Corsair166bIf you girls like Kid Rock then know that one of his MAJOR influences (and my MAIN MAN musically) is Bob Seger…Rock inducted Seger into the Hall of Fame this last spring…
Mark
Corsair166bConnie Edwards…what a classic…here’s one about him from Breckenridge in it’s heyday….seems Connie brought the PBY to the Breckenridge show a number of years back, and after being jostled around on the ramp by the marshallers, he found his spot and shut the plane down….and Howard Pardue walked over to the PBY to say HI…just then, the bow hatch on the PBY popped open, Connie popped out and flung an anchor out of the hatch and onto the ramp and apparently knocked a fair sized piece of the concrete on the ramp loose…to which Howard nonchalantly looked at it, then up at Connie and said “You gonna fix that?”
Then there was the time at Breck that he tried to deploy a drag chute out the back of the Albatross to slow it down, but it went out the LEFT side , away from the crowd and into the downward spiral of the propwash and was flattened and dragged along the runway where it never did deploy properly…a nice TRY but hardly anyone noticed it had been deployed….guess it was the THOUGHT of it deploying that is funny…
Mark
Corsair166bBoth taste like malted battery acid…but I admit I kinda stick to Coke…it always tastes better cold and out of the bottle, which isn’t done much anymore these days…
Mark
Corsair166bN I C E ! Only adds to the current lack of excitement tho, I’m afraid….maybe some more will help…please?
Mark
Corsair166bLet me get this straight….they fought the Krauts aAND the Japs all in one action?
Corsair166bGood god, who is rebuilding their engines these days? Last I heard they were none too happy with the rebuild on their P-40N that caused it’s engine to seize a few years ago and ALSO caused a belly landing (Ollie Crawford was alright)…now this and the C-60 accident…man, time for the luck of the CAF to change…
Mark
Corsair166bIt was a number of years ago that we were watching the Thunder chickens out here in Colorado, but we could’nt keep a straight face during the display….someone had slipped past Bill Clinton’s ‘no ask/no tell’ policy for gays in the military and had OBVIOUSLY become a commentator for the chickens and was cracking EVERYONE on the flightline up with his VERY expressive comments on the maneuvers the Chickens were doing…”…and now from the left, Thunderbird number two will do a ssplit essssss!” Sounded like steam escaping! We were rolling…
On another occasion, we got to the airshow at Front Range airport here in Denver at about 6 am and the local weatherman, a guy named Nick Carter who we are friends with, was doing his broadcast from a remote van and had Sean Tucker standing by to be interviewed…we were all crammed in the 9news van with our coffee and donuts, and the minute Nick went live, we started making faces at him from the van and carrying on…Nick tried like hell to keep a straight face, but Sean Tucker was laughing and shaking his head in the background, trying to keep himself out of the shot while Nick finished the broadcast and finally turned the interview towards Sean…when it all was over, Nick said he had almost lost it on the air and was laughing with the rest of us…he’s a great guy and tells some of the best dirty jokes you could ever hear…
Mark
Corsair166bMan….that Hellcat vs Luftwaffe story really intrigues me…you learn something new every day, don’t you? I knew that one Corsair was shot down by German flak on the Tirpitz raids (Vas is los? Zee vings iss bent?) but never heard the stories of Hellcats vs the Luftwaffe….
M
Corsair166bWow…never heard about that one at all….closest I could’ve come was Wildcats fighting the Germans, which they did…never knew a Hellcat or two saw combat against the Nazis….VERY interesting.
Yes, the Corsair was given to the Marines to use while the Hellcat went aboard carriers until the Corsair was straightened out for carrier work…even VF-17, which had conducted carrier trials with their F4U’s and were ready to embark aboard the Bunker Hill for combat were told that they were to leave their F4U’s behind and instead went to war in Hellcats, and they were NOT happy about it…but finally, and in great amount thanks to the Brits who used the Corsair on carriers despite loads of accidents until a way was found to land the Corsair out of a stalling turn….the Corsair FINALLY was cleared to land on US carriers again and did finish the war in Japan’s back yard, it’s full potential finally realized.
