Military Posts

When WASPS took over Avenger Field
April 7, 2025

When WASPS took over Avenger Field

I enjoyed Pam Leblanc’s story when I read it in another magazine. I asked, and she graciously allowed us to reprint it here. Enjoy – RM______________________________By Pam LeBlancThey had to cinch up the waistbands of their oversized,…
Straightening Out the Enola Gay
March 14, 2025

Straightening Out the Enola Gay

“Who controls the past, controls the future.Who controls the present controls the past.”George Orwell, from his novel, 1984The name Enola Gay may mean nothing to quite a few people these days. That’s OK. While I never met Enola Gay, I’ll betcha …
What Makes an Ace in the 21st Century?
Feb. 18, 2024

What Makes an Ace in the 21st Century?

When it was revealed in a BBC interview, The Fighter Pilots Hunting Houthi Drones Over the Red Sea, that Marine Captain Earl Ehrhart, an AV-8B Harrier pilot aboard the USS Bataan, had downed seven drones, subsequent stories on this action hailed him…
Making Like Maverick in an L-39
Jan. 17, 2024

Making Like Maverick in an L-39

By Rob MarkAn early scene in An Officer and a Gentleman, the 1982 movie about U.S. Navy recruits slogging their way through officer candidate school, has granite-tough Marine Gunnery Sgt. Foley (actor Lou Gossett Jr.) confronting candidate Zack May…
X-65 Controls with the (Active) Flow
Oct. 2, 2023

X-65 Controls with the (Active) Flow

The brothers Wright solved the conundrum of three-axis control for powered aircraft with the pitch, yaw, and roll control through the combined forces of an elevator, rudder, and wing warping. Glenn Curtiss effectively won his roll control legal batt…
Defining Aviation Learning Experiences
Sept. 18, 2023

Defining Aviation Learning Experiences

To maintain my social skills, on Fridays I hike the Wiouwash Trail for 2.46 miles from the trailhead just east of Winneconne to the Bare Bones Brewery, which is trailside where the former interurban railbed enters Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on its northwes…
Mechanical Drawing: The Art of Aviation Engineering
Sept. 4, 2023

Mechanical Drawing: The Art of Aviation Engineering

Guided by triangles and French curves, pencil applied to paper is how ideas made the transition to all things aviation. Mechanical drawing was its moniker and the artists who precisely lined each part of some aeronautical creation so hands-on crafts…
Single-Pilot Point of Failure
May 1, 2023

Single-Pilot Point of Failure

Given the capable reliability of aviation technology today, in the realm of a perfect world, single-pilots flying people-carrying commercial and military aircraft seems a logical hypothetical possibility.To prove the reality of this possibility, th…
Aerostats: A Stratospheric Gulf of Tonkin?
Feb. 20, 2023

Aerostats: A Stratospheric Gulf of Tonkin?

The recent political and military focus on aerostats—balloons—and the resulting cyclone of incomplete communication of verifiable concrete details, the confusion resulting from people demonstrating that they possess no knowledge or understanding of …
Veteran’s Day Reflection: Is it Time to Bring Back the Military Draft?
Nov. 14, 2022

Veteran’s Day Reflection: Is it Time to Bring Back the Military Draft?

Combine the historically low unemployment rate with decades of conflicts that citizens cannot remember, enumerate, explain, or even acknowledge knowing about them in the first place, and it should be no surprise that volunteers are ignoring the US a…
Words Versus Military Tuskegee Top Gun Actions
Aug. 22, 2022

Words Versus Military Tuskegee Top Gun Actions

President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. It mandated the desegregation of the US military. Truman stood firm in the face of pushback from politicians and military officers of all ranks from all branches who opposed an int…
Wings Set Aviation Movie Standard in 1927
Aug. 8, 2022

Wings Set Aviation Movie Standard in 1927

Much has been made of the actors portraying naval aviators in Top Gun: Maverick being filmed in the aft seat of an F-18 Super Hornet to capture the sagging distortion of real-life g-forces. Compare that to the challenges faced by Charles “Budd…
Don’t Pass the Historic Wendover Airfield By
July 11, 2022

