Sunday, April 13, 2014

...that you do so well!

McDonnell F-101B Voodoo: Two-seat all weather supersonic interceptor, keeping America safe from Bear and Bison through the Sixties and Seventies.
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4 comments:

Jim said...

Excellent photo choices,
Tam. However, since you seem to be aiming at the ultimate flyable beauty, why not just post an F-86 shot and be done with it?:)

4:15 PM, April 13, 2014
David aka True Blue Sam said...

The men who flew these were constantly training for what were essentially suicide missions, delivering thermonuclear bombs, and trying to speed away before their control surfaces were melted by the flash. If they flew that mission, there wouldn't have been a place to come back to, anyway. Here's one who was lost in training, almost fifty years ago. http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/pages/scotland/scotland56-0013.htm

10:08 PM, April 13, 2014
Joseph said...

Heart that.

Century series planes are so awesome. I liken them to F1 cars of the 70's when aero was starting to take hold and nobody knew what would really work and wouldn't. Now all the cars look alike and the fighters do too.

10:25 PM, April 13, 2014
Paul from Canada said...

Back in the mid '80's as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, I learned to fly at North Bay, which at the time was a dual military/civvy airfield. The RCAF was in the process of retiring the last of the (C)F-101 Voodoos in favour of the (C)F-18.

I still have a set of shoulder patches I got from the squadron on base.

Later in my military career I had a boss who had been a backseater (scope-wizard as they were called), and he had some good stories of chasing Bears, taking part in William Tell etc.

His best story was finding himself mentioned in an episode of Leanord Nemoy's "In Search of." One of the UFO episodes.

It seems that crews based in Chatham, New Brunswick had a habit of buzzing drunks driving home late at night. They would fly along without lights then buzz their target in a knife edge pass, full burners and all the lights on, then turn the lights off when the burners shut off, giggling like fools as their victim swerved into the ditch. (It goes without saying that this was many years ago, and that such things would not be possible today...)

Some years later, watching "In Search of", a "UFO Witness" described his "encounter" on a lonely road in rural New Brunswick. How the UFO "appeared out of no-where, two tongues of fire, one on top of the other, winking lights and a spotlight beam, buzzed over his truck at a high rate of speed and then suddenly vanished!". My boss checked his log book, and matched up the dates of this UFO "encounter". He did NOT however, phone the producers of the show to fess up.

I can't verify this myself, but it was a great story.

Memories!

10:25 PM, April 13, 2014

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