Three American First Ladies have received the Congressional Gold Medal, two along with their husbands-Betty Ford in October 1999 and Nancy Reagan in May 2002-and this lady who received it solo.
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Take control in the East and West, on the surface and in the air. There’s considerable ground to cover when re-creating World War II aviation, but a pair of strategy games manage to do a fairly good job of it. Battlestations Pacific ($30, requires Micro – soft Windows XP/Vista, 3 Ghz processor, 1GB system RAM, …
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The Big Show by Pierre Clostermann Published in 1951 and revised in 2006, Pierre Clostermann’s memoir of aerial combat was one of the first to emerge from WWII. Reflecting the perceptions of an extremely opinionated French volunteer in the RAF, The Big Show has been criticized for its unflattering portrayal of the U.S. Eighth Air …
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Black Fokker Leader: Carl Degelow— The First World War’s Last Airfighter Knight by Peter Kilduff, Grub Street Publishing, London, 2009, $39.95. In 1979 World War I aviation historian Peter Kilduff published a book based on the accounts of a German veteran he knew, Carl Degelow. Since then he has obtained a wealth of new documentation …
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Lighter than Air: An Illustrated History of Balloons and Airships by Tom D. Crouch, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 2009, $35. Anyone who thinks that the days of lighter-than-air flight are over should pick up Tom Crouch’s latest book, which covers the history of “the invention of the balloon and the great events …
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Harold F. Pitcairn: Aviator, Inventor, and Developer of the Autogiro by Carl R. Gunther, Bryn Athyn College Press, Pa., 2009, $29.95. Harold Pitcairn’s brief entry in the Aviation Hall of Fame, written a quarter century after his death, fails to effectively showcase this American aviation innovator’s many invaluable contributions. And Frank Kingston Smith’s 1981 Legacy …
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X-Plane Crashes: Exploring Experimental, Rocket Plane and Spycraft Incidents, Accidents and Crash Sites by Peter W. Merlin and Tony Moore, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2009, $29.95. Frankly speaking, this book could have been a disaster in any hands less sure than these authors’. Peter Merlin is an archivist and historian at Dryden Flight Research …
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North American’s T-6: A Definitive History of the World’s Most Famous Trainer by Dan Hagedorn, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2009, $32.95. Using the word “definitive” in a title is risky, but this beautiful volume from Specialty Press is exactly that: the definitive history of an enormously important airplane. In it the handwritten notations of …
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In the Skies of France: A Chronicle of JG 2 “Richthofen,” Volume I, 1934-1940 by Erik Mombeeck and Jean-Louis Roba, with Chris Goss, ASBL, Linkebeek, Belgium, 2009, $74. Storming the Bombers: A Chronicle of JG 4, The Luftwaffe’s 4th Fighter Wing, Volume I, 1942-1944 by Erik Mombeeck, ASBL, 2009, $69. The bar for Luftwaffe unit …
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Before he gained fame in America as an airplane designer and air power advocate, Alexander de Seversky made a name for himself as Russia’s leading World War I naval ace. Alexander P. de Seversky is best remembered today for building the P-35 fighter, and for his books and many articles on air power. An aviation …
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How do you get the pilot of a single-seat fighter down from altitude if he’s unconscious? For the men of the U.S. Air Force’s 154th Fighter Bomber Squadron, November 16, 1951, started out just like any other day at a forward com- bat base in South Korea. On this particular mission, several flights of Republic …
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In his twilight years, a WWII tail-gunner relives the perils of his youth and takes home a powerful memento. Secured in his tail-gunner position at the rear of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator, 20-year-old Sergeant Francis J. Lashinsky was about to age several additional years within a scant few minutes. Lashinsky had never been inside an …
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Though best known as a designer of airplanes, particularly the lethal Focke-Wulf Fw-190, Tank never lost sight of his pilot roots. Along with the Griffon-engine Spitfire Mk. XVI, the Hawker Tempest V and the Dornier Do-335—not to mention the P-51H Mustang, F2G Corsair and F8F Bearcat, all of which were introduced too late to actually …
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The Norwegians never forgave their most famous aviator for collaborating with the Nazis. Robert F. Scott saw great potential in 21-year-old ski expert Tryggve Gran, who accompanied him to Antarctica in 1910. But the polar explorer was by no means blind to the youthful Norwegian’s faults, commenting: “…the boy has a certain amount of intelligence …
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Luigi Stipa claimed his ‘intubed propeller’ was the ancestor of the jet engine. Even in an era when aircraft designers experimented with every conceivable shape and size, the prototype designed by Italian engineer Luigi Stipa and built by the Caproni company in 1932 stood apart. In place of a conventional fuselage, the airplane, known as …
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Hendon’s recovered Handley-Page Halifax brings new meaning to the phrase ‘battle trim’ Visitors to London’s Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon may notice that, unlike the other lovingly preserved aircraft on display, one museum resident isn’t exactly in pristine condition. It’s missing part of a wing and three of its four engines, there are holes …
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On a February morning 68 years ago, 18 members of British No. 825 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, took off in six Fairey Swordfish on what amounted to a suicide mission. Their assignment: to torpedo a German flotilla in transit from France to Germany via the English Channel. Within 20 minutes of leaving the airfield at …
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Hawaiian Airlines Bellanca The Bellanca Pacemaker was one of the first of the great North Country single-engine utility airplanes, a tradition continued by the Noorduyn Norseman, de Havilland Beaver and various Fairchilds and Fokkers. Many Bellancas flew out their days, often on floats, in Canada’s Northwest Territory and Alaska, so it might seem odd that …
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Franklin Roosevelt delivered his famous quote the “Only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in this one of his inaugural addresses.