Don’t Pass the Historic Wendover Airfield By

During World War II the US military carved thousands of airfields into the American landscape. Of the hundreds that still serve our aerial infrastructure, few maintain a general connection to their original mission. An exception might be Utah’…
Indestructible: The Rest of the Pappy Gunn Story
June 27, 2022

Indestructible: The Rest of the Pappy Gunn Story

During a bimonthly recon of a used bookstore hoping that some unexpected title would catch my eye, Indestructible: One Man’s Mission That Changed the Course of World War II arrested my scan with the image of a red Beech 18 wearing prewar US re…
Reporting for Duty: AARP Studios Shares Veterans’ Stories
June 13, 2022

Reporting for Duty: AARP Studios Shares Veterans’ Stories

The bait dangled by AARP Studios was the 10-minute Reporting for Duty documentary about Lt. Carey Lohrenz, who in 1994 became one of the first female aviators to fly the F-14 Tomcat. The latest of eight episodes so far produced, the YouTube channel …
Counting Down to Top Gun: Maverick
May 16, 2022

Counting Down to Top Gun: Maverick

As one crawling into the final third of life, I’m in no hurry to write my final chapters. That said, May 27—when Top Gun: Maverick is due in our local movie house—cannot get here soon enough. To accelerate the passage of time, I’ve been …
EAA Corsair is Korean Vet Flown by Medal of Honor Recipient
May 2, 2022

EAA Corsair is Korean Vet Flown by Medal of Honor Recipient

Few veterans that fought in World War II are still with us today, and that’s as true for aircraft as well as the pilots who flew them. It is especially true for the veterans who were recalled for Korea, America’s forgotten war, which con…
The First F-15 Was a Reporter
March 21, 2022

The First F-15 Was a Reporter

Researching the 75th anniversary of Project Thunderstorm, conducted at the U.S. Air Force’s All-Weather Flying Center in Wilmington, Ohio, from May to September, 1947, I admired the courage of the volunteer pilots, weather observers, and airbo…
Review: Eric Brown’s Wings on My Sleeve, the Life of Flying’s Forrest Gump
March 7, 2022

Review: Eric Brown’s Wings on My Sleeve, the Life of Flying’s Forrest Gump

Like many history-obsessed aviation geeks, I had a passing knowledge of Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown defined by the most common bullet points that most often summarized his life. He was (he passed in 2016 at age 97) a Royal Navy aviator a…
Open Cockpits, Stepping into History at the Air Zoo
Dec. 27, 2021

Open Cockpits, Stepping into History at the Air Zoo

Admiring historic airplanes from a museum floor is a big-picture perspective of their contributions, whatever they may be, to aviation. Regardless the aeronautical era or the scope of the story, the viewer’s mind readily puts the winged artifa…
Dauntless Dedication to Air Zoo Aircraft Reincarnation
Dec. 13, 2021

Dauntless Dedication to Air Zoo Aircraft Reincarnation

Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience CEO Troy Thrash said the Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless on display in the World War II exhibit was the team’s first Lake Michigan restoration project. The eight-year effort took place years ago in a building…
Aircraft Reincarnation Through Air Zoo Restoration
Nov. 29, 2021

Aircraft Reincarnation Through Air Zoo Restoration

When it comes to aircraft, restoration and reincarnation may seem like synonyms, but there is a significant difference that transcends semantics.Restoration is rehabilitating an airplane to a former point in its existence. Certainly, this is what t…
Air Zoo: Unique Airplanes
Nov. 1, 2021

Air Zoo: Unique Airplanes

What makes the aerospace menagerie on display at Kalamazoo’s Air Zoo special is its unique airplanes, as in the only one in the world, the sole survivor of a specific make and model. With its black skin fading into the main display floor’…
Review: YouTube’s Ward Carroll, F-14 RIO
May 31, 2021

Review: YouTube’s Ward Carroll, F-14 RIO

A pandemic addiction to YouTube has delivered consistently interesting, entertaining, and educational interludes when its selection algorithm introduced me to Ward Carroll, a retired naval flight officer who spent most of his career as a radar inter…