Elvis forever????

Listening to that, i’d be caught in a trap.
I can’t walk out!

Suspecious Minds….His best song along with Kentucky Rain.

A true Elvis story that has something to do with aircraft. In the mid-50’s my father, an USAF major at the time, was attending Lockheed’s F-104 maintenence course in Burbank.
He’s at the bar at the Knickerbarker Hotel and who’s sitting there but Elvis.
Elvis says Hi and autographs a picture book for my two sisters.
Dad swore it was true.

Brush with fame…

Aside from politicians famous in the US only, mine all have something to do with aviation….

Bob Hope, U.S. actor and comedian…now they’ve named an airport after him.
Jimmy Stewart, actor and WWII Liberator pilot based in Norfolk.
Ed White, astronaut, first American to walk in space. Killed in 1967 Apollo 1 fire.

But one of my biggest thrills was meeting the neice of the Wright Brothers, Ivonette Wirght Miller. Her attorney husband was the executor of the Orville Write estate. She was in her 90s when I met her…and it sounds corney but it was an honor to meet someone who knew the brothers from her childhood until Orville’s death in 1948.

My autographed book collection includes Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, Mustang ace Don Gentile, aviation author Ernie Gann, astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Alan Sheppard, Frank Borman.
And Chuck Yeager….

When the chips were down….

Is that not a WW2 burger van for feeding the aircrew when they come back from a sortie?

They picked it up on a raid over Hamburg.

XA-22 Maryland

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/attack/a3/a3-22.htm

I checked with the USAF Museum site and indeed theUSAAF bought Maryland for testing….the XA-22. The company paid for R&D.
They did not buy a Baltimore, but paid for the RAF Leand Lease aircarft.

No Marylands or Baltimores

No preserved Marylands or Baltimores remain…of course they could be some piece out there used as a potting shed in Suffolk, but no complete airframes.
They were not used operationally by the USAAF (they may have been evaluated, but I doubt it). I hate to say anything with 100% authority because 1 or 2 may have shown up in USAAF markings as a squadron hack or target tow AC. They were developed before the US entered the war, but the time the US did, the A-20, B-25, B-26 were available.

The B-26 is as close the US came to scrapping aircraft to extinction (outside a few limited production AC like the B-32).
I saw the CAF B-26 when it was painted in San Angelo, Texas back in 1985 and a few years later saw Week’s plane at Chino. Great looking ships. I understand there is another almost complete example of the B-26 in storage (probably at Chino) that came from the same place where Week’s plane was found (Alaska, if memory serves correctly).
The USAFM example came out of a school in France. And I don’t know how much of “Flak Bait” the NASM has aside from the nose.

Wink, wink, nod, nod….here’s your ticket to Canada

From what I understand (I was too young to be there) most facets of the U.S. government didn’t care about people breaking the neutrality laws.
If you go back in popular media…magazines,radio news broadscasts, films, etc. people like the Flying Tigers were seen as heros and people identied with the English during the Battle of Britain.
In reading the autobiography of fighter ace Don Gentile, he didn’t mention any government inetrference when he joined the RCAF.
While the OFFICIAL government stance was neutality, the pervailing stance of the government was to support the UK and its allies.
After all, the Lend Lease Act was law, and there were no restrictions of sale of military goods to the Commonwealth (delivery via U.S. flag ships were regulated to avoid U-Boat attacks). If the U.S. were REALLY against helping the U.K., I’m sure they would have passed some laws blocking the sale or giving of war material. FDR certainly supported the war…and his party held a majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress.
Somewhere I have a great photo of a Hudson being delivered to Canada on a field in North Dakota….towed across by a horse team.

What’s the worst that could….?

BOOO! Russia sucks!

He shouldn’t have landed, what’s the worst that could happened?

I don’t know …what’s the worst that could happen?
Oh yeah, ask the crew and passngers of KAL 007, and the KAL 707 shot down in the 70s. Not to mention varoius SIGINT and ELINT planes…and a few lost transports shot down over the years.

Having said that, an ultralight vs. a MiG 29 and their AAMs sounds like an opening scene of a James Bond film.