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Successfully bridging old and new operating systems. I skipped the Windows Vista operating system for three reasons: I’d read it was mediocre; it required stronger hardware and more system memory than my old PC had for satisfactory performance; I was running fine with Windows XP. I recently installed Windows 7 (Win7) on my new PC. …
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King of Airfighters by Ira Jones World War I produced a multitude of aviation heroes, many of whom stood out as much for their larger-than-life personalities as for their exploits. Amid that colorful cast of characters, Edward “Mick” Mannock may very well rate as the most fascinatingly unconventional. A socialist who detested war, Mannock nevertheless …
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Magnum! The Wild Weasels in Desert Storm by Lt. Col. Braxton “Brick” Eisel and James A. Schreiner, Pen and Sword Books Ltd., England, 2009, $50. When Francis Gary Powers’ Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile, a new sort of air-to-ground war began that would resume in earnest over Vietnam …
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Italian Aces of World War 1 by Paolo Varriale, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2009, $22.95. Back in 2003, Paolo Varriale collaborated with Antonio Iozzi and Roberto Gentilli to produce Italian Aces of World War I and Their Aircraft, a voluminous Schiffer release that was far from cheap but gave customers everything they paid for. Anyone …
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He was the first US President to die in office.
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Orville’s Aviators: Outstanding Alumni of the Wright Flying School, 1910-1916 by John Carver Edwards, McFarland & Company, London, 2009, $45. While $45 may seem like a lot to the average reader for a slim, specialized book, anyone interested in the early era of flight will be pleased with this volume. John Edwards deals with subject …
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Gunships: The Story of Spooky, Shadow, Stinger and Spectre by Wayne Mutza, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2009, $34.95. Wayne Mutza writes for the expert as well as the casual reader. His latest effort, Gunships, is loaded with photos and tells the story of one of the most interesting weapon systems of the 20th century. …
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Forgotten Weapon: U.S. Navy Airships and the U-Boat War by William F. Althoff, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 2009, $49.95. It’s rare for a new book to appear describing an aspect of World War II that hasn’t already been covered in great detail elsewhere, but that is precisely the case in Forgotten Weapon. The development …
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Perhaps no other pilot personifies the carefree days of aviation’s Golden Age better than Roscoe Turner. During the 1920s and ’30s—when aviators routinely risked their lives wing-walking, racing, breaking records and pushing the limits of their aircraft and themselves—his aerial escapades and penchant for self-promotion continually kept him in the public eye. Jimmy Doolittle, one …
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A B-29 pilot recalls battling weather fronts, fighters and flak to rain fire on Japanese cities. The crew soon realized the searchlight battery was actually emplaced halfway up 12,000-foot-high Mount Fuji, right at their 6,000- to 8,000-foot attack altitude. It was a perilously low-level mission for a heavy bomber that had been designed expressly for …
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It took him 10 years and two wars, but Canadian fighter pilot Omer Levesque finally got his fifth victory in the skies over Korea. On March 31, 1951, Joseph Auguste Omer Levesque became the first British Commonwealth pilot to shoot down a MiG-15 during the Korean War. It was his fifth aerial victory, qualifying him …
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What the bantamweight Bearcat lacked in finesse it made up for with brute strength. The Grumman F8F Bearcat is the Dodge Viper of airplanes. Both are outrageous, lightweight, in-your-face- American, monster-motor artifacts of fast-disappearing eras, designed on the cheap and produced quickly. The car/airplane comparison even extends to the fact that both have what might …
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The Hughes D-2 went up in flames before the Army Air Forces even had an opportunity to test it. Howard Hughes’ obsession with record-breaking is well documented. Everything we know about the eccentric multimillionaire suggests that, contrary to popular belief, his mysterious D-2 did not originate as a military project but as a purpose-built airplane …
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Jesse Brown, the U.S. Navy’s first black aviator, overcame hardship and prejudice in his quest for wings of gold. Jesse Leroy Brown set his sights on flying when he was just a youngster working in Mississippi’s corn and cotton fields. Growing up as the son of a sharecropper, whenever he spotted an airplane overhead, young …
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After a decade of dedicated effort, the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s P-26A reproduction is nearing completion. Amid the din of pounding rivet guns, skilled workmen are busy building a cutting-edge fighter—cutting-edge for 1933, that is. The scene is reminiscent of a 1930s-era Boeing factory floor, but it’s actually taking place in 2009 at …
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BABY P-38 Texan Jim O’Hara learned to fly when he was 62, an age that most student pilots would assume was on short final to geezer-dom. Yet just four years later, O’Hara, a retired Tulane University aeronautical engineering professor, began to design and construct his own airplane—from scratch. At 81 he has completed his project, …
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On January 29, 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.
