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Testimony of Pilot #31

Once at a dinner party I was asked by a woman what on earth I had ever seen in military life. I couldn’t answer her, of course.

I couldn’t summon it all, the distant places, the comradeship, the idealism, the youth. I couldn’t tell about flying over the islands long ago, seeing them rise in the blue distance wreathed in legend, the ring of white surf around them… I couldn’t tell about Mahurin being shot down and not a soul seeing him go… I couldn’t tell her about brilliant group commanders or flying with men who later became famous, the days and days of boredom and moments of pure ecstasy, of walking out to the parked planes in the early morning or coming in at dusk when the wind had died to make the last landing of the day …

To fly with the thirty-year-old veterans and finally earn the right to lead yourself, flights, squadrons, a few times the entire group. The great days of youth when you are mispronouncing foreign words and trading dreams.

 Money meant nothing and in a way neither did fame. I couldn’t tell any of that or of the roads along the sea in Honolulu, the dances, the last drinks at the bar, or who Harry Thyng was, or Kasler, or the captain’s wife. James Salter, Burning the Day

Collected years ago, probably from a Sunday Magazine …

Flight Into Remembered Sky

By Thomas French Norton

He didn’t look like the ordinary street bum.

Perhaps it was his eyes, which were clear and blue and focused on some distant horizon. Or his stance. He carried his head up and his shoulders squared. He needed a shave, but he wore a white military mustache thar had seen recent trimming.

Our eyes met for a moment and some kind of recognition passed between us.”Could you spare something for an old B-24 pilot?” he asked.

He had been a tall skinny kid of 20 when he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943. He was sent to Texas, where he went through flight school. It was hard work, he said, but it was exciting and it gave his his first real purpose. He loved every minute in the air. Continue reading →

Testimony of Pilot # 29

‘Dogfighting makes movies. Close air support wins wars,’

Colonel Steve Ladd (USAF, Ret) recently published From F-4 Phantom to A-10 Warthog; Memoirs of a Cold War Fighter Pilot, and has graciously provided RememberedSky with a key excerpt  particularly pertinent to RS’s major thread of air-ground or attack missions recently catalogued and highlighted in the post Anthology – RememberedSky Vietnam Airwar ’72-73 Stories.

Note that definitive of US Air Force usage, despite half of Steve’s  4000+ hour career in the A-10 attack aircraft, he refers to himself as a fighter pilot, and indeed in both the F-4 and A-10 aircraft his squadrons were Tactical Fighter Squadrons.

The Air Force and the aviation branch of the U.S. Navy have similar roles and missions but have distinct differences, mostly (but not all) of course driven and centered around the aircraft carrier.

Historically, through WWII navy squadron designation indicated their mission – VB, dive bombers, VT-torpedo bombers, VS, scouting and dive bombers, and VF, fighter or air-air. In the 50s the VB/VS/VT consolidated under the nomenclature “VA” for attack, air-ground missions. This remained until the replacement of both F-4s and A-7s by the F/A-18 Hornet with squadron designation becoming “VFA,” strike fighter squadrons, tasked to do both air-air and air-ground. From the Air Corps/Air Force perspective in the 30s the decision was made to not design, purchase, or designate “A” attack a/c. They  did violate their rules with the A-1 Skyraider, A-7D, and the A-10, and thus they had Tactical Air Command fighters and Strategic Air Command bombers (strategic bombing tasking – B-17, B-29, B-52, etc).

And so, considering first the air-ground mission and then differences in the two services, and terminology, Col Ladd’s  career experiences are of great interest  in regard to the  focus of RememberedSky  and so…

OBTW, really well written and highly recommended!!!

PHANTOM TO WARTHOG – The Transition

Continue reading →