This Date in Aviation History: July 29 - July 31

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 07/31/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from July 29 through July 31.

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July 29, 1967 – A massive fire breaks out on the flight deck of USS Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam. Working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier has been called one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Controlling jet and propeller aircraft around a rolling deck is an intricate ballet of blasting jet engines and spinning propellers, with death or serious injury a constant concern. And that is just during peacetime. In wartime, the dangers are compounded by a higher tempo of operations and the presence of bombs, missiles, rockets, and fully-fueled aircraft either on the flight deck or stored belowdecks. In fact, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! took a critical turn when American dive bombers arrived over the Japanese fleet while aircraft were sitting on deck, fully loaded with bombs and fuel. The US Navy has been honing the art of carrier operations and carrier safety since 1920, but despite rigid safety procedures, there is always the potential for disaster.

By the early summer of 1967, the war in Vietnam was escalating dramatically, and the carrier !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CVA-59) sailed from Norfolk, Virginia to take up a position at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! off the coast of Vietnam. Once there, Forrestal immediately began launching attacks against North Vietnam in support of American and South Vietnamese troops. But as the pace of operations increased, the Navy’s demand for bombs soon outstripped production. To keep the bombers flying, the Navy was forced to use older ordnance, some of which dated back more than 10 years and had been exposed to the elements while in storage. On the day preceding the accident, Forrestal received a shipment of 1000-pound bombs, many of which were older, unstable bombs that had been improperly stored in Guam. Forrestal’s commanding officer, Captain !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , at first refused the munitions, but he ended up accepting them reluctantly because of the acute shortage and the need for the bombs on sorties the following day. Forrestal’s bomb handlers were particularly concerned with the unstable bombs being stored belowdecks, where an accidental explosion could sink the entire ship. So the bombs were stored out in the open on the flight deck.

The next day, the deck of Forrestal was crowded with fueled and armed aircraft and swarmed with deck handlers, pilots, and other personnel. Shortly before 11:00 am an electrical fault in a 5-inch !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! caused it to launch uncommanded from a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! parked on the flight deck. The rocket tore across the flight deck and struck the external fuel tank on an armed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Though the rocket did not explode, it punctured the fuel tank and the leaking fuel ignited. As damage control teams rushed to fight the rapidly spreading fire, one of the unstable bombs loaded on the Skyhawk detonated, blowing a hole in the armored flight deck and raking the deck with shrapnel. Most of the members of Forrestal’s most experienced damage control team were killed, and even more burning fuel was spread around the deck. As the fires continued to rage, nine more explosions occurred, eight of which were caused by the unstable bombs. The detonations tore holes in the flight deck that allowed burning jet fuel to flow into the living quarters below and into the interior spaces of the ship. In an effort to minimize further explosions, Forrestal’s crew pushed damaged aircraft into the water and rolled bombs overboard by hand.

The destroyer USS Rupertus comes alongside Forrestal to help fight the fires

In what Rear Admiral Harvey P. Lanham later called an act of “magnificent seamanship, ” Commander Edwin Burke maneuvered the destroyer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (DD-851) to within 20 feet of Forrestal and held station there for 90 minutes in order to use its own fire hoses to fight the fire, and Forrestal’s crew was eventually able to extinguish the fire by 4:00 am the following morning. The fire and explosions, the worst on a US carrier since WWII, claimed the life of 134 crewmen and injured 161, many of them seriously. Forrestal returned to Norfolk, where it spent more than 200 days undergoing repairs and refitting. Though Capt. Beling was absolved of responsibility for the fire, he was assigned to staff work following the incident and retired in 1973 with the rank of Rear Admiral. Forrestal returned to service in the Mediterranean in 1968, and was decommissioned in 1993.

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Northrop F-5E Freedom Fighter

July 30, 1959 – The first flight of the Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter. When the first jet fighters appeared near the end of WWII, they were relatively simple affairs, essentially straight-winged piston aircraft that were adapted for the new turbojet engines. But as jet engines became more powerful, fighters got bigger, more complex—and more expensive. To combat this trend, Northrop began working on a small, simple fighter in the mid-1950s called the N-156 in the hopes of securing a contract to produce a fighter that could fly from the US Navy’s smaller !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The design team was led by Northrop’s vice president of engineering !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who also designed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , arguably two of the greatest fighters ever built. Along with chief engineer Welko Gasich, the Northrop team set out with the specific goal of creating a small, low-cost fighter that would be easy to maintain and easy to fly, but would also have the potential for future growth and development.