Mark
Corsair166bAlright, early morning here in chilly Colorado, just getting a chance to look at all this stuff since my last post….Daz, that shot you ask about looks like a Porbeagle caught by two fishermen….wish they’d put it back! The ‘Save the Great white shark’ movement seems to be off to a great start and folks have realized how much damage was done to the GW population after JAWS and are relenting…after all there is no greater argument for the great white than trying to get to your boat in San Francisco but having your way blocked by Sea Lions lying on the pier that won’t let you pass, something that, when Great Whites were more prevalent in the immediate area, the sea lions did’nt do! But now with things out of balance the way they are, the sea lions are getting arrogant and doing what they want cuz there’s nothing to keep them in check….and just 25 miles out the herbor entrance lies the Farallon islands, a notorious west coast Great White hang out…
The photos you guys post are spectacular, LOVE the shots of the jumping Great Whites…..I recieved no bigger surprise in my life than when I watched the National Geographic footage on TV with Peter Benchley and David Doubilet luring the sharks to the surface and the other guy who would get them right alongside the boat and grab them by the nose…incredible stuff, something you just don’t SEE every day…as afr as diving with sharks, I would love to do the Walker’s Cay ‘feeding time’ thing (assuming it’s still going) when you sit on the bottom and watch the sharks feed on a huge frozen block of fish….that has always intrigued me.
Mark
Corsair166bFIRMLY entrenched…since my grandfather built the F4U…and the facts support it as being better than the P-51 ;-)…Granted, the P-51 DID have the range, can’t deny it.
Mark
Corsair166bCut my leg open with a riding lawn mower in 1986, saw the bone…missed the main artery by inches, but lived through it, leg and all….
40 foot seas in the Coast Guard while putting the crew of the s/v Windermere on board the tanker ‘British Resolution’, could’ve fallen overboard at any time and never been seen again, and we DID almost lose a man…
Never had a close call in an airplane, even one of the old ones….
Mark
Corsair166bYou don’t hear much about Porbeagles here in the states, the Mako’s/GW’s long lost brother, not a lot of folks know about it….nice to see some pics of one (got any more?) and see what this magnificent creature looks like in its element.
For a land locked Coloradan, I have a lot of time in on the ocean (both oceans here, Pacific and Atlantic) having been in the Coast guard in Connecticut and worked on a fishing boat in California…always wanted to know more about sharks after seeing JAWS, still one of my favorite films (glad Peter Benchley has repented and now leads a lot of the ‘Save the Great White’ effort these days)…saw a lot of sharks in my Coast Guard days including Basking sharks that we had to proceed WITH CAUTION through so as not to hit the with the bow of our ship…saw sharks feeding at night in clouds of squid out at sea when our lights were on for fisheries boardings…we once came hauling across Chesapeake bay at top speed (for our ship 12 knots was tops) and we scared a 4 foot shark who raced alongside us (not sure what kind of shark) and slowly angled away from the boat, kinda funny….off of california, as I say, I saw my first and only Great White on a pier…worked on a sport fishing boat in Morro Bay CA when one of the customers caught the CUTEST little 1 and a 1/2 foot long baby Mako shark…thankfully he put it back…later on a fishing boat I was working on we were hauling in fish on a long line when a blue shark followed one of the fish right up to the boat -surprised both of us!-and turned and dissappeared into the deep, but noit before leaving quite an impression on me as being one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen-dark blue back, silvery sides, and SNOW white belly, maybe 4 or 5 feet long….
My recent encounters have included helping an Irishmen at the Welsh town of Pwthilly (sic) free a catshark that he caught with his son while fishing from shore and a skate that I caught off the pier at Long Beach, CA (while another guy nearby caught a Leopard shark-pretty fish!) I hope I have many more encounters with them over the years…and of course out this way, we have the Rocky Mountain spotted Shark in streams and lakes around here…
Mark
Corsair166bActually, that’s a good point….and one I always went by, since the Corsair and Hellcat never fought German aircraft and the P-51 did…and we now know (though some will argue) that the Corsair was a better performer and basically superior to the P-51 at and below 25,000 ft (after which the Mustang took over), would it not make sense that since the P-51 was better than the FW and the 109 and the Corsair was better than the P-51, that the F4U would be better than the FW and the 109? BELOW 25,000 , I mean? Simplistic, as I say, but seeming to have it’s foot in the door of merit as apparently, listening to these pilots who flew these planes, that’s the way they seem to feel..
Tactical situation considered, yes, maybe a lot of it had to do with keeping one’s head on a swivel and not getting caught with one’s pants down and a decided altitude disadvantage….I seem to recall something about the USS Enterprise being void of fighters once so the Dauntlesses had to do the fighting against an incoming attack…and the Dauntlesses shot down 10 attacking enemy planes with no losses because they worked together and used the Dauntless’ ability to dive away from attacking Zekes to stay alive…so even the lesser capable planes in combat COULD be useful given the right conditions..
Mark
Corsair166bGreat stuff….they all had problems coming aboard, no matter what plane type or how excellently the plane handled, did’nt they? Lots of perfectly good planes came to grief that way…such is the life of a Naval aviator.
I notice the Fireflies and Spits/Seafires in some pics…any chance one of these is Eddie Kurdziel’s machine (Firefly?)
Mark
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