Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2021 i Flight Journal

Eighty-one years ago, during the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain catapulted the war in Europe onto the world stage. Newsreels in movie theaters captivated audiences with clips of the rubble and bombed-out, smoking buildings, Brits huddled together underground in the Tube stations, and most iconic, Mae West-clad Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilots scrambling to their fighters on grassy runways, just alerted by Fighter Command. The Battle was fought entirely by air, with the RAF eventually successful in staving off the German Luftwaffe and averting a ground invasion. Arguably, the three key combatants that tangled in the skies above the channel coast and towns were the best fielded at the time: the British Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane vs. the German Messerschmitt 109. But of these foes, which…

IT WAS ANOTHER HUMID DAY, with the smells of Thailand heavy in the morning air as I walked into the Triple Nickel Fighter Squadron building at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB) in northeast Thailand. The 555th was the top MiG-killer squadron, but hunting had been scarce since I joined them earlier in the year. It was just another day of war, November 20, 1970, and time seemed to run together. I really enjoyed flying combat missions in the F-4; the adrenaline rush of being shot at without result was as exhilarating as Winston Churchill pronounced. But before fun, there was a job of making out the squadrons’ flying schedule for the next day. As a newly promoted captain, I had the responsibility as the assistant operations officer to…

Retired Cdr. Hamilton “Mac” McWhorter III was one of the Navy’s great World War II fighter pilots—a hero who inspired many During our interviews, Mac told of flying and fighting in the tough, robust F6F Hellcat. These are his words: Deadly dogfight Imagine you’re in a metal shed and someone throws rocks against the outside. That’s what it sounded like when machine-gun fire ripped into my Hellcat. I looked around, and sure enough, a pair of Japanese Zero fighters was right behind me. Tracers were coming at me. I was the pilot of a magnificent Grumman F6F Hellcat, probably the best fighter of World War II. I was a member of Navy fighter squadron VF-9, operating from the USS Essex (CV 9). We were escorting our carrier's bombers on a…

Fighter pilots live, work, fly and fight in an extremely competitive environment. Winning or losing may well mean the difference between life and death in the fast-moving and lethal business of aerial combat. For sheer survival, fighter pilots want—indeed need—to be the best, and they want to be flying the best. In aerial combat there are several factors that may affect the outcome of a fight. To win you need superior equipment or tactics, better training, greater experience, or a mixture of these factors. Beyond that there are only intangibles that may affect the result, things such as fighting spirit, aggression, courage and luck, which should not, perhaps, be relied upon for victory. If my time as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot had started 33 years earlier than it…

The first of four B-1A bomber prototypes blazed into the wild blue yonder in December of 1974. Initially designed for low-level penetration at a blistering Mach 2, the B-1A was ultimately canceled due to budget constraints. President Reagan later resurrected the program and the B-1B was born, with the first production aircraft flying in October 1984. Let’s fast forward to 46 years later and explore the B-1B of today; it’s a much-evolved animal. Although the official USAF aircraft name is the “Lancer,” it is more commonly referred to as the “Bone” within the community, a product of “B + one.” Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, is home to the 28th Bomb Wing consisting of two operational combat B-1B squadrons, the 34th Bomb Squadron (BS) Thunderbirds and the 37th BS…

During the desperate days of the first half of 1942, the virtually unchallenged Japanese Army and Naval forces had almost completed their domination of the Western Pacific. The Philippines were abandoned; Indochina, Java, the Solomons and Burma had been overrun. China was half occupied and losing ground, and even India was being threatened. There was little hope for the Allies, except for the stopgap efforts of the Flying Tigers in China. Efforts to reinforce the theater began in January 1942 with the movement of several P-40 groups to the Southwest Pacific. Although it was intended initially for duty in Java, the 51st FG was diverted to India after most of its aircraft had been lost when the USS Langley was sunk. Ten of their P-40s made it to Karachi, India,…

BETWEEN 1938 AND 1945, Hans-Ekkehard Bob flew more than 2,000 missions in Messerschmitt 109s, at least half of them in combat. He served in almost every major campaign from the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Britain to the Russian campaign and the final defense of Germany. He notched up an impressive 60 aerial victories, including one by ramming. He was shot down behind Russian lines, awarded the Knight’s Cross by Hermann Göring and capped his impressive military service by joining the small group of élite pilots who flew the world’s first jet aircraft, the Me 262, in the waning days of the War. It is sobering to think that when he returned to civilian life he was only 28. The start of the War While Bob and his…

In 1934, Tubal Claude Ryan created a new corporation, aptly named the Ryan Aeronautical Corp., whose first design, the ST—for sport trainer—became an instant classic. As a trainer, the ST was a big improvement over its competitors. The U.S. Army showed immediate interest in the new machine and ended up ordering an off-the-shelf ST-A for evaluation that led to the acquisition of a grand total of 1,203 PT-16, PT-20, PT-21, and PT-22 aircraft, the last of the series being delivered in 1942. Other countries also showed a deep interest in the Ryan, and the plane sold reasonably well in South America and China; however, Ryan’s biggest export customer was the Dutch government, which ordered 108 STM-2s in 1940. Never a cheap airplane, the surviving Ryans are now the pride and…