59 articles · 18.9K karma · 39 friends · active 2 years, 11 months ago
i'm a 68 year old retired high steel ironworker out of ironworkers local #5 washington d.c but live in maryland...we are not steel workers...ironworkers erect it they don't make it in a mill...i did that for 34 years..i am a navy brat...my dad and brother were both navy captains...dad a pilot and brother submarine service...dad joined in 1939 and went into battleships served in iceland on the armed neutrality patrol chasing the tirpitz but couldn't shoot unless hit...then blimps then heavier than air...was at coral seas and midway [kiska and attu] on the battle ship and was one of three battle wagons to survive pearl...he got into airships 1943 and went to flight school after the war...flew snj ad t-33 banshee pbm's p2v's s2f's and beechcraft and commanded 2 blimp squadrons ZW-1 and 2 and set up the first blimp squadron in england 1945...is mentioned in the book blimps and u boats twice..dad was anti submarine warfare and brother was a submariner...brother was a high school dropout who joined the navy at 17 in 1962 became one of the youngest 2nd class Petty Officers in the navy at 19...went to college at Purdue on the navy's dime and commanded 2 nuclear submarines a fast attack and an fbm...he was skipper of the alabama when crimson tide was made...he hated the movie...said it was just a farce...i became an ironworker because i am not an academic...more of a mechanic...i raised 4 kids and now have 7 grands and 5 more that belong my second wife...two of my dads best friends were jimmy flatly and john l smith MOH who lead the cactus air force on guadalcanal and marine general george dooley an early tbf pilot...my parents moved 18 times in 26 years...but i kept finding them...i was born at lakehurst naval air station 1952...have been a modeller since 1960...i still love monogram tbf sbd hellcat and corsair and that old 1/96 pby plus an aurora or two quite a few renwall ships and some of those lovely suitable for framing revell kits...not to mention the lindberg me 262..i love planes ships muscle cars motorcycles figures and armor...world history and reading...i am married to a fine very kind lady that puts up with just about anything i do and have a loving sister, i have been close to all my life
More than a hundred years ago, in a mountain village in Switzerland, lived a man who's strange experiments with the dead have since become legend.,the legend is still told the world over, the legend of Fraankensteen
ahhgh,pig snort, [...]
actually the Revell knock-off as the original Aurora had Batman written on the tree
Holy Smokes Batman
as a young man he served as "batboy" for the Gotham city Yankees
zoinks
kapow
I thought the searchlight was the bomb but [...]
F4U-2 Corsair BuNo.02624 No.212 'Midnite Cocktail' flown by Capt Howard W Bollman, VMF(N)-532, Kagman Field, Saipan, 14 April 1944...two kills
these had the bullet proof glass removed for night visibility
should not have had the blown [...]
My brother joined the navy at age 17 in aug. 1962 after completing the 11th grade...He attended boot camp at san diego and qualified for his GED before being transferred to Millington- Memphis NAS Tenn. for electronics "A" [...]
Lt. Jim Thompson piloted this aircraft out of Suwon AFB South Korea. In May 1953 he scored his first kill, a Russian MiG-15 flown by a red Chinese pilot. The MiG had a marvelous dragon painted on the nose which enamoured Jim so much he ran [...]
Taegu AFB South Korea 1952
the little round hole was an access cover so ground crew could get to the electronics below the canopy
pilot is Col. Joe Davis Jr.
58th Bomb Wing
the white canopy frames were not individual windows...the [...]
The world's first production helicopter came on the scene in 1942...Flettner came up with the same intermeshing blade design still in effect today...a radial engine sits behind the pilot with a transmission on the front from which a shaft [...]
the Messerschmitt 262 the first operational and combat jet must have been a pretty scary opponent, being as it could do 100 mph faster than anything in the allied inventory...i still remember Clark Gable's consternation about it in the [...]
The Bell AH-1 Cobra came on the scene in 1967. It was the first dedicated gunship platform from the ground up in the world. I remember how impressed I was the first time I saw one with that signature front profile of three foot across from [...]
this is a Rolls Royce Phaeton…the old black buggies in the westerns that the doctors drove…like “Doc Adams” on Gunsmoke were called Phaetons…it basically means open , no side windows…these were called open cars or coachs and [...]