Northrop YF-5A pre-production prototype

To keep the size of their new fighter at a minimum, Northrop selected two powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines which had originally been designed to power the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! target decoy. Though the J85 was small, weighing in at just 300-500 pounds, it provided 3,500 pounds of thrust in normal operation and 5,000 pounds with afterburner. Combined with the fighter’s small size and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fuselage, which gave the plucky fighter its characteristic Coke bottle shape, the F-5 was capable of a top speed of Mach 1.6 with a thrust-to-weight ratio of up to 7.5:1, compared to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! at just 4.7:1. The F-5 was armed with two 20mm !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! revolver cannons in the nose with 280 rounds each. Seven hardpoints could carry up to 7,000 pounds of bombs, rockets, missiles, or extra fuel tanks.

The two-seat F-5B, which was later developed into the remarkably successful T-38 Talon trainer

The changing needs of the US Navy led them to abandon the use of smaller escort carriers, but Northrop forged ahead with their design and developed both a single-seat fighter version, the N-156F, and a two-seat trainer version, the N-156T. In July 1956, the Air Force chose the N-156T to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as its primary trainer, and the newly designated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! became the first supersonic trainer and eventually the most-produced trainer in the world. Northrop continued developing the N-156F in the hopes of providing a fighter for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which sought to arm nations allied to the US with low-cost weapons. It was this aircraft which took its maiden flight on July 30, breaking the sound barrier on its first flight.

A Northrop F-5F Tiger II flown by Tactical Air Support Inc, a private company that provides tactical training to the US military and other allied countries

Despite the excellent performance and reliability of the F-5, the Air Force showed little interest in the fighter, and the program teetered on the edge of cancelation. However, the Kennedy Administration chose the F-5 in 1962 as the winner of the F-X completion to provide a low-cost export fighter to America’s allies. In 1965, the Air Force sent 12 F-5As to Vietnam to evaluate them under the codename Project Skoshi Tiger, and it was here that the F-5 received its unofficial nickname, which later became official with the F-5E/F Tiger II. While the F-5A and F-5E/F weren’t adopted in large numbers by the US, it continues to be flown in the aggressor role for dissimilar combat training. The Tiger II, which won the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, remains in service alongside older Freedom Fighters the world over. Northrop attempted yet another upgrade to the plucky little fighter with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , hoping to develop an export fighter that would compete with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but it was ultimately unsuccessful. By the end of production in 1987, a total of 847 F-5A/B/C aircraft had been built, along with nearly 1,400 F-5E/Fs.

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Short Takeoff

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July 29, 1945 – Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis . In the lead up to the nuclear attacks on Japan that hastened the end of WWII, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) sailed to the American air base on the island of Tinian to deliver the highly-enriched uranium-235 that would be used in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! atomic bomb. After delivering its cargo, Indianapolis left Tinian bound for the Philippines, but was discovered en route by Japanese submarine I-58, which put two torpedoes into the cruiser. The ship sank in just 12 minutes. Of the nearly 1,200 man crew, roughly 300 went down with the ship, while 900 men went into the water with few life rafts, few flotation vests, and no food or water. Due to the secrecy of the mission, the Navy was unaware of the sinking, and the remainder of the crew drifted for nearly four days. The men suffered dehydration, starvation, hyper- and hypothermia, salt poisoning, skin loss, and horrifying shark attacks before they were spotted by a routine aerial patrol. A Navy PBY Catalina arrived on scene, but could only put 56 survivors on board. Many more were lashed to the wings of the plane with parachute lines until rescue ships could arrive. Of the 900 crewmen who went into the water, only 300 survived, the largest single loss of life from a single ship at sea in Navy history. Captain Charles B. McVay III was court-martialed over the sinking and found guilty of failing to zigzag, though doing so was at his discretion and he was not told that a Japanese sub was operating in the area. He was later exonerated and retired at the rank of rear admiral, but committed suicide in 1968 at age 70.

