Pima Air Museum, Tucson

Above: art project, some painted Douglas C-117s

My dad was in town from Seattle, so we met up with his second cousin and his wife and took off for the Pima Air Museum. My family has a deep aviation background. My grandfather in Farmington and Galesburg, Illinois, owned a working farm, where my dad grew up. But he also operated a rural airport, seeing the opportunity for commuter flying to Chicago and elsewhere, but also for crop dusting. My dad also told me that he saw the opportunity for rental cars, opened a Hertz business at the airport, and rented out former military cars from the 1950s, but that the big push came in the early 1960s when he had a fleet of – get this – 1962-64 Chevy Impalas. Fuck, I wish he would have held on to a couple of those…  My great uncle (second cousin’s father) was a stunt pilot and barnstormer who used to land a plane on a station wagon at air shows. My grandfather died in his plane while flying – likely due to a heart attack – and I remember as a kid going to Illinois while the Civil Air Patrol was searching for him. I also had coffee for the first time there (I was about 8 years old) and puked because I drank too much of it.

My dad wanted to escape the farm. He began flying at 14, and eventually got a commercial license and would fly people on charter flights, including some bigwigs. But at his high school, a counselor asked him what he liked and was good at, and he answered math, so they got him enrolled in engineering at the University of Illinois. He entered the aerodynamic engineering program, did two summer internships (with Douglas in Long Beach and Boeing in Seattle), graduated, then took a job at Douglas. At this point, he got his 1964 Corvette, which he unfortunately sold when he married my mom. He worked in the LA area, but when gangs and drugs appeared in the neighborhood, and my older brothers’ friends were involved, my mom insisted that we moved to Seattle, so he got a job at Boeing, where he worked until retirement. He worked on a lot of the commercial jets, and was a lead engineer on the AWACS program.

My second cousin Jim grew up in Illinois, and as he continually tells me and my dad, he viewed my dad as a hero (flying at 14, and flying as a charter pilot). Jim didn’t get to college right away, but joined the Air Force and was sent to Viet Nam and Thailand from 1964-66, as shit was heating up there, to work as a mechanic on planes. After he did his time, he came back to the US, got his certification, and was an airline pilot for American Airlines until mandatory retirement at 55. He now flies for SRP here in Phoenix, and is about to retire. He also has some amazing toys: a mint 1962 Corvette, a Buecher Bi-plane (two-seat trainer), and a Clip-wing Monocoupe racing plane.   

Always been diggin' nose art. Fighting Cock. 

Faded Valkyrie 

Torpedo Bomber 

This is Eisenhower's Air Force One. Kennedy's is there too, and you used to be able to walk through it, but not anymore... 

Nose art on the beautiful B-24 -- this one was sent to India after WWII and continued service into the 1950s. 

This part of the visit was intense. Jim worked on these planes, the F-105, for a while. They were sluggish and easy targets for the North Vietnamese. He told us that out of every 4 planes sent, usually only 3 and sometimes only 2 made it back. He choked up telling us the story, and told us some names of pilots who didn't make it, and how he stopped looking pilots in the eye before they went up in these. He also had amazing technical knowledge of the planes, as well as the operations. The US had 6 flight patterns for bombing the North Vietnamese, and they remained unchanged for a long time. The North Vietnmese learned them, and sent up MIGs and surface-to-air missiles to take out the F-105s, hence the high loss rate. A few months in, they changed up the pattern by sending up heavily armed and fast fighters but in the same configuration as the F-105 bombing runs, and they flew slowly to mimic the F-105s. The North Vietnamese sent up the MIGs, and the US fighters knocked out15-20 without any losses. After that, the North Vietnamese sent up spotters to verify. 

"I'm not a trouble maker, but..."

Other side of the B-24 

Amazing. Always loved the P-51 Mustang. 

Jim had better memories of the F-