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Top Ten Low Fly By's
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Tuesday, 02 March 10 - 05:53 PM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Norway
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Wednesday, 10 February 10 - 01:50 AM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Blue Angels
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Thursday, 01 October 09 - 08:47 PM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Blue Angels - Raw Cockpit Footage
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Friday, 10 July 09 - 06:28 PM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Video of Carrier Landings
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Wednesday, 08 April 09 - 09:23 PM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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From the PBS documentary series "Carrier" - Rites of Passage. Navy pilots landing aboard the USS Nimitz during rough seas in the Pacific.
What A Way to Fly Our Flag
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Monday, 23 February 09 - 01:15 AM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Click HERE for a 4 minute video.
WWII Carrier Ops Video
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Wednesday, 12 November 08 - 09:08 PM (GMT) By Site Contributor in Video |
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Chairman Joe passes along another video posted of WWII carrier operations, along with a story about a pilot he knows from one of those videos.
To view the video, simply click on the photo below.
Point of interest ... about 3 minutes 20 seconds into the clip, you will see an F6F Hellcat, its hydraulics shot away during a strafing run, pancake on the carrier deck and slew into the island. A deckhand was crushed between the aircraft and the superstructure and killed. The number on the plane is 30.
The lanky pilot sitting dazed in the cockpit is a gentleman named Andy Cowan, a friend of mine. He is hale and hearty at 87 and lives just north of Salinas, Ca. To this day he cannot recall this accident without a tear coming to his eye. The swabby who was killed was his crew chief.
Andy is a marvel. He has absolute total recall of those bygone days. He is regularly invited back to the Naval War College to give a power point demonstration to the young fighter jocks of today's Navy. They hang on his every word. A living link to the past..to the days when you got up close and personal to kill the enemy. No over-the-horizon missile kills.
Andy was the longest serving Navy fighter pilot in WWII. He was on his shakedown cruise off Gitmo on Dec. 7th, 1941. The carrier Ranger made flank speed to Norfolk and the pilots were shipped to San Francisco by train, then sped to Hawaii by ship. He saw Pearl not long after the sneak attack, and again is unable to speak of it ... a horrible disaster. He immediately went aboard the Lexington and in the course of the war had 4 carriers shot out from under him as he fought in every major Pacific battle: Coral Sea, Midway, Battle of Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima ... you name it. Credited with 4.5 kills. Flew with Butch O'Hare, Cmdr. Thatch (inventor of the "Thatch Weave"), flew with high-scoring ace David McCampbell ... served under admirals Nimitiz, Bull Halsey.
Andy has studied the Japanese side of the Pacific War and is a recognized expert on their side of it. He can reel off the names of all their capital ships, admirals and battles from memory. Remarkable man ... and still alive to tell the tale.
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