It happens. Not often, but it does occur. A trusted primary source of information has a verifiable glaring error. How does one go about correcting it? In writing my most recent column for Naval History about the USS Iowa (Battleship No. 4), I naturally searched for photographs. One of my favorite sites for pre-World War …
This is why I still have film in the freezer from the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games. I am doing a full-ship cutaway drawing of the Civil War ironclad USS Cairo. The riverine gunboat had a life of just two and a half months with the US Navy from 1 October to 12 December …
Nitrate photographic negatives were among the first on a light-weight “stable” flexible base. Before them were the heavy and fragile glass plates. Needless to say, the new base greatly enhanced the photographer’s abilities by significantly reducing weight and volume as well as shipping and carriage requirements. If you grew up with film before digital you …
Soaring to Glory A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account of World War II By Philip Handleman with Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr. Regnery Publishing, 2019. 264 pages. $29.99. The odyssey of Tuskegee airman Harry T. Stewart Jr. is one that should be known. His travails, starting in early childhood, and his perseverance to achieve goals …
I wrote this for The Richmond News Leader on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. THE RICHMOND NEWS LEADER Copyright (c) 1989, Richmond Times-Dispatch FIRST MAN ON MOON? PHOTO PROOF SLIM Why is there no photograph taken on the moon of the first man to walk on the moon? The accompanying photograph …
U.S Cruise Missiles From Kettering’s 1920s’ Bug & 1950’s Snark to Today’s Tomahawk By Bill Yenne Specialty Press, 2018. 203 pages. $34.95. Unmanned aircraft are, in general, of little interest for me. It is the man—and now, woman—in the cockpit that brings an aircraft literally to life. The story of aviation is more about people …
Boeing B-47 Stratojet: Strategic Air Command’s Transitional Bomber By C. Mike Habermehl and Robert S. Hopkins III Specialty Press, 2018. 320 pages. $44.95. The Stratojet was every 1950s kid’s ideal of U.S. aviation might. It was big. Six jets hanging out there on the wings for all to see. It was fast. It even looked …
Bob Frascotti never made it to the beaches of Normandy, yet he was a veteran of that invasion. He was one of the first to die that day. Just four months past his 21st birthday, Bob—known as Scotty—was to fly one of the first missions of the day. His fellow pilots recall his “superb” singing …
Two harbors and a ship Seventy-five years ago young Americans and their Allies took a big gamble with the largest invasion force ever assembled. On 6 June 1944, they stormed ashore to gain first a toe-hold, then a foot-hold, and then more on the European continent and bring the ground war to Nazi Germany. While …
Mini Aircraft and Carriers to Match Norman Polmar’s March-April 2014 for Historic Aircraft in the U.S. Naval Institute’s (USNI) Naval History magazine concerned the smallest of aircraft carriers and perhaps its (and the Marine Corps and Army’s) smallest aircraft. The tiny aircraft—OY-1/2 in the Navy and Marines and L-4 in the Army—are often mistaken for …
