Archive for the 'AIRCRAFT' Category
TODAY IN HISTORY THIRTEEN YEARS AGO!
LAST SURVIVING CREW MEMBER DIES AT 93
Theodore Van Kirk (February 27, 1921 – July 28, 2014)
ATLANTA (AP) – The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into
the atomic age, has died in Georgia.
According to his son Tom Theodore VanKirk, also known as "Dutch," died Monday
of natural causes at the retirement home where he was living in Stone Mountain,
Georgia.
VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific
that secured him a place in history. He was 24 years old when he served as the
navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic
bomb to be deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6,
1945.
‘HIGH’ BALL CAUGHT ON THIS DAY IN 1926
In this rare news photograph, Babe Ruth has just caught a baseball dropped
from an airplane at Mitchel Field (an early New York airport) in Garden City,
Long Island. The New York Times reports Ruth donned an army uniform to
drum up publicity for the Citizens Military Training Camps.
According to the Times account, Six times, baseballs were dropped from the
airplane and Ruth was sweating up a storm, running all over the field trying to
catch one. On the seventh attempt, Ruth caught a baseball from 300 feet up.
FIRST FLIGHT ON THIS DAY IN 1942
The unpainted XF6F-1 prior to its first flight
On June 26th, 1942, a prototype of the Grumman F6F Hellcat took to the skies
for the first time. Initially conceived of as an improved version of the Grumman
F4F Wildcat which had been in service since the 1930s. The plane was designed
with its greatest opponent, the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero, in mind.
The Hellcats were credited with destroying 5,223 aircraft while in service with the
U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and the Royal Navy‘s Fleet Air Arm. They remained
in service as late as 1954 as a night fighter.
USS SARATOGA TO BE SCRAPPED FOR 1-CENT
USS Saratoga (CVA 60) was commissioned April 14, 1956
The USS Saratoga, the legendary aircraft carrier that played a key role in the
Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Gulf wars, is destined for dismantling after
the Navy paid one penny to a Texas firm to recycle the 81,101-ton behemoth.
The once-mighty vessel is the second of three conventionally-powered carriers
to set to sail to the scrapyard, following another one-cent deal involving the
Forrestal in October. ESCO Marine, of Brownsville, will pay to tow, dismantle
and recycle the ship, which was decommissioned in 1994 after more than 38
years of service. Efforts to spare the ship failed, as they did with the Forrestal
last year.
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