“On this date in 1963 Captain Joe Walker flew the North American X-15A to an altitude of 271,000 feet. Having flown higher than 50 miles, he qualified for astronaut wings.” Only The Space Shuttle ‘flew’ Faster Than This Rocket Plane Designed With A Slide Rule Queue the theme song/video to Star Trek ‘Enterprise’ …
Category: Aviation
Concorde vs SR-71 Blackbird
I was controlling a westbound Concorde just entering my airspace when I received details of an SR-71 coming eastbound on a route that would conflict with Concorde. The SR-71 did not always fly supersonically, it was doing less than Mach1 on this day, but it was still at a very high altitude. I had been…
On This Day: Berlin Airlift Ended
The Berlin Airlift ended in 1949, months after the blockade was lifted. The allies airlifted supplies to the city for nearly a year. They delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies, and raised spirits for over 2 million Berliners.This morning, Ambassador Haber called it, “a show of solidarity Germans will never forget.” The Berlin Airlift remains…
99 Degree Luftballons
On this day in 1927, a gust of wind pushed the airship USS Los Angeles into an almost vertical position as it was moored to a mast at NAS Lakehurst. The crew tried to right the airship by climbing the keel towards the tail before it settled back down with only minor damage and no…
Catch me if you can!
This photo was taken in April of 1985 over the Irish Sea by Adrian Meredith who was flying in a Royal Air Force Tornado fighter jet and it’s the only photo of a Concorde flying at supersonic speed. Even though the Tornado is capable of matching the Concorde’s cruising speed, it could only do it…
The 1963 Flying Fury
Naval Aviation history you probably never knew about…In 1978, while in port at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines, some folks from RVAH-1 “captured” a 1963 Plymouth Fury and brought it back on board the USS Enterprise, CVN-65. The Sailors marked up the Fury to represent the Squadron and the ship. Then when they…
Life at Area 51 in the 1960s
I came across this in an aviation group somewhere, previously shared on Facebook by Thornton “TD” Barnes, who worked at the facility for a period of time. He’s also got a website with his bio and pictures from his career with the Army, NASA, Atomic projects and business ventures in oil. More unclassified frivolity that…
Wisdom by Chuck Yeager
One of my favorite quotes by Chuck Yeager is “It’s the man, not the machine” which is in reference to dogfighting in an aircraft. This of course is meant to say that someone with a superior fighter plane could still be taken down by someone with an inferior one; that it is the operator in…
RIP General Chuck Yeager
The man, the legend… Chuck Yeager has left us. He was an ace in WWII (“Ace in a day” in fact, downing 5 aircraft in a single mission), he was the first to shoot down a German Me-262 jet fighter in his propeller-driven P-51 Mustang, he was the first man to break the sound barrier…
The First SR-71 over North Korea
I came across this interesting little story posted by Linda Sheffield in her “Habubrats” group online: A few paragraphs from my father’s (Col. Richard “Butch” Sheffield) unpublished book.North Korea, November 22, 1969, SR-71 number, 972First SR to overfly North Korea and first to land in South Korea.Some years later General Minter told me that this…