Posts Tagged ‘pilots’
May 3, 2018
This article reminded me of a story my ground school instructor, Jim Judge, told us while we were working on our pilot’s license. He also taught ground school to 747 pilots. Part of any ground school is learning how to do a proper “walk around”. Walk Arounds are the procedure a pilot goes through before leaving Earth. It is simply an effort to find anything on the outside of the vehicle that could endanger the flight. He told us some of the 747 pilots feared heights. It was evident during the 747 “walk around”. There were times when the 747 pilot would be required to walk on the horizontal stabilizer (small wing in rear of plane). They needed to do this to get a good look at the vertical stabilizer also at the rear. There is a lot of distance between the horizontal stabilizer and the ground and not a lot to hold onto. My ground school class thought it was a bit funny a pilot that flies at 30,000 feet feared such a height.
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Tags:Astronauts, heights, pilots
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February 10, 2016
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I learned about “Short Snorters” in a book I am reading entitled “Frozen in Time” which is a true story that took place during WW II. A cargo plane went down in Greenland. A B-17 bomber diverted from its maiden flight to Europe via Greenland crashed searching for the cargo plane. Finally, a Coast Guard “Duck” airplane crashed looking for the bomber. The book is about the effort to bring the planes and crews home, alive or dead.
Tags:Alaska, pilots, whiskey
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December 30, 2015
November 1940 during the greatest conflict man has ever known, an epic duel unfolds between two ace pilots, each willing to take the match to its ultimate conclusion. Unknown to the pilots is a fate neither has considered.
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Tags:German, pilots, WW II
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December 3, 2013
During WWII the USA used women to ferry planes from the factories to United States bases and overseas. As the new high performance fighters were developed they too needed to be ferried from the factories to where they were needed. The Catch 22 was almost all were single seat aircraft (impossible for an instructor to ride along on the first flight) . As a result with just a short briefing on the ground as to where the instruments were located the women were required to fly these high performance aircraft to their bases and theaters of operation. The did it heroically and ironically as a civilian corps with no military benefits. Many years after the war congress agreed to award the women flyers military benefits.
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Tags:pilots, women, WWII
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July 28, 2013
Nightwitches – Female Russian bombers who bombed Germany during WW2. They had old, noisy planes & the engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid-flight to restart the props. To stop Germans from hearing them & starting up the anti aircraft guns, they’d climb to a certain height, coast down to German positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair & get the hell out of dodge. Their leader flew 200+ missions & was never captured.
Thanks to Tony V for the above image
Tags:pilots, Russian, witches
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