Innholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2021 i Flight Journal

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right when he declared December 7, 1941 a day that would live in infamy. Even 80 years later, the mere mention of the attack on Pearl Harbor can summon quite a range of emotions, and the violation of our sovereignty on that day, with the images of burning ships and planes, will forever be etched in our souls. Now history has proved that while Pearl Harbor may have been a temporary tactical success for the Imperial Japanese Military, it was a strategic blunder on a massive scale. It was the catalyst that awakened the industrial might of America and her Allies and the extraordinary resolve and strength of our citizens. That first glimpse of strength was demonstrated by those who fought at Pearl as the…

At 0620, three PBYs were ordered into the air on a routine submarine patrol that had nothing to do with any knowledge of an impending attack. One found a midget sub and helped the USS Ward to sink it. When the attack on Pearl Harbor started, they were diverted to search for the Japanese carriers. At 0700, four PBYs took off on a training mission with submarine USS Gudgeon off the island of Lanai. They, too, were diverted to search for Japanese carriers. One flew into a Japanese Val formation and managed to survive an air-to-air battle. Eighteen unarmed SBDs from the USS Enterprise were unwittingly flown into battle (six were lost—one, to ground fire), and 12 B-17s came in from California (two were lost). They arrived just after the…

Hollywood has made the entire planet aware of the heroics of Lieutenants George Welch and Ken Taylor as they scrambled to get their P-40s into the air at a moment’s notice. All across Oahu, however, other pilots were also doing their best to react to an attack that caught them completely off guard. These are some of their stories. In 1941, the U.S. Army Air Force was tasked with the defense of the Hawaii-based Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor. Wheeler Field in central Oahu was home of the Army fighters. the 18th Pursuit Group was the senior fighter unit, receiving enough new P-40s for all its squadrons. the new 15th PG got hand-me-down P-36s for two squadrons and added some P-40s amid the 47th Squadron’s P-36s. Yet training accidents…

“Steve knew five or ten minutes before we went down that he was probably going to die but that he’d be giving me a chance to get out of it.” The thought didn’t occur to Marine Corps Captain Mike Brown until days after a sortie he flew with Air Force Captain Steve Bennett on June 29, 1972. Brown’s notion came a little over eight years after his first deployment to southeast Asia as an enlisted Marine aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. The native Texan subsequently went through officer candidate school, earning a commission with the goal of being a helicopter pilot. But Navy bureaucracy and a desire to fight alongside friends who had gone to Vietnam altered his course. By 1972, he…

January 10, 1964. Boeing civilian test pilot Chuck Fisher and his three-man crew lost their tail at about 14,000 feet over the northern New Mexico’s Sangre de Christo Mountains. Ironically, their mission was to shake and rattle their B-52H aircraft at high speed and low altitude to record sensor data on how such a profile affected the B-52’s structure. They certainly discovered that! The vertical stabilizer blew off. Six hours later and after a lot of engineering on the ground, Fisher brought the B-52 safely home. It should be noted here that any plane produced with a fuselage and wing design CANNOT fly without the vertical stabilizer. But, see that little stub of stabilizer left and the rear landing gear in the down position? That created enough stabilization to keep…

THE AMERICAN MILITARY AND MANUFACTURERS reeled from shock when, in 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for the U.S. industry to produce 50,000 warplanes a year. This was over 25 times the current output, and at a time when the Air Corps had only a meager 1,100 combat-ready aircraft. Many believed that FDR randomly pulled this number out of thin air—OK, it sounded great—but most were clueless how this feat could possibly be accomplished. With the increasing demand from Europe and the Far East, combined with the Axis declaration of war in 1941, Americans threw themselves at the challenge. Our great nation supplied the military and Allies with every kind of war supply, from boots to aircraft carriers! This extraordinary demand yanked us out of the Depression and transformed our…

The movies “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and “Pearl Harbor” give us the erroneous impression that the only American defenders over Oahu were two Army Air Force (AAF) P-40 pilots. In fact, a number of pilots managed to make it into the air and battle the attackers. This combat ranged all over the island and was not merely, as the movies would have it, centered on the harbor. Newspaper accounts and interviews with 2nd L. George S. Welch and 2nd Lt. Kenneth M. Taylor recorded months after the attack are the basis for most of the stories about their actions on December 7, 1941. The thread of facts originates with them, but further details from the Japanese Kodochosho (combat reports), U.S. witnesses on the ground, and Welch and Taylor’s first reports paint…

At 0740, December 7, 1941, Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida had his radioman fire a flare signaling the change to “surprise attack” formation. The Zero fighters were high above the rest of the attacking units to assure defense if U.S. interceptors found them first. But from that perch, the Zeros did not see the single flare and did not initiate their close role—a Zero Buntai (squadron) escorting each subunit of attacking planes. Frustrated, Fuchida ordered a flare fired directly at the lead Mitsubishi. The Zeros began their formation change. Two flares, however, meant “surprise lost,” meaning that the Aichi D3A dive-bombers were to lead the charge. Lt. Cmdr. Kakuichi Takahashi of Shokaku then heard the “To” signal to initiate the attack. He signaled the Zuikaku D3As to strike Wheeler Field while his…

