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!

Sewers Not Walls

I don’t know how many readers look at older posts here at Paul’s Thing, but if you do you might have noticed most of the photos are gone. The graphics and photos I use here link to originals stored on Flickr. Three days ago I tried to upload new photos: my account had vanished, along […]

Air-Minded: Soesterberg Photoblog, April 1961

My friend Peter van ____, who was the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Dutch military liaison officer when I flew F-15s at Soesterberg Air Base from 1978-1982, just sent me a batch of NATO archival photos taken there on 5 & 6 April 1961. The occasion was either a NATO exercise or possibly the production of […]

Air-Minded: Influencing the Future

In 1979, when I was stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, Prince Claus and two of his boys came to visit. I was on air defense alert that day with Jim Kellogg. We were pretty sure the Dutch would arrange a scramble for the royal family. Sure enough, the klaxon went off and five […]