SLUF

The LTV* A-7 Corsair II was nicknamed the "SLUF", for Short Little Ugly Fucker. A single seat attack aircraft developed from the F-8 fighter, it was a workhorse in Vietnam.

The one in Dayton is an A-7D, which is a version of the Navy's A-7 that was built for the USAF. Instead of the two 20mm Colt Mk. 12 cannon of the original, the D model had a single 20mm Vulcan, as well as a more powerful Allison turbofan, a fine product of Indiana.

The USAF A-7's were relegated to Air National Guard units as the F-16 came online in the Seventies, but the last combat missions flown by Navy SLUFs were in Operation Desert Storm. The Corsair II was also flown by the Greeks, Thais, and Portuguese.

*LTV was Ling-Temco-Vought, the company that resulted from a 1961 hostile takeover of the old Chance Vought corporation of F4U Corsair and F8U Crusader fame by Ling Electric, who had recently gone on a buying spree, absorbing Temco Aircraft and speaker manufacturer Altec Electronics among others.

Meme Dump!

Interwar Bombers

The Martin B-10, which first flew in prototype form in '32, went into service with the USAAF in summer of 1935. It was a sales success, with the US government buying over a hundred and export sales to China, the Dutch, Thailand, and Turkey.

We phased ours out pretty quickly at the start of WW2, but the type saw extensive combat with the Chinese, Dutch, and Thai forces, and Thailand didn't retire theirs until 1949.

It was replaced as a frontline aircraft in the USAAF inventory by the Douglas B-18 Bolo.

Most of our forward deployed B-18s were in the Philippines and got destroyed on the ground by the Japanese. Most of its wartime US service was flying anti-sub patrols along the coasts. Canada got twenty of them, which were also used for anti-submarine work, and a few went to Brazil, where they served as trainers.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #263...

It appears I may be spending some time getting good with a DA trigger again, as the tactical dirt colored SIG Sauer SP2022 in the horsehide Milt Sparks Summer Special 2 will attest. The SIG is likely just going to be a waypoint for three or four months as I work back up to spending six months or a year carrying the Langdon Beretta, which is the pistol with which I've had most of my moments of glory in gun school.

The rest of the pocket detritus is the same as usual: Surefire EDCL1-T, Spyderco Dragonfly, and POM spray.

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Meme Dump!

Tab Clearing...

• Some Substackers are big mad about the automated AI flag.


• A student wrote a piece for his California high school newspaper looking into local connections in the Epstein Files. Some people got big mad.


• I will henceforth be referring to CVS as "shampoo jail". I hope it makes them big mad.

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The Only Two...

The Enola Gay was reassembled from storage and put on permanent display at the Udvar-Hazy museum in 2003.

When I visited in November of 2015, the way it was displayed made it nearly impossible for me to frame the entire aircraft in a photo from the floor. It's pretty crowded in there.

On the other hand, you can't help but come nose-to-nose with the only other aircraft to have dropped an atomic bomb in anger. Round the corner in the World War II gallery in the USAF Museum and Bockscar is right there up in your grille.

Memes on Friday!

Lockheed Snouts!

Lockheed F-94A Starfire

The other day I finally did something I've been meaning to do since I first moved to Indianapolis almost twenty years ago.

I booked a room for two nights at a Holiday Inn Express on the east side of Dayton, Ohio. While it's only a little over two hours away, this allowed me to drive out there at a leisurely pace around noon on Tuesday, grab a late lunch, and check into the hotel so that the next morning I could get to the USAF museum about the time it opened, walk until my feet couldn't take any more walking, then go back to the hotel and drive home all nicely rested at a leisurely pace on Thursday morning.

Lockheed P-38L Lightning

When I went to Udvar-Hazy back in 2015, I was shooting a Nikon D200 with an 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 consumer zoom lens, backed up with the Coolpix P7000. Relatively speaking, I had no idea what I was doing. This time I not only had better bodies and lenses, but more importantly I had eleven years more experience taking photos.

Now to sort through the images on the cards and see what I have.

These two images are straight-out-of-camera JPEGs shot with the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

Meme Dump!

Bad Ideas

This is how you generate restrictive legislation... if you're lucky. Molotov cocktails if you're not.

Hump Day Meme Dump!

Zoom Zoom!

You want a little vicarious zooming around Italy's Amalfi Coast in a rental Mazda MX-5? Here you go!

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Tab Clearing...

• The state of the air war over Ukraine, four years on...


• The Rise of American Bushido


• Meta, belatedly and ineffectively, gets worried about creepers using its pervert glasses.

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I'm good, thanks...

"What is X Money? The new service on X basically provides banking and financial services for paying X Premium and Premium+ subscribers right within the app. X Money includes peer-to-peer payments and money transfers within the X platform, as well as a deposit account. Users will also receive "the X card," a physical Visa debit card for ATM withdrawals and in-person transactions."

Now you'll be able to pay for your Grok-generated revenge porn without even leaving the app!

Meme Dump!

Back To The Meme Mines!