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July 29, 1958 – President Dwight Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. NASA has its origin in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , an agency created in 1915 to further the efforts of aeronautic research and technological development in the United States. But as America entered the space age following WWII, the country needed an organization for a new era. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! carries this simple preamble: To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes. While NASA has done, and continues to do, research that carries military implications, its stated purpose is that of a peaceful, non-military organization. The Act goes on to say that, “The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.” In addition to NASA’s high profile space programs such as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the organization continues to fund research into all aspects of space exploration, space travel, aviation, and related sciences. NASA’s latest large project, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, will see astronauts return to the Moon, create a permanent lunar station, and one day journey to Mars.

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An RB-45 Tornado is refueled by a KB-29 tanker

July 29, 1952 – A US Air Force North American RB-45 Tornado completes the first non-stop jet-powered flight across the Pacific Ocean. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! has the distinction of being the first jet-powered bomber to enter US Air Force service, and though it was quickly superseded by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the RB-45 reconnaissance variant served until 1959 and made flights over the Soviet Union. To demonstrate the capability of the bomber, a B-45 of the 91st Reconnaissance Wing commanded by Maj. Lou Carrington departed from Alaska and arrived in Japan 9 hours and 50 minutes later, refueling twice in the air along the way. The midair refueling by Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! tankers also marked the first time a multiengine jet bomber was refueled in flight. Carrington and his crew were awarded the MacKay Trophy by the Air Force in recognition of the “most meritorious flight of the year.”

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July 30, 1935 – US Navy pilot Frank Akers becomes the first person to perform a blind landing on an aircraft carrier. The importance of being able to fly without any outside visual cues was emphasized early on by American pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who, in 1929, became the first aviator to take off, fly, and land using only the airplane’s instruments. However, landing on a large airfield is not the same as landing on a small aircraft carrier. Frank Akers became a Naval Aviator in 1925, and by 1933 he was serving as a Radio Flight Test Officer and as Project Officer for Instrument Flying Development at the Naval Air Station, Anacostia, where he began working on the problem of landing on a carrier using only instruments. Akers took off from San Diego flying in the rear seat of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! with a hood over the cockpit. After a flight of 150 miles, Akers located and landed aboard the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a feat which earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. Akers was also present on board USS Hornet for the Doolittle Raid, took part in the Battle of Midway, and commanded the USS Saratoga from 1945-1946, and oversaw a record 642 landings in a single day

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July 30, 1971 – The Apollo 15 mission deploys the first Lunar Rover on the Moon. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was the ninth manned mission launched by NASA as part of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the fourth to land on the Moon. It was also the first of the so-called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which featured extended stays of more than three days on the lunar surface and a greater emphasis on scientific exploration. In order to cover more ground than was possible on foot, Apollo 15 deployed the first !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (LRV), a battery-powered rover that could carry two astronauts at speeds of up to eight miles per hour. Over the course of their stay on the Moon, astronauts !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! covered a total distance of 17.25 miles in the Rover. The Rover, along with ones deployed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , remain on the Moon.

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July 30, 1958 – The first flight of the de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou, a cargo aircraft designed for short takeoff and landing ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) to fulfill a requirement from the US Army for a tactical airlifter to supply frontline troops. Following the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Caribou was the first aircraft designed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to have two engines, and it entered US Army service in 1961 where it was known as the C-7. Initially seeing service in Vietnam, the Caribou’s ability to operate from runways as short as 1,200 feet made it an ideal complement to the Air Force’s larger cargo airplanes. A total of 307 were produced, and the final Caribous were retired from military service by the Royal Australian Air Force in 2009.

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July 30, 1954 – The first flight of the Grumman F-11 Tiger, a day fighter developed by Grumman for the US Navy that began as an advanced development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Grumman eliminated the wing root air intakes and moved them forward to help reduce drag, made the wing thinner, moved the elevator down to the fuselage, and reshaped the fuselage to take advantage of the newly discovered principle of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Tiger remained a work in progress throughout its career, and also earned the dubious distinction of being the first jet to shoot itself down when it overtook its own bullets in a dive during weapons testing. The Tiger’s operational career was relatively short, though it gained notoriety when the fighter was selected by the Navy’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1957. A total of 200 Tigers were produced from 1954-1959, and it was retired from active service in 1961, though it served the Blue Angels until 1969.  