The Hall of Fame actually had its beginnings in 1935, when plans were made to build a museum devoted to baseball and its 100-year history. A private organization based in Cooperstown called the Clark Foundation thought that establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame in their city would help to reinvigorate the area’s Depression-ravaged economy by attracting tourists. To help sell the idea, the foundation advanced the idea that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown. The story proved to be phony, but baseball officials, eager to capitalize on the marketing and publicity potential of a museum to honor the game’s greats, gave their support to the project anyway.
In preparation for the dedication of the Hall of Fame in 1939–thought by many to be the centennial of baseball–the Baseball Writers’ Association of America chose the five greatest superstars of the game as the first class to be inducted: Ty Cobb was the most productive hitter in history; Babe Ruth was both an ace pitcher and the greatest home-run hitter to play the game; Honus Wagner was a versatile star shortstop and batting champion; Christy Matthewson had more wins than any pitcher in National League history; and Walter Johnson was considered one of the most powerful pitchers to ever have taken the mound.
Today, with approximately 350,000 visitors per year, the Hall of Fame continues to be the hub of all things baseball. It has elected 278 individuals, in all, including 225 players, 17 managers, 8 umpires and 28 executives and pioneers.
This man was the first full admiral of the US Navy.
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At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.
In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.
In the aftermath of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the disaster was caused by the failure of an “O-ring†seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive loss. As a result, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.
In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.
On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.
Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop introduced this to American dinner tables.
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A flexible combat simulation puts you in the driver’s seat of 40 historic warbirds. Combat flight sims typically focus on a particular aircraft or a set of planes common to a theater. Wings of Prey ($50, requires Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7, Pentium 4-class 3.2 Ghz processor, 1 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600-class 256 MB video card, …
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Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Captain Ted W. Lawson On April 18, 1942, Americans got some very welcome news: 16 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers had raided Tokyo and four other major Japanese cities in retaliation for the attack on Hawaii the previous December. Led by racing pilot Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, the mission …
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SPAD XIII vs FOKKER D VII: Western Front 1918 by Jon Guttman, Osprey, Colchester, England, 2009, $17.95. SE 5A vs ALBATROS D V: Western Front 1917-18 by Jon Guttman, Osprey, Colchester, England, 2009, $17.95. Jon Guttman parlays his knowledge of World War I aviation with photographs and some remarkable illustrations in these two works for …
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This was the first symphony written and published by a female American composer.
