Air-Minded: Little Friends & Aerial Refueling

In an earlier Air-Minded post, I wrote about the early days of aerial refueling and the initial development of USAF tanker aircraft and refueling methods. This post is about the USAF jet fighters, interceptors, and attack jets that depend on those tankers to get to where they’re going and back home again.

Would You Like Some Hitler with That? (Updated)

Did anyone ever really think invoking Hitler and the Holocaust was a sure-fire way to shut down the other side in a debate? I ask this because both progressives and conservatives have been Hitlering one another’s arguments since the end of the Third Reich and to my knowledge it’s never once worked.

We Gonna Rock Down to Electric Avenue

… and then we’ll take it higher. For months now, contractors have been building a new volunteer center at Pima Air & Space Museum. When I went in yesterday it was open, and I became one of the first volunteers to use it. The really big surprise, though, was finding two new electric trams parked […]

Air-Minded: IL-2 Restoration Photoblog

Work continues on Pima Air & Space Museum’s IL-2 Shturmovik. The fuselage is largely finished, the engine is in, the wings have been fabricated from original blueprints and are awaiting installation, and the propeller, damaged when the Shturmovik’s pilot crash-landed on a frozen lake near the Russian village of Zamejie on January 28, 1944, is being hammered […]

Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XIII

I included an image of Pima Air & Space Museum’s Curtiss F6C-4 Hawk in a recent Air-Minded entry. At the time it was still in restoration, and the photo wasn’t mine. The Hawk is now on display, just inside the main entrance, and I’m able to share some of my own photos: The Curtiss F6C Hawk was […]

Air-Minded: Air Force One Folklore & Fact (Updated 11/16/18)

I’m a docent at Pima Air & Space Museum, where I conduct tram tours of our outdoor display aircraft. When welcoming visitors at the start of the tour, I ask if anyone wants to know more about any particular airplane. Nine times out of ten, the one people want to hear about is our former Air Force […]