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Lt. Col. Martha McSally

July 31, 1991 – The US Senate votes to allow women to fly combat aircraft. Women were first allowed to fly US military aircraft in WWII as members of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (WASP), but they were limited to ferrying flights and were considered civilian pilots, receiving no military benefits. The US Navy was the first branch to accept women as pilots in 1974, while the US Air Force accepted its first group of women pilots in 1976. However, women were still excluded from combat missions, even though they were flying cargo and liaison aircraft into war zones such as Panama, Grenada, and the Persian Gulf. Following the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! became the first American woman to fly a combat mission when she piloted a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in support of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! over Iraq in 1995. Today, women make up about seven percent of US Air Force combat pilots.

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July 31, 1952 – The first transatlantic helicopter flight. For a ferry flight from the United States to Germany, two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , christened Hop-A-Long and Whirl-O-Way , and modified to carry a 300-gallon fuel tank in the cabin, took off from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts on July 15 headed for Goose Bay, Labrador, with a stop in Maine. Accompanied by escort aircraft, the helicopters made stops in Greenland, Iceland, and finally arrived at Prestwick, Scotland on July 31. By the time the Chickasaws reached Wiesbaden, Germany, the trip had taken 21 days, due in large part to poor weather in the North Atlantic, and included nearly 52 hours of flight time. The first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by helicopter was completed in 1967 by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! with nine in-flight refuelings along the way.

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July 31, 1944 – The disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Born on June 29, 1900, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was a French author and pilot who is best known for his book   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ( The Little Princ e). Saint-Exupéry flew for the French Air Force in the early part WWII, then traveled to America following the fall of France to encourage the US to join the war. He later joined the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in North Africa, even though his health was failing and he was beyond the age limit for service. While flying a Lockheed F-5B, the unarmed reconnaissance variant of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Saint-Exupéry disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea. Though remains of a pilot were found, they were not confirmed to be his, and the details of his disappearance were never determined.

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July 31, 1941 – The first flight of the Lockheed Ventura, a medium bomber and maritime patrol aircraft developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and designed to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Ventura was initially flown by the RAF as a medium bomber, but it suffered high combat losses and was pulled from service in favor of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Remaining Venturas were moved to maritime patrol missions. In US Army Air Corps service, it was known as the B-34 Lexington and was used primarily for training, though Army Venturas were subsequently transferred to the US Navy where they gained the designation PV-1 and served primarily in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of Alaska.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. You can find more posts about aviation history, aviators, and aviation oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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gettingoldercarguy > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 12:52

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Great read, all of it. Thanks

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 12:53

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I was told this was the F-5 thread

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 12:57

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Having had some exposure to the aftermath... I can assure you that the Forrestal event had huge ramifications in how the Navy handles weapons design, handling and safety.

I often say, if Boeing had even 1% of the Navy’s safety protocols in design? There’d be 350 more people alive today. The Navy’s design standards for anything involving human factors and safety are world class.

RIP all those who suffered on the Forrestal that week.

bmil128 > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 13:08

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My dad was a supply officer and plankowner on John F Kennedy CVA-67 during pre-commissioning in Newport News/Norfolk and on her first deployment to the Mediterranean. When the Forrestal was towed into Norfolk, his CO Captain (later RADM) Buddy Yates sent him and some of the other officers to take a look at it to see what they could learn. On the JFK my dad’s office was underneath the aft landing deck near the first or second arresting cable; on the Forrestal in the exact corresponding spot was a huge hole in the deck.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > For Sweden 07/31/2020 at 13:17

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Mig-28!

user314 > For Sweden 07/31/2020 at 13:21

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Sister aircraft:

And distant cousins:

DipodomysDeserti > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 13:21

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ttyymmnn > DipodomysDeserti 07/31/2020 at 13:23

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“I like people who weren’t shot down.”