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British Airships 1905-30 by Ian Castle, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2009, $17.95. By 1914 British airship technology was lagging far behind Germany’s, with no rigid airship program and few airships of any other description. But the British began producing a large number of smaller, less expensive nonrigid airships, soon to become known as “blimps.” The …
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Northrop’s Night Hunter: P-61 Black Widow by Jeff Kolln, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2009, $39.95. Unquestionably the finest Allied night fighter of World War II, the Northrop P-61 Black Widow entered service in 1944 and served with distinction in all theaters of the war. One of the few night fighters designed from the start …
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The First Jet Pilot: The Story of German Test Pilot Erich Warsitz by Lutz Warsitz, trans. by Geoffrey Brooks, Pen & Sword, South Yorkshire, England, $39.99. Test pilot Erich Warsitz is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking flight in the Heinkel He-178 prototype on August 27, 1939—the first successful jet flight in history. His son …
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DC-3: A Legend in Her Time, A 75th Anniversary Photographic Tribute by Bruce McAllister, Roundup Press, Boulder, Colo., 2010, $49.95. It has been said that the Douglas DC-3 transport helped lift America out of the Depression and has surpassed all other aircraft in faithful service, safety and dependability since its birth in 1935. Most are …
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R 101’s ill-fated final flight brought Britain’s long-range dirigible program to a tragic conclusion. In 1904 novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling penned With the Night Mail, a “Story of 2000 AD,” tracing a voyage from London to Quebec by “Postal Packet 162,” an atomic-powered airship. By the 21st century, he predicted, flight would dominate international …
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Long before the kitplane craze, Bernard Pietenpol designed airplanes that average consumers could build and fly themselves. About 80 years ago a group of aviation enthusiasts concluded that the “big guys” had cornered the market on aircraft construction and sales, pricing most people out of owning airplanes. They set out to design planes that could …
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In late May 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces intelligence officers were intrigued by the results of a photoreconnaissance sweep over an airfield near Tokyo. Clearly visible in photos of Tachikawa, home base for Japan’s Army Aviation Technical Research Institute, was what seemed to be a new type of Japanese four-engine bomber or transport. The Tachikawa …
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Napier’s temperamental 24-cylinder gem was one of the most innovative engines of its time. Enigmatic, charismatic and, yes, a pain in the rear are just some of the descriptions that could be applied to the Napier Sabre, surely the most complex aircraft engine to see series production during World War II. Hallmarks of most Napier …
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Willy Messerschmitt’s Me-262 was not quite the game changer it might have been if produced earlier and in greater numbers, but after its 1944 debut, air combat would never be the same. On the morning of August 27, 1939, a new era dawned when Ernst Heinkel telephoned Ernst Udet and told the just-awakened chief of …
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After establishing a new flight record over Lake Erie in 1910, Glenn Curtiss nearly came to grief on his return trip to Cleveland. Thousands of Clevelanders watched as Glenn Hammond Curtiss paced the Euclid Beach Park pier on the morning of August 31, 1910. Many had skipped work that day in hopes of watching him …
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Britain hoped to take the airspeed record back from Germany with the Napier-Heston T.5, but it literally fell flat on its first flight. In 1935 the British engine manufacturer D. Napier and Son came out with an extremely advanced, hugely complex, high-revving and unusually powerful aircraft engine, the Napier Sabre. This 24-cylinder, 2,450-hp, H-configuration power …
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A father-son team spent nearly two decades restoring a pair of Grumman Widgeons, with award-winning results. Rebuilding a 64-year-old amphibious airplane is a monumental undertaking, but taking on two such projects requires serious—some would say fanatical—dedication. That’s exactly what the father and son team of Mark and Steven Taylor have displayed in their meticulous restoration …
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At the final Women Airforce Service Pilots graduation ceremony in December 1944, General “Hap” Arnold admitted just how skeptical he had been about the program from its outset. He said he hadn’t been sure “whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather.” But he added, “Now in …
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American Pilgrims Find New Homes One of the least-known U.S. airliners was the nine-passenger American Pilgrim 100, 16 of which were built for American Airways—soon to become American Airlines—in 1931. The Pilgrim was actually a Fairchild, but during the time it was being built, Sherman Fairchild had, in a bankruptcy dodge, briefly reorganized his Farmingdale, …
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This 20th Century mercenary soldier’s nick name was “Mad Mike”.
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The Flying North by Jean Potter Last published in 1983, with a revised, retrospective preface by its author, then known as Jean Potter Chelnov, The Flying North is an interview-based chronicle of the pioneer days of bush aviation in Alaska, focused on nine airmen who lived the adventure. When the book was first written in …
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Fictional worlds bring new freedom to explore and seize the initiative. Sometimes fiction can get a message across more intensely than nonfiction. Stephen Coonts’ Flight of the Intruder was hardly the first novel about combat, but it delivered a potent message about an individual’s ability to think independently and choose a course of action. Put …
