Great aviation photos

[4583C]

Thanks for posting!!
Could spend hours on this

[blueldr]

Arayana,

Thanks for some really nice pix. I remember all of those airplanes except for a few of the pre WWII Navy biplanes. I can't remember the dash numbers of all of them, but I recognise the P-40s in North Africa as the models having Rolls Royce engines rather than Allisons since they had no carburetor air scoops on the top of the cowlings. Allisons had a downdraft carb and Rolls used an updraft with the scoop on the bottom. Some of the pix were taken well post WWII. You might note that some of them show VOR antennas which were a post war development. Some of the B-25 pix show a square carb air scoop on the top which indicates a post war change to a Bendix carb from the Holley Variable Venturi carb of WWII. The B-29 must have been a post WWII weather recon or something. No gun turrets and what seems to be a VOR antenna. The first pic of the C-47 appeared to have two VOR antennas on the top of the fuselage.
I was fun to try to remember all the different types of engines and propellers on the various models.

[hilltop170]

BL-
You should write a book!

[blueldr]

Richard,
I would, except that I'm already 90 years old and only know how to hunt and peck on the keyboard and I'd never get it finished.

[hilltop170]

Dick,
That's just what everybody says these days, get an iPhone and every time you think of one of your stories, turn the recorder on and record it. Pretty soon you have a book and your daughter can publish it for her retirement income!

[GAHorn]

Dick, you gotta quit ridin' that Vespa and get a Ferret scout car. I worry some nut will pull out in front of you on the freeway.

FerretScoutCar.jpg

Several of these have been sold in recent years in Texas. They require a motorcycle license to drive.
In 20 years you'll still not have matured. (Besse Cooper (116) would date you except she doesn't want to rob the cradle.)

[bagarre]

Richard,
I would, except that I'm already 90 years old and only know how to hunt and peck on the keyboard and I'd never get it finished.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-NaturallyS ... B003VNCRNQ

It works very well.

[hilltop170]

BL-
Calling Dick, come in Dick, hello Dick, you out there?

Did you see the post above? I'll buy it for you if you'll use it to record your stories as you think of them.

[blueldr]

Richard,
As tempting as that device looks, I think I'll pass on this one. Seems kinda scary to me.

If you will notice that the first picture of this group is obviously a DC-3 type but probably not a C-47/RD-4, the type of the vast majority of the military
DC-3s. It appears to me that the exhaust stack looks too short, and the cowling seems to be too short from the leading edge to the cowl flaps to cover a two row P&W R-1830 engine. I suspect it contains a single row Wrighr R1820, which would make the airplane other than a C-47. If it is indeed an ex military airplane, it well might be one of the many DC-3s with a Wright engine impressed from the airlines during WWII.
On the pic of the B-25 v Jap ship, please note the relatively flat/oval air scoops on the top of the cowlings that indicate the wartime use of the Holley carburetors rather than the post war Bendix carbs.
On the pic of the Wildcat in flight with the number 3 on the cowling, I would suspect it is not a Grumman F4F Wildcat, but an FM-1 since it has a Hamilton prop rather than a Curtis Electric and it appears to have the square ignition manifold and mags on the nose case of the engine like a P&W 1830 of the FM-i rather than the Wright R-1820 of the FM-2.
Facinating bunch of pix!

[bagarre]

I could read about stuff like this all day long.

[hilltop170]

That's what I'm talking about!

Come on, Dick record those stories so we can all enjoy them. Heck, you could sell that stuff and make gas money for the Vespa!

[jrenwick]

That's what I'm talking about!

Come on, Dick record those stories so we can all enjoy them. Heck, you could sell that stuff and make gas money for the Vespa!

I'd buy a copy or two!

[170C]

I would buy a copy too Dick! I know a lot of WWII vets have recorded their experiences and some have written books. I hate to not have those stories kept for all of us and future generations to read. Unfortunately so many of our vets never had their aviation/war histories recorded. One of these was my good friend R L (Dick) Johnson whom I had the pleasure of knowing and flying with for over 20 years. What a career, both during the war (P-47 pilot) and afterward. I won't go into detail about his many experiences, but the sad thing is he was always going to write a book. Unfortunately it never happened and his experiences are all but lost. Here is a guy whose career befriended aviators like Bud Anderson, Bob Hoover, Charles Lindburb and others. My point is that there are a lot of folks out there now and in the future who would gain a lot of insight by being able to read of the many experiences such as those you occasionally share with us Dick. We would like to hear more and have them written down for others. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Frank

[blueldr]

Thanks Guys. Your literary ideas are flattering but after all I'm a proud high school drop out with a particularly admirable failure rate, especially in english.
I lacked the necessary scholastic credits to qualify for army flight training in WWII by about twenty leagues. I kept pestering them until things got really tough and they became desperate. Old "Hap" said to "give that miserable SOB a comprehensive written examination and get him out of my hair." To their amazement, not to mention my own, I passed with flying colors. They taught me to fly, and by god we won the war.
Honestly. Thats how it was.

[jrenwick]

My great-grandfather built many of Chicago's great buildings in the 1890s and following. He had some great stories. My grandfather talked him into sitting down with a secretary and dictating his memories. She typed them up and mimeographed a bunch of copies, which went to family members and libraries. Besides the inestimable value to the family, it resulted in a historical book being published about his firm, which I don't think ever would have been written without his memoirs. It can be done, blueldr!