Air-Minded: the Non-Starter Option? (Updated 11/20/15)
Fuck stealth. There isn’t an air force in the world that won’t turn tail and run from a wall of Eagles coming its way.
Air-Minded: Burning and Turning
The controversial and over-budget F-35 fighter is under almost constant attack. Some of the shortcomings identified by critics are no doubt real, but the story of a previously-unidentified F-35 glitch that emerged last week was, at least to this former air-to-air pilot, a bit of a shock: a report out of Edwards AFB stating that a clean (no […]
Air-Minded: Special Weapons & Fighters
The Navy reportedly wants to add nuclear bomb-carrying capability to its version of the F-35 fighter, the F-35C. The weapon mentioned in the linked article is the B61 gravity nuclear bomb, designed in the 1960s and long out of production. For some reason this disturbs me. In the 1950s and 60s, you’d occasionally hear about Air Force […]
Air-Minded: Dragons & Bolos
A friend visited the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) in Tucson a few weeks ago. I told her if any particular airplane spoke to her, I’d write an air-minded post on it. Well, you never know what’s going to catch someone’s eye. In her case, it was one of our orphans, a Douglas B-23 Dragon. PASM’s Dragon has been […]
Air-Minded: Planes of Fame Photoblog I
During last week’s motorcycle trip, I visited the Planes of Fame Museum in Valle, Arizona. The main Planes of Fame Museum is located in Chino, California; the Arizona adjunct is what I would call an overflow facility. It’s off the beaten track, located halfway up the lonely road between Williams, Arizona and the South Rim […]
Air-Minded: Letting the Team Down
I don’t have any brilliant thoughts or insights about Germanwings Flight 9525, where the co-pilot is suspected of committing mass murder by flying a plane full of passengers into a mountain in the Swiss Alps. I’m sad and shocked, of course, that any pilot would do such a thing. I’ve always considered military and commercial flying a profession; […]
Air-Minded: “I’ve Never Seen the Knife More Dull”
Institutionally, the military services have never forgotten the crippling constraints imposed upon the conduct of the air war in Vietnam: Target lists were reviewed at the White House in the informal atmosphere of the Tuesday lunch, attended principally by President Johnson, his press secretary, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the President’s special assistant for national […]
Air-Minded: Propellers of the Stars
I am the Nancy Grace of celebrity plane wrecks. When I saw the first photos of actor Harrison Ford’s crashed airplane on the golf course in Santa Monica, I immediately zeroed in on the propeller. Probably only someone trained as an aircraft accident investigator would do that. I am such a someone, and that is what […]