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Chinese Aircraft: China’s Aviation Industry Since 1951 by Yefim Gordon and Dmitriy Komissarov, Hikoki Productions Ltd., Manchester, UK, distributed by Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2009, $56.95. China’s aircraft industry has long been veiled in mystery, partly thanks to the secrecy maintained by its government and partially due to a Western tendency to dismiss its …
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FW 200 Condor vs Atlantic Convoy 1941-43 by Robert Forczyk, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2010, $17.95. Up to now, the formula behind Osprey’s successful series of “Duel” books has usually been to compare two contemporary opposing aircraft, warships or armored fighting vehicles. Its latest release has broken the mold in pitting the combined air and …
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The B-45 Tornado: An Operational History of the First American Jet Bomber by John C. Fredriksen, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, N.C., 2009, $45. The B-45 Tornado is the first comprehensive history of a shamefully neglected American aviation achievement. North American’s B-45 Tornado was the first jet-propelled bomber to enter service with the U.S. Air Force, …
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Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948- May 1949 by Richard Reeves, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010, $28. The news was ominous in June 1948. Red Army troops had blockaded all surface connections from West Germany into Berlin, which was divided into four occupation sec tors located deep …
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Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds by Robin Olds with Christina Olds and Ed Rasimus, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2010, $26.99. Veteran fighter pilots and members attending annual gatherings of the American Fighter Aces Association were sometimes privileged—especially if he’d already had a few— to hear retired Brig. Gen. Robin Olds …
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Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II by J. Todd Moye, Oxford University Press, 2010, $24.95. In this well-written history of the pioneering African-American pilots and ground crews who fought for liberty abroad while being denied its benefits at home, J. Todd Moye chronicles a now familiar story. To his credit, Moye draws …
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Despite the failure of his 1924 around-the-world attempt, Archibald MacLaren remained optimistic that such a flight ‘by one British machine and one British engine’ was possible. Flying perilously low, desperately seeking a passage through the fog, the pilot eased the single-engine Vickers Vulture amphibian down to within 100 feet of the surging waves of the …
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Whether soaring at 30,000 feet or ‘dicing’ on the deck, the 10th Photo Reconnaissance Group got the pictures Allied planners needed. Compared with fighter jocks and bomber crews, pilots of the photoreconnaissance squadrons were among the unsung heroes of World War II. They flew below the radar, both literally and figuratively. One such American unit, …
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During an impromptu flight to the Russian Front, the Führer was forced to forgo the comforts of his usual transport. On a frigid day in early December 1941, Adolf Hitler paced back and forth in the situation room at Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. He pondered the noon report stating that the Red Army had just …
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Lockheed genius Kelly Johnson’s words summed up the philosophy behind several of history’s most innovative airplanes. Kelly Johnson—his mother named him Clarence, but that wasn’t his fault—owes to one man much of his legendary position as the designer of the fastest, highest-flying, most advanced and most capable airplanes ever built. That one man was a …
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Test pilot Stanley Beltz flew nearly everything Lockheed produced in the decade following World War II. When a bang rattled the windows of the Gilbert home north of Lancaster, California, on the morning of August 31, 1955, Goldie Gilbert assumed it was just another sonic boom. Jets from Palmdale or Edwards Air Force Base routinely …
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Soaring development costs and evolving air defense requirements killed North American’s innovative F-108 Rapier before it got off the ground. Before the missile age, when nuclear deterrence depended solely on aircraft, speed meant everything. You needed it not just for striking the enemy’s homeland with impunity, but also to stop the bombers invading your own …
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A 1917 Curtiss JN-4D is the centerpiece of an Oregon museum’s collection of flying antiques. Visitors to the Columbia River Gorge area might be surprised to find a vast 95,000-square-foot aviation museum tucked away on the outskirts of the bustling little town of Hood River, Ore. With 75 beautifully restored aircraft, not to mention more …
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In his last months, before Jorge Chávez died in September 1910, he made headlines across Europe during a frenetic summer of competitive flying. A gifted athlete and recent engineering graduate, Chávez—born to wealthy Peruvian parents in Paris—had just earned his international pilot’s license at age 23. He became interested in flying after attending the Great …
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B-25s Gather at Doolittle Raiders Reunion On April 18, 68 years after the Doolittle Raiders flew their historic bombing mission over Japan, 17 North American B-25 Mitchells—probably the largest such gathering since World War II—took part in a spectacular formation flight witnessed by three of the eight surviving Raiders. The 2010 Doo – little Raiders …
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This was the first film screened at the White House.
