Transonic Cat Wars

I remember a huge flap at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands when a new guy, one of the first of a wave of evangelical Christian officers from the Air Force Academy (a wave that continues to plague the USAF today), recorded Spielberg’s awful “1941” movie over all the alert shack’s Betamax porn tapes. Funny now, but an existential crisis at the time!

Air-Minded: Training for the Last One

We should have it so easy, going up against an enemy air force equipped with 1950s technology … even North Korea has more advanced equipment. But you know what they say: we always train to fight the last war we had (and in this case I feel like we’re still training for Vietnam).

Tuesday Bag o’ Callsigns (Updated 2/5/18)

That leaves Marine One, the callsign used by USMC helicopter crews flying the current president to and from the White House. This is the point of highest danger on my tour, because I refuse to say that president’s name. “Current president” is as close as I come; I have to carefully engage my tongue to my brain lest I blurt out “President Individual One” or something worse.

Friday Bag o’ Happiness

You’re an educated person, dear reader, and I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m talking to people like Donald Trump of Mar-a-Lago, Governor Rick Scott in Florida, and Secretary of State Brian Kemp in Georgia, all of whom are abusing the powers of the offices they hold to claim the normal counting of ballots is voter fraud, and to stop the count while the vote is going their way.

Air-Minded: Air Force Museum Photoblog

Well, I call it the Air Force Museum (and so does everybody else, including the people who work there), but in reality it’s the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. And it’s one of the holy grails of the air museum world. I had an opportunity to visit in the early 1980s, when I flew […]