of great Marines, transforming passing moments into epic legends to be forever retold and celebrated by the generations of warriors who follow. Never to be forgotten is the rallying cry of Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly at the Battle of Belleau Wood, France, on June 4, 1918: “Come on you son’s of bitches! Do you want to live forever?” [snip] So too will a contemporary Marine be remembered, not only for his extraordinary act of courage and composure under...

Groton — The collision between the USS Philadelphia and a Turkish merchant ship in the Persian Gulf this week left the two ships entangled, unable to separate for more than an hour, Navy sources said. In addition, a preliminary assessment of the damage has shown that it is more extensive than indicated earlier and that some major repairs could be necessary. The worst damage includes a rather large hole in the rudder, scoring on at least one propeller blade, damage to a periscope and damage to the fairwater planes, the large fins on the sail of the submarine that help...

A radio show stunt that sent an intern rafting in the flooded Santa Cruz River on Wednesday morning was "irresponsible" and "mocks" the safety message firefighters have been sending this summer, a Tucson Fire Department official said. While on the air with JohnJay and Rich on KRQQ, intern Randy Stein launched near El Camino del Cerro and managed to get out of the river before a police officer asked him to go home, DJ Rich Berra said. "It sends the wrong message," said Fire Capt. Paul McDonough. "We"ve had several drownings in wash-related accidents this year and this kind of...

ALMATY, Kazakhstan - When Sergei Pashevich looks at the map of Central Asia, he sees a chessboard on which a replay of the Great Game is unfolding, with oil, trade and the war on terrorism as the big global issues. The Great Game, a term invented to define the imperial rivalries and ambitions of 19th-century Russia and Britain, now applies, in Pashevich's view, to a new, post-9/11 struggle for influence that is pitting Russia and China against the United States. "Right now the whole Central Asian region is a field for geopolitical games," he says. [SNIP - see article for...