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U.S. Army Aircraft 1908-1946: SC-AEF-AAS-AAC-AAF by James C. Fahey A severe disappointment for James Fahey turned out to benefit future historians. After medical problems disqualified him as a naval aviator, he served in the Merchant Marine—but opted to write about the U.S. Navy. In 1939 his first volume of wonderful reference works, The Ships and …
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American Flying Boats and Amphibious Aircraft: An Illustrated History by E.R. Johnson, McFarland, Jefferson, N.C., 2010, $49.95. E.R. Johnson’s latest book reflects a modern and vastly improved version of the technique James Fahey pioneered in U.S. Army Aircraft 1908-1946. “Buddy” Johnson takes the same comprehensive approach as Fahey, but is able to devote more print …
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Hermann Göring Fighter Ace: The World War I Career of Germany’s Most Infamous Airman by Peter Kilduff, Grub Street, London, 2010, $39.95. Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20, and it gets plenty of play when exploring the backgrounds of the Third Reich’s most notorious kingpins. On the face of it, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command and Luftwaffe …
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The Battle of Britain by Kate Moore, Osprey, Oxford, UK, 2010, $29.95. The Most Dangerous Enemy: An Illustrated History of the Battle of Britain by Stephen Bungay, Zenith, Minneapolis, Minn., 2010, $40. Last of the Few: 18 Battle of Britain Fighter Pilots Tell their Extraordinary Stories by Dilip Sarkar, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2010, $34.95. Seventy …
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There’s no better place to explore the Battle of Britain’s legacy than at the Imperial War Museum’s historic airfield. More than any other air attraction in Britain, the Imperial War Museum Duxford evokes the spirit of “the Few,” the small group of young men who saved the United Kingdom from the Luftwaffe onslaught 70 years …
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Belvin Maynard’s 1919 victory inspired aviators across America—and made a hero of the ‘Flying Parson’. Late in the morning on October 16, 1919, a de Havilland DH-4 dropped from the clouds and touched down silently in a pasture near Wahoo, Nebraska. A tall man wearing riding breeches clambered out of its front cockpit, and from …
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A B-29 copilot’s sole combat mission began with a dangerous flight over ‘the Hump’ and ended with internment in the Soviet Union. On November 14, 1944, a shiny new B-29 Superfortress arrived from the United States at XX Bomber Command in Kharagpur, India. The copilot on the 11-man rookie crew was a 22-year-old second lieutenant …
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A former Topgun instructor describes a typical combat training mission during his time at the Navy Fighter Weapons School. In September 1982 I was one of eight students being briefed in a classroom at the Navy Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar for a series of flights over southern Arizona, part of the …
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One of the RAF’s most colorful characters became an ace during the desperate days of the Battle of Britain. Flamboyant Royal Air Force ace Basil Gerald “Stapme” Stapleton was one of those men who seem to have been born to fill a particular role in life. His des- tiny: to become a World War II …
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The Republic XF-84H turboprop was so loud, ground crew were physically sickened by its noise. Early jet fighters accelerated slowly and required long takeoff runs, and if a pilot needed to pour on the gas to correct a bad approach or make a go-around—particularly crucial for carrier aircraft—it was like trying to accelerate from 5 …
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Ottawa restorers breathe new life into a dismembered 1929 ‘Wichita Fokker’. The Travel Air 2000 was the brain child of aviation giants Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman, founders of the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in January 1924 at Wichita, Kansas. Drawing on structural inspiration from the legendary Fokker D.VII fighter, the 2000 was …
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The Swamp Ghost Comes Home Boeing B-17E no. 41-2446 went into combat only once, on February 23, 1942, in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ first raid on Rabaul. Nobody got hurt, no bombs were effectively dropped—the release mechanism malfunctioned over the target. On a second run over the target, the bombs were dropped through cloud …
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Dangerous Visitors: The Lawless Era by Orval E. Allbritton, Garland County Historical Society, Hot Springs, Ark., 2008. Hot Springs, Arkansas, doesn’t usually spring to mind as a hotbed of lawlessness, but it’s safe to say not everyone came to the community for the warming waters. Local historian Orval E. Allbritton makes that perfectly clear in …
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Thunder Over the Prairie: The True Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the Greatest Posse of all Time by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, TwoDot (The Globe Pequot Press), Guilford, Conn., 2009, $14.95. The trigger finger of frontier fate pointed to songstress Dora Hand in Dodge City, Kansas, on October 4, 1878. That …
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The Deadliest Outlaws: The Ketchum Gang and the Wild Bunch by Jeffrey Burton, University of North Texas Press, Denton, 2009, $34.95. For more than 30 years, English author Jeffrey Burton has been researching hard case Tom Ketchum, his gentler brother Sam, their associates in crime and other late-19th-century outlaws. Burton’s latest book is an expanded, …
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Custer Survivor: The End of a Myth, the Beginning of a Legend by John Koster, Chronology Books, an imprint of History Publishing Co., Palisades, N.Y., 2010, $16.95. This is not a book about Comanche, the late Captain Myles Keogh’s horse and sole survivor of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s immediate command at the June 25, …
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Dodge City: The Early Years, 1872–1886 by Wm. B. Shillingberg, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Norman, Okla., 2009, $49.95. “The buildings were mostly box affairs and built in the quickest possible way,” buffalo hunter Billy Dixon recalled of early Dodge City, Kansas. “But a palace does not make happiness, and I am sure that in …
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Frontiersman Granville Stuart once repaired it. The notorious Montana Vigilantes hanged Sheriff Henry Plummer in the mining town of Bannack on January 10, 1864, either because he secretly led a gang of road agents or for largely political reasons, depending on whose history one reads. The debate over whether the sheriff was good and hanged …
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This was the official name of the World War Two’s “Flying Tigers.”
