The Flying Circus
Flight Into Remembered Sky
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 [...]
Phantoms to WartHogs
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 [...]
The Flying Circus Toy Shop: Recommendations
The Flying Circus Hey Mom, when I grow up I wanna be a fighter pilot …………… Son, I’m sorry, but you can’t do both … of flight jackets, patches, aircraft pictures, models, books, watches, coffee mugs, ‘I luv me walls’ and old toys and … of history, memories, and of the friends The “Remembered Sky” Enterprise [ 😉 ] includes this site, a Facebook page of the same name, a collection of flight jackets, coffee mugs, ball caps, old flight suits, model airplanes, pictures, and the museum-ish office/library/computer center referred to as the Toy shop or Pilot Lounge. I have [...]
Veterans Day 2017: What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Burns and Novick The Vietnam War – A Counter Anthology The PBS documentary The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has received critical acclaim and has been recommended for showing in schools. It follows Burns reputation well as a work of film art. For all its ‘truth telling,’ I simply cannot get in tune with its overall context. This Veterans Day post focuses on the Vietnam veteran with remembrance of all. “This documentary succeeds in vividly evoking sadness and frustration. But that is not all there was to the story. “The Vietnam War” strives for a moral equivalence [...]
“It’s Only Reading If You Do It”
Blown Slick Series #6 It is a true statement but not an indictment, that the fleets of the world never had a formal requirement for an airplane, or a submarine, or a communications satellite. Instead, in all cases, a debate was established within the fleet (indeed, within the fleets of the world) and over time, doctrine, technology, people, and organization came to fruition. Requirements cannot be divorced from detailed understanding of their implementing strategy. In practice, the best requirements come from operators who understand technology in detail and who can, in their mind’s eye, envision the new tactics it makes [...]
The 4th of June – Remembered Sky Day
Blown Slick Series#5 The A-7 Corsair II carried a healthy fuel load for a carrier based strike aircraft. On major strikes – those to significant, highly defended targets – into North Vietnam called “Alpha Strikes” with 30 -40 A-7,s, A-6’s, F-4’s, bombers, fighters, Iron-Hand MiG Cap, tankers, Electronic Warfare birds and an E-2 control – the A-7’s mostly took off first, landed last. The strike group launched and rendezvoused in a circle above the USS Midway before heading into as we non-PC called it, Indian Country. It took a bit and once joined on my flight lead, it was both a time of anticipation and building [...]
Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines: Heroes & Relics
Believe that some good thing is possible, find the principle that makes it so, put the principle into practice, there you have it - Freedom Richard Bach As related in the previous two posts, Remembered Sky certainly flows from my own personal experiences with aviation, but its future depends heavily upon the people either in or related to those stories to expand the storyline on the basis and through their own perception, and then on relating their further adventures. In a sense the site is a series of branches and sequels, but it requires firm grounding in the history [...]
Story Telling
Richard Bach -“Paradise is a personal thing.” Once taken on, flying runs deeply and permanently in one’s blood, and I find that since I can’t “do” anymore, I need to remember and to “tell” and have some fun doing it. I’ve been working on this notion since before opening the Project White Horse website and thinking about the possibility of a book. Also as you know I have occasionally posted pieces on the FORUM, particularly in light of Memorial Day, Veterans Day, 4th of July, and then throughout 2011 – Naval Aviation’s 100 year anniversary. There were also posts in regard [...]
Remembered Sky: Gift of Wings
Throughout our lives we receive multiple gifts, many simply because we are loved. Whether private, commercial or military, aviators are given the gift of wings only if they earn the right and persist in a pursuit of perfecting the gift. My intent after posting several articles was to explain my vision for Remembered Sky. As in Ghosts of Christmas Past, it seemed a wiser choice to defer to those who’ve already said the words. And so, airplanes, adventure, mission, country and people. The Airplane: A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the [...]
Sticks & Wires & Cloth
“An airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren’t destructible.” Nothing by Chance, Richard Bach Nanna by Kristin Hill That quote also serves as the first words in Sticks & Wires & Cloth by Anne Hopkins. Then in the closing chapter she begins: “Someday I will discover that climbing into Nana’s cockpit takes too great a toll on [...]
