Posted on 02/08/2018 8:07:10 AM PST by DFG
When I was a kid, I actually got to meet Pappy. I was to young at the time to understand the significance but I remember thinking that the guy was tough as nails.
Right. Conrad. Thx.
:)
Good point.
The H[eroes] & I[cons] channel runs it Sundays, @6PM, iirc.
I read an article once about a Black Sheep Squadron veteran who was a lawyer. He was pretty irritated at the TV show, especially when a judge said something like “why should I believe a schemer from that unit?”
Another great book is The Jolly Rogers by Tom Blackburn. VF-17 was known as the Skull and Crossbones squadron. They had over 150 confirmed air to air kills. I read both Baa Baa Black Sheep and The Jolly Rogers more than once.
Most of the aerial footage was shot off the Southern California coast. The island seen during the closing credits is (the eastern tip of) Santa Cruz Island, facing southeast.
From the looks of that picture he couldn’t see over the instrument panel!! I hope the seat elevated.
What I learned, was told, is to land a Corsair on a Aircraft Carrier, instead of approaching say from 2 miles out, and coming straight at the Aircraft Carrier, you would circle around, and at the last minute, turn into {heading Straight} the Aircraft Carrier, and basically land blind.
From where I stand on this small subject, gives the true meaning of a set of BRASS Balls.
#39 Robert Conrad cheated on his wife with actress Brianne Leary who played a nurse. His daughter Nancy Conrad was on the show too as a nurse.
Picture sure to trigger some race hustler.
Baader and Dowding went at it tooth and tong over interception strategies to the point that Dowding had him posted to North England to keep Baader out of his hair. Baader wanted massed fighter formations hitting German bombers, but Dowding was more wily in letting Goering think that the RAF was on its last legs by intentionally straggling his fighters up to intercept the Luftwaffe.
Goering took the bait, assuming that he was mopping up the last of the RAF fighter force, meanwhile his bombers were getting shot up coming and going with their crews bailing out over England into captivity. British pilots bailed out over their homeland and were quickly back in the cockpit.
Dowding even faked a bombed out RAF communications center, which German agents reported back to Berlin, as part of this deception plan which added to the implication that British air coordination was a shambles. Dwoding’s strategy was a brilliant use of stretched thin resources at an absolutely critical juncture in the war, one that kept Germany from invading England.
Mainly, I would imagine, in order to catch the arrestor cable with the tail hook, you’d have to be seriously ‘nose up’ ...putting that huge 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney right in your line of sight. Blind indeed.
No diversity, no trans, no queers, no women, no disabled...
>Which is why I love anything connected with WW2. Actually the Korean War too, they were cut out of the same cloth as those of WW2.
My Dad was a 2nd Armored tanker under George Patton in WW2, and fought in Korea from Pusan to the Yalu River. So I know a thing or too about these kind of men. Millennials today, generally speaking, are a bunch of sissies by comparison, they make me puke.
I saw many Corsairs in 1944-1945 coming out of the factory doors in Conn. and take off. Mine and my sister`s names were written on the tail of the last Corsair sent to England.
My father was the chief electrical inspector for Vought. I also saw Sikorsky`s helicopters flying there next door - I called them “big bugs”.
Picture sure to trigger some race hustler.
Thank you for posting this. Excellent photos! Had the privilege of meeting Pappy at an airshow in Merced, CA many years ago. He was very grumpy, but I shook his hand and thank him for his service anyway. He signed a poster for me that I gave to a friend as a gift. I’ll never forget it.
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