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One more reason to visit this New Mexico resort town. Lincoln the town and Lincoln the county were the center of much guns-a-blazin’ Wild West action in 1870s–80s New Mexico Territory, and they still get their share of attention from Billy the Kid fans, gunfighter and lawmen aficionados and tourists in general. Thirty miles southwest …
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In 1882 prospector Hanson H. Barnes found outcrops of silver and lead while roaming the southern flank of the Castle Mountains in Meagher County, Montana Territory. Two years later Barnes got around to recording his remote discoveries, later to become the Princess and Maverick mines. In 1883 F.L. “Lafe” Hensley, a longtime prospector from Adair, …
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In April 1891 members of the 4th U.S. Cavalry formed a well-disciplined vigilante force to avenge the killing of a fellow trooper. Rancor swelled among members of Troop D, 4th U.S. Cavalry, at Fort Walla Walla, Washington, as one of their own, Private Emit L. Miller, lay dying in the post hospital on April 23, …
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Frontier lawyer Henry Clay McDougal took on the fearsome outlaw in court—and never backed down. Among the most dangerous and feared badmen on the Western frontier, Jesse James frightened folks even in states where he had never set foot. Yes, some people, most notably the citizens of Northfield, Minnesota, fought back when Jesse and his …
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The onetime New England shoemaker ventured to California during the gold rush and went wild—hunting, trapping and befriending such grizzly bears as Ben Franklin, Lady Washington and General Fremont. He came from the craggy mountains and brush-choked canyons of the Coast Range, strolling beside a beat-up, creaking wagon. He was in his early 40s, but …
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In the year 1792, in a terra incognita of vast yellow grasslands and brightly hued canyons 2,000 miles west of Washington, D.C., a mysterious young American was experiencing a world as yet unimagined—and certainly unnamed—in American and European power centers. European fur traders and ships’ captains were probing the far corners of the American West, …
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Once a trusted trader, he turned to building a town. Dutch Bill Greiffenstein lost his young Cheyenne wife before the November 1868 Battle of the Washita and a young fortune afterward when Lieutenant Colonel George Custer killed some of his best customers and Greiffenstein himself was forced to beat it out of Indian Territory under …
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She reigned at the Fort Union trading post on the upper Missouri. “Fort marriages” were often temporary—and tragic for the Indian girls who thought they were permanently married to white men. A few horses changed hands, the Indian girl thought she’d found a provider for life, and the white man thought he was buying a …
The post Blackfoot Natawista Iksana Was a White Man’s Princess appeared first on HistoryNet.
The republic’s second president was no Houston man. “Texas to the Pacific!” was the rallying cry in 1838 when nationalist Mirabeau Lamar succeeded Sam Houston as president of the young republic. Houston men wanted to annex Texas to the Union; Lamar men wanted Texas to seek her own destiny. Lamar himself was an oddity. A …
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The Higgins-Horrell Feud did not end his trouble in Texas. Rancher Pink Higgins was a practical man. If someone did him a hurt, he would hurt them back, often with a Winchester rifle—his weapon of choice even for close-up action. In 1874, 23-year-old Pink heard talk around Lampasas County, Texas, about a “miracle” birth in …
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On this day in 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs–now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.
The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O–the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle–changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.
High school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball, in 1967. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets; there are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees. There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs–the best natural Frisbee players.
Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs–generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 20-25 centimeters (8-10 inches) in diameter with a curved lip. The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994.
She was the first woman to appear on a US postage stamp.