—Donald Trump 

DipodomysDeserti > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 13:30

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That guy is such a pussy.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 13:31

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Subsequent crews referred to that ship as the Forest Fire. There was a big fire on the Oriskany, which was thereafter referred to as the Toasty-O.

ttyymmnn > DipodomysDeserti 07/31/2020 at 13:49

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Yeah, total loser. 

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 07/31/2020 at 14:55

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What will we call the Bonhomme Richard ?

Scrap.

ttyymmnn > bmil128 07/31/2020 at 14:56

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I grew up in Norfolk, and I miss being around the water and seeing all the Navy ships, and all the Navy aircraft overhead. 

ttyymmnn > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 07/31/2020 at 14:58

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I remember reading something a few years ago about the Chinese and their new carrier. It talked about how, sure, the Chinese could build a carrier, but we’ve got 100 years of experience operating them.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 07/31/2020 at 15:05

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It is.

ttyymmnn > gettingoldercarguy 07/31/2020 at 15:06

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My pleasure! Thanks for reading. 

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 15:06

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Yeah. You have a lot of “really dangerous stuff” in close proximity. Makes you wonder what the protocols were for the nuclear torpedos and anti-aircraft rounds?

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 15:54

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Why is “meritorious” a word? It’s got too many syllables hanging off the useful bit . Feels like it should be “ meritous” though a quick google says the world doesn’t think so.

ttyymmnn > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 07/31/2020 at 16:16

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Because Latin.

early 15c., “deserving of divine grace,” from Latin meritorius “that for which money is paid, that by which money is earned,” from meritus , past participle of merere “to earn” (from PIE root *(s)mer- (2) “to get a share of something”). From late 15c. (Caxton) as “deserving of reward, worthy of praise or honor.” Related: Meritoriously ; meritoriousness .

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 16:25

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Because English, more like. If it was because Latin it’d follow victor, victorious or glory, glorious. Latin doesn’t do inconsistency, it’s the most logical language till they invented Esperanto. English, OTOH...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 07/31/2020 at 18:18

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The Bonfire?

bison78 > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 07/31/2020 at 23:01

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I believe one change was that all Navy personnel are now trained in fire fighting.

Bu t are we not going to mention that John McCain was in one of the planes that was hit by the errant missile?

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > bison78 07/31/2020 at 23:23

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Yeah, McCain was so controversial (sorta Swift Boaty theories) that it’s best to let him RIP. As an odd bit of trivia, there’s a photo in the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda of a group of POWs in the Hanoi Hilton. “Hey, that guy in the back row looks familiar... It was McCain.”

On the design side (the Forrestal had some PRE-KOREAN era old stock ordnance that was astonishingly obsolete— apparently the Fleet wanted to dispose of the old crap over Vietnam and much of it was completely lacking in interlocks and safing devices) th e level of safety engineering, reviews and approvals went way, way up. Every node in a system now gets full FMEA, every line of code gets scrutiny in literally every system state... everything must be proven  “fails safe” no matter what the situation. It’s frankly a pain in the ass to manage projects to that standard, but it’s for a noble purpose. No more Forrestals.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > ttyymmnn 08/01/2020 at 00:06

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that caribou looks like it took a hard landing and bowed the nose.

ttyymmnn > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 08/01/2020 at 00:08

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Looks okay from where I’m sitting, but it does have an odd shape.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > ttyymmnn 08/01/2020 at 00:25

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Yeah I meant how the nose/cockpit don’t line up with the engines wings or tail

ttyymmnn > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 08/01/2020 at 01:04

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Definitely a downward tilt to the engines. Not sure why. 

bmil128 > ttyymmnn 08/01/2020 at 15:31

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All the CVA-67 plankowners were made honor ary plankowners of the new CVN-79 and I went with him to Newport News for the christening in December, I had never been to the Tidewater area before. It was a windy and bitter cold day next to the pier.

His old CO was there, still kicking at 95, and he presented the CO of the new ship with a Kennedy rocking chair, something that has been done for every skipper of the old JFK, and I got a picture of my dad with both of them. He stayed in the reserves until 1991 and his last 2 week duty assignment was unloading equipment here in Houston/Barbours Cut returning from Desert Storm.