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pinball

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Everything posted by pinball

  1. I don't know if this has been posted before, but I was looking at the interwebs and found this: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000677710 Really took me back to the days of old. It was neat to see some names I'd forgotten . . . Kim
  2. Hey, are you guys sure 1681 was a LAPES? I remember it as a night drop at Sicily; for some reason they had to racetrack and the LMs didn't follow checklist . . . ended up trying to drop the tank with the locks still in the platform. One load went aft to cut the extraction chutes free and fell out; the plane couldn't overcome the drag of the three 28 footers and crashed. If I remember right, the other load lost a leg but there weren't any other major injuries. The only Pope LAPES crash that I remember was the well-documented Pope incident. Kim
  3. Hey Don, Took this at the Chicago Air and Water Show a couple of weeks ago . . . recognize the tail number? From the Connecticut Guard. They were dropping the Leapfrogs (the Golden Knights were using their own airplane, because the rumor is the 'Frogs and Knights can't jump the same airframe anymore after the fatality last year). Kim
  4. Oh, man . . . the Slug . . . if he's the one I'm thinking of he had, at best, a nodding relationship with personal hygiene. I stabbed him in the hand with my fork one time when he tried to steal some food off my plate. Larry Wagoner, Dan Sonchi (?), Father Mike Mulcahy, Joe Jackson . . . the list goes on. Reprobates, all of them. kim
  5. Yup, it was Tony. On the last try, he just kept going . . . I'm almost certain his FE was Ron Barnard. As for the pictures, I can't find them. It was many moves ago, and they probably just got tossed. Or maybe my first wife has them . . . she got most everything else What a goofy bunch of folks we were. I'm really surprised, looking back, that we didn't have a weekly article 15 board kind of thing. The crap people did . . . kim
  6. Not trying to stir the pot anymore than it's already been stirred . . . but I kind of see both sides of the story here. War has changed, period. I'd rather see a drone-driver rain fire from the sky than put the 'pounders in harms way, but a "combat" medal? Don't see that. IF their shack/trailer/whatever was under actual attack, and they still completed their mission, different story. And as for PTSD, my gut feel is that they're at much less risk than the folks on the ground. They may see the carnage of their actions, but they don't see the carnage of their comrades. They should not have the emotional attachment to their target that Joe Grunt has with his boys on the ground, and if they do, maybe they should be taken off the stick. At the risk of being mistaken (and I often am), aren't the majority of drone missions being flown by agencies other than the USAF? And at the risk of being mistaken further, weren't the original drone folks enlisted? Wasn't it the pilot "drawdown" that forced rated folks into the Nintendo chair? And if it was still an enlisted game, would a "drone" medal even be considered? (okay, that last comment was kind of snarky, but I stand by it.) Just my 2 pfenning kim
  7. At the house in Abilene. You and Norm Brander had stopped by. You were leaning against a wall in the kitchen, drinking a beer, when all of a sudden you just dropped the beer on the floor and started snoring . . . standing straight up. I thought Norm was going to chunk a lung he was laughing so hard. Those first years at Rhein-Main when they reconstituted the 37th were the best times I ever had flying. kim
  8. I thought I had pics, but I can't find them. Paul Bunt supposedly wrote "bought and paid for by P.S. Bunt" on one of the nose gear rims. I'm trying to remember the name of the guy in the dorm who had a lot of pics of the incident . . . all I can remember right now is he drove a VW bus, he was an FE, considered himself the "Daddy" of the dorm, and Father Mike Mulcahy used to threaten to whip his butt on a monthly basis . . . kim
  9. My philosophy on administering evals was pretty simple . . . be safe, know what you need to know (wasn't a big fan of endless questions to prove I know more than you, that's for the stag bar and besides, if I'm an evaluator, I SHOULD know more than you). One thing I wouldn't tolerate was stupidity. I busted an ILM once for preflighting -4A rails using a -4 checklist . . . I have no idea where he found it, but he swore to me it was the right checklist. That was just stupid. kim
  10. Back in late 70s, we were flying in Saudi for a month or so (anyone remember the BAT missions?) and we picked up 2 1/2 tons of Kotex and flew it around . . . made four or five stops, at each one downloaded just a portion of the Kotex. That was our load for the day. Same trip in Saudi, saw a contract forklift driver go hauling ass away from the airplane, make a sharp turn, and dump an entire pallet of "tea" rations off the forks . . . sad day, that was. In Honduras in the mid-80s, carried a pallet of washers and dryers from Tegucigalpa into a remote dirt strip, did a combat offload, and left . . . five days later, another crew went to the same strip, and the pallet of washer/dryers was still there, sitting at the end . . . probably still there today. Saw Don Rogers pass out once standing up, but that's a different thread . . . kim
  11. I'd forgotten all about that guy, Don. Hated flying speghetti runs with him . . . when I started to read your reply, my first thought wasn't him, tho . . . it was No-Go Nolan. kim
  12. If you want to go the free route . . . http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/bookinfo.asp?bid=42 kim
  13. Probably a stupid question, but why the O2 masks on the crew?
  14. Speaking of three engine takeoffs . . . I was a two-striper at Rhein-Main when the 37th was reactivated. I seem to recall we had a crew (and I want to say this was in Reggio) got permission for a taxi-start, except the engine never really came on speed, and they kept going, anyway. Nobody would have known about it, except they had to brag when they got back to R-M. I think the AC ended up going to CP after that. That was just about the best three years I had in the AF. The enlisted experience level was tremendous. We got all the old crap birds Pope didn't want, and our maintenance guys and FEs kept 'em going. Damn near everything was waived. It wasn't unusual to get over 100 hours flight time two or three months in a row. Some real characters in that outfit, too (like DC10FE ).
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