Launched by the carrier Enterprise shortly before 1700 on December 1941, six Fighting Six Wildcats escorted a strike consisting of 18 Torpedo Six TBDs and six VB-6 Dauntlesses fitted with smoke generators to mask the TBDs as they approached their targets. Unable to locate an enemy carrier reported to be 100 miles southeast, the strike returned to the Enterprise after nightfall. The VF-6 Wildcats under Lt. (jg) Francis “Fritz” Hebel were directed to land on Oahu instead of risking night carrier landings. At 2100, VF-6 approached the Army’s Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor. Although multiple broadcasts to all ships and batteries in the vicinity warned of their arrival, the Wildcats were immediately challenged for recognition signals, which they did not have. Within seconds, the night sky was bright with tracers.…

At 13 years-old, Mike Manclark fell in love with the OV-10 Bronco, an airplane few others noticed. He first saw one at an MCAS El Toro airshow in the 1970s, and despite all the fast jets on hand, the Bronco made the biggest impression. “This funky looking airplane with a big tail boom comes flying by, pitches up and four guys come tumbling out of the back, parachuting,” he remembers. “I always dreamed of having one, one day.” Now he has eight Broncos: seven OV-10Ds and one OV-10G. Manclark, a longtime pilot, philanthropist, and former owner of Los Angeles-based Leading Edge Aviation Services, Inc., acquired his first Bronco after years of searching in 2016. He shipped it from a museum in Virginia to Matt Nightingale’s California Aerofab restoration shop at…

“The pride in my Dad’s eyes… that’s what I remember. He passed away three years later. But he got to see it—the ceremony—the one where the wing commander awarded me two Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism in the SAM-filled skies of North Vietnam, December, 1972. Proudest moment of my life. Leading a cell of B-52s into North Vietnam and over Hanoi with broken navigation/bombing equipment. He’s been gone many years, and you know what… it remains my proudest moment. Yes, for what I did in that B-52, but more that he had the opportunity to see those medals pinned on his son. It doesn’t get any better than that.” —A former B-52 radar navigator The history of one of the greatest warplanes ever created—the B-52 Stratofortress—is resplendent with personal stories…

THE AGING US BOMBER FLEET, composed of B-1Bs, B-2As, and B-52Hs, has not received any new aircraft for nearly 30 years. The newest of the lot is the 1980s-designed B-2A Spirit, with the last one having been ordered in fiscal year 1993. The 1960-61 vintage B-52Hs are the oldest, and the B-1B Lancers were manufactured in the mid-’80s. All are older than any of the crewmembers that fly them today. The Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program was initiated in 2014, and thus, the nuclear weapon-capable Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider was born. Northrop Grumman applied the lessons learned from the B-2, injecting them into the new Raider design. Maintainability, without compromising “stealth,” was one of the priorities. Compared to the B-2, some of the unique external B-21 features include lower…

On that fateful morning in December 1941, 12 unarmed B-17s on their way to reinforce the Philippines arrived over Oahu to find Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field under attack. Six bombers, led by Major Truman Landon, were from the 19th Bomb Group’s 38th Reconnaissance Squadron. Two of them, Landon’s 41-2413 and 41-2408 piloted by Lieutenant Karl Barthelmess, were brand-new B-17Es. The other four were obsolescent B-17Cs that would never see combat again. Following were six B-17Es from the 88th Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Bomb Group, led by Captain Richard Carmichael in 41-2429. Carmichael decided to fly northeast, “just off the ground,” and try Bellows Field. At Bellows he encountered more chaos, and at Kaneohe and Wheeler, too. With little choice left he turned into the wind, lowered the landing gear and…

By the end of WW II, more than 8,000 D.H.82s had been built. Large numbers were disposed of as war surplus and were available on the civil market for as little as £50. A number were the subject of conversion schemes. The most ambitious was that carried out by Jackaroo Aircraft, Thruxton, Hampshire, England in 1956. It involved widening the fuselage to seat four passengers in side-byside pairs. Known as the Thruxton Jackaroo, the first aircraft modified to the design flew on March 2, 1957. A grand total of 19 Tiger Moths were so modified between 1957 and 1962. Thruxton Jackaroo C-FPHZ rolled out of the de Havilland Hatfield factory in 1939 as D.H.82 “Tiger Moth” RAF S/N 6924 and was first issued to 22 Elementary Flying Training School, Traversham,…

ON AUGUST 14, 2008, a young Air Force Captain named Aaron Hedrick flew B-52H Stratofortress, serial number 60-0034, “Wise Guy” from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota to the 309th Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Sentimental in the moment and believing he would be the last to fly the aircraft, he left a note on the flight deck clipboard reading, “AMARG, this is 60-034, a cold warrior that stood sentinel over America from the darkest days of the Cold War to the global fight against terror. Take good care of her … until we need her again.” In the early morning hours of May 19, 2016, B-52H, 60-0047 was involved in a mishap resulting in the destruction of the aircraft. B-52H, 60-0034, “Wise…

Considering that the United States was in the grips of a serious depression and the Midwest food basket was experiencing a drought of biblical proportions, the aviation accomplishments of 1935–40 seem out of place. But the same thing was happening worldwide: The universal mantra was “The biplane is dead. Long live the monoplane—and bring on bigger motors.” Although the developments were happening throughout the United States, much of the flight testing by the Army Air Corps (U.S. Army Air Forces after June 1941) was conducted at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. There, after the manufacturer had flight-tested and supposedly debugged the aircraft, the Air Development Center tagged new “pursuits” as YP (service test) rather than XP (experimental test) and ran them through the wringer to see if they could actually…