Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/08/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 12:28 AM 8/14/2007, Adam Bridge wrote: >I desperately wish I could have seen a B-58 in the air. After I was >old enough to drive I'd go down to the Air Force Museum at Wright >Patterson. At that time, before the new museum was built, the aircraft >sat outside. B-70, B-58, a great hulking B-36, B-47 and all the WWII >birds. I was always a lover of the big delta-winged fighters. The >Century-Series fighters were the shapes of my youth. > When I was three we lived in the City of Lost Angles. One day, my father took the dog for a walk and I went along. There was a heavy rumbling in the distance and Dad stopped to look up. I did to: overhead flew a flight of six B-36D's with those "six turnin' and four burnin'". Dad, who began his flight instruction in biplanes, just grinned. Later, when I was in Pittsburgh, I got to see B-58's flying overhead, and impressive it was. Then we moved West again, though to the Bay Area and lived in northern Marin County in Novato, just outside what was then Hamilton AFB. The F-106's from Air Defense Command used to come in and drop subsonic over Novato, just to make the windows rattle a bit. They did this 24/7 but you got used to it after a while. Hell, I saw the very last performance Barnum & Bailey ever did under the Big Top and I met Sir Alan Villiers and spoke with a bunch of German and Russian WWI Vets and shook Barry Goldwater's hand but NOTHING impacted my youth like those B-36's. Peacemakers they were called, and Peacemakers they were: one of the very few mainline US bombers never to have dropped a bomb in anger. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!