Media Archives - Page 5 of 22

Aviation Insider: A Tale of the Times

We’ll lose the XC-99 and it won’t be alone Big, historic airplanes could be the aeronautical definition of “conundrum” for museum people. No one wants to see a truly historic airplane, such as the XC-99 disintegrate into powdery oxide while in outside storage. However, the realities of space and financing determine the prioritization for every […]

America’s Aerial Warriors Today

Life begins at 40 or 50, or … It’s a sure fact of life that we all reach a point where we can’t begin to guess how long ago something in our lives happened. Did such and such happen five years ago? Or was it 10? We get to the point where we can’t even […]

Hey, That’s My Dad!

Part of the enjoyment of viewing WW II photographs is seeing the never-ending panorama of men and women at work during the war. Young and cocky fighter pilots, winsome women serving donuts or riveting bombers, and mechanics lounging for a moment before returning to the endless tasks of keeping high-performance aircraft ready to fight. Much […]

Multi-Engine Monday: B-25 Mitchells over the Mediterranean

Wavetop warfare: Skip-bombing and Big Guns When the North American NA-62, officially dubbed B-25, first flew in August of 1940, it was less than a roaring success. The UK and France had just chosen the smaller Douglas DB-7 Boston (A-20 Havoc) attack bomber over the North American design. However, in the years leading up to […]

Wingman to the Aces

There are no great aces without great wingmen and young Lt. Floyd Fulkerson from Little Rock, Arkansas, was one of those wingmen. Although he had four confirmed victories, so he was nearly an ace himself, he sees his primary contribution to the war effort to have been the protection of his lead pilots, some of […]

Utility Warbird Cessna’s LC-126

Here’s a question for Flight Journal readers: How many are familiar with the Korean War–era Cessna LC-126? Let’s have a show of hands. Hmm. Not many. If we rephrased that question as “How many are familiar with the Cessna 195?” we’d see lots of hands. This is interesting considering that they are the same airplane—sort […]

Hawk 33 – A Day in the Life of a Vietnam Cobra Pilot

March 20, 1971, was not a good day for American and Vietnamese forces engaged in Operation Lam Son 719. Originally billed as the operation that would prove the success of “Vietnamization,” that the South Vietnamese Army and Marines were capable of taking on North Vietnamese main force units successfully, the incursion into Laos was becoming […]

From the Archive: Mentoring a Thunderbird Pilot

As one of six stars of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds squadron, Maj. Jason Curtis has all the qualities of an elite pilot. He’s intelligent, focused, personable and flies with unparalleled precision. He’s also humble — and quick to credit those who guided him during his childhood in Kalispell. Curtis, 33, is returning to his hometown […]

Lee Lauderback Sets a Record

“I think the thing I like most about my time with the Mustang has been the people I’ve met through it.” The speaker is Lee Lauderback, founder/owner of Stallion 51, the longtime Mustang check-out haven in Kissimmee, Florida. He recently had a good week in which he logged his 10,000th hour in the P-51D and […]

Warbirds – A Personal History

My own interest in warbirds goes back to the BT-13 my father bought and parked in front of his store to draw in customers; that was when I was six years old. Other kids had jungle gyms to climb on—I had a BT-13, and surplus airplanes were everywhere. On our semimonthly trip to visit my […]