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Who was the subject of the following quote: “If you ask him the time of day, he’ll give you the history of the watch.”? I think it might be Eisenhower, in references to his rambling press conferences, but I’m not sure. George Grimsrud ??? Dear Mr. Grimsrud, The most common appearance of that quote …
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Bonanza: The Official First Season, Vols. 1 and 2 Paramount Home Entertainment, 2009, 8 disks, 1,585 min., $69.98. All 32 first-season episodes of Bonanza (1959–73)—the second all-time longest running TV Western behind Gunsmoke, which ran 20 years—were released on DVD last fall to mark the show’s 50th anniversary. The first Western to be televised in …
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Days of the Pony Express Scout Pictures Documentary, 2008, one disk, 60 minutes, $20. This action-driven documentary provides solid information about the roots of the Pony Express and the young men who carried the mail on horseback for that historic if short-lived enterprise. Horse lovers will appreciate many of the action sequences filmed at Western …
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Shooting Stars of the Small Screen: Encyclopedia of TV Western Actors, 1946– Present by Douglas Brode, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2009, $39.95. For those of us who saw our first Westerns on the small screen more than half a century ago and still haven’t seen enough of them (thank goodness for satellite TV and …
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Winchester Warriors: Texas Rangers of Company D, 1874–1901 by Bob Alexander, University of North Texas Press, Denton, 2009, $29.95. General histories of the Texas Rangers are legion, but in No. 6 of the University of North Texas Press’ Frances B. Vick series, Winchester Warriors, former lawman Bob Alexander narrows his sights on a representative “little …
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Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845–1924 by Frank H. Goodyear III, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2009, $45. Published in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, Faces of the Frontier is the companion book to a recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. www.npg.si.edu. The book presents more …
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Centers on Bill Mackin’s world-renowned collection. Rugged and remote Moffat County was once a go-to place for Wild Bunch members and other outlaws seeking to escape the long arm of the law. Today, it’s a great place for law-abiding citizens to escape the crowds and get a taste of the Old West. Such a journey …
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Most Western boomtowns depended on mining, but Mondak—platted in 1903 on the border between “dry” North Dakota and “wet” Montana—was a liquor town. Its Montana saloons existed to separate booze-thirsty North Dakotans from their coin. Mondak had a hard reputation; its first recorded death was one C.H. King, who died of inebriation. More than a …
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Their mere presence was enough to scare off most challengers. Gatling gun. The name is nearly as recognizable to Old West aficionados as Colt, Winchester, Remington or Smith & Wesson, and it certainly triggers the imagination as much as any frontier gun. In reality, though, this revolving-barreled forerunner of the machine gun was seldom used …
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His early days are little known and his later life largely a blank. But in between, this shadowy hard case rode with outlaw gangs in Wyoming and Dakota territories and became a gun handler of the first rank. Gunman-turned-rancher Jack Watkins and young ranch hand Richard Rogers rode into Laramie, Wyoming Territory, on May 24, …
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A steadfast manager of the Central Overland stagecoach line and the Pony Express, the man called Slade could transform—especially when whiskey talked—into a ruffian bent on wrongdoing and self-destruction. On the eve of the Civil War, on the sole street of Julesburg in the northeastern corner of what would become Colorado, two antagonists faced off …
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A rich mouth and a loudmouth sparked reckless gunplay that seemed to involve nearly every man in Ballarat, California, and resulted in the wounding of two deputy sheriffs —two-thirds of the town’s entire sober population. The fusillade of bullets bored more holes in adobe and wood walls than in the human flesh for which it …
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Not all the tracklayers were Irish or strictly meat-and-potatoes men. First of all, they were all Irish. Second, they had to fight Indians every step of the way while laying track. Third, they ate and drank themselves to death on meat and potatoes and rotgut whisky instead of eating vegetables and seafood like the Chinese. …
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Alexis de Tocqueville was sympathetic but not optimistic. In Michigan Territory during the summer of 1831, young French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville met Indians not yet burdened with European religion, principles and ideas. But he did not doubt that soon the civilizing process would, by compulsion or choice, transform them, and he was just as …
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The Tombstone woman went after lover with a ‘Bulldog’. Five-foot-four, gray-eyed May Woodman, armed with a nickel-plated Bulldog pistol, walked down Fifth toward Allen Street in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, on February 23, 1883. She approached her lover, William “Billy” Kinsman, and engaged him in a short conversation of unknown subject. As they stood talking in …
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Tragedy struck in Los Angeles’ Chinese quarter. On October 24, 1871, Robert Thompson, a saloonkeeper turned rancher, cautiously approached the front door of a house on Calle de los Negroes (aka “Negro Alley”). The occupants, members of a neighborhood Chinese tong, were quiet now, but they were well armed, and they had shot a police …
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On this day in 1998, in a Sacramento, California, courtroom, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.”
Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water. From this isolated location, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others.
The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. After federal investigators set up the UNABOM Task Force (the name came from the words “university and airline bombing”), the media dubbed the culprit the “Unabomber.” The bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses (depicted in an infamous 1987 police sketch).
In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Recognizing elements of his brother’s writings, David Kaczynski went to authorities with his suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996. In his cabin, federal investigators found ample evidence linking him to the bombings, including bomb parts, journal entries and drafts of the manifesto.
Kaczynski was arraigned in Sacramento and charged with bombings in 1985, 1993 and 1995 that killed two people and maimed two others. (A bombing in New Jersey in 1994 also resulted in the victim’s death.) Despite his lawyers’ efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist’s verdict helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill defendant.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty to all federal charges; he also gave up the right to appeal any rulings in the case. Though Kaczynski later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski was remanded to a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving his life sentence.