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The Flying Circus
Flight Into Remembered Sky
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 [...]
Phantoms to WartHogs
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 [...]
The Flying Circus Toy Shop: Recommendations
The Flying Circus Hey Mom, when I grow up I wanna be a fighter pilot …………… Son, I’m sorry, but you can’t do both … of flight jackets, patches, aircraft pictures, models, books, watches, coffee mugs, ‘I luv me walls’ and old toys and … of history, memories, and of the friends The “Remembered Sky” Enterprise [ 😉 ] includes this site, a Facebook page of the same name, a collection of flight jackets, coffee mugs, ball caps, old flight suits, model airplanes, pictures, and the museum-ish office/library/computer center referred to as the Toy shop or Pilot Lounge. I have [...]
Veterans Day 2017: What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Burns and Novick The Vietnam War – A Counter Anthology The PBS documentary The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has received critical acclaim and has been recommended for showing in schools. It follows Burns reputation well as a work of film art. For all its ‘truth telling,’ I simply cannot get in tune with its overall context. This Veterans Day post focuses on the Vietnam veteran with remembrance of all. “This documentary succeeds in vividly evoking sadness and frustration. But that is not all there was to the story. “The Vietnam War” strives for a moral equivalence [...]
“It’s Only Reading If You Do It”
Blown Slick Series #6 It is a true statement but not an indictment, that the fleets of the world never had a formal requirement for an airplane, or a submarine, or a communications satellite. Instead, in all cases, a debate was established within the fleet (indeed, within the fleets of the world) and over time, doctrine, technology, people, and organization came to fruition. Requirements cannot be divorced from detailed understanding of their implementing strategy. In practice, the best requirements come from operators who understand technology in detail and who can, in their mind’s eye, envision the new tactics it makes [...]
The 4th of June – Remembered Sky Day
Blown Slick Series#5 The A-7 Corsair II carried a healthy fuel load for a carrier based strike aircraft. On major strikes – those to significant, highly defended targets – into North Vietnam called “Alpha Strikes” with 30 -40 A-7,s, A-6’s, F-4’s, bombers, fighters, Iron-Hand MiG Cap, tankers, Electronic Warfare birds and an E-2 control – the A-7’s mostly took off first, landed last. The strike group launched and rendezvoused in a circle above the USS Midway before heading into as we non-PC called it, Indian Country. It took a bit and once joined on my flight lead, it was both a time of anticipation and building [...]
Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines: Heroes & Relics
Believe that some good thing is possible, find the principle that makes it so, put the principle into practice, there you have it - Freedom Richard Bach As related in the previous two posts, Remembered Sky certainly flows from my own personal experiences with aviation, but its future depends heavily upon the people either in or related to those stories to expand the storyline on the basis and through their own perception, and then on relating their further adventures. In a sense the site is a series of branches and sequels, but it requires firm grounding in the history [...]
Story Telling
Richard Bach -“Paradise is a personal thing.” Once taken on, flying runs deeply and permanently in one’s blood, and I find that since I can’t “do” anymore, I need to remember and to “tell” and have some fun doing it. I’ve been working on this notion since before opening the Project White Horse website and thinking about the possibility of a book. Also as you know I have occasionally posted pieces on the FORUM, particularly in light of Memorial Day, Veterans Day, 4th of July, and then throughout 2011 – Naval Aviation’s 100 year anniversary. There were also posts in regard [...]
Remembered Sky: Gift of Wings
Throughout our lives we receive multiple gifts, many simply because we are loved. Whether private, commercial or military, aviators are given the gift of wings only if they earn the right and persist in a pursuit of perfecting the gift. My intent after posting several articles was to explain my vision for Remembered Sky. As in Ghosts of Christmas Past, it seemed a wiser choice to defer to those who’ve already said the words. And so, airplanes, adventure, mission, country and people. The Airplane: A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the [...]
Sticks & Wires & Cloth
“An airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren’t destructible.” Nothing by Chance, Richard Bach Nanna by Kristin Hill That quote also serves as the first words in Sticks & Wires & Cloth by Anne Hopkins. Then in the closing chapter she begins: “Someday I will discover that climbing into Nana’s cockpit takes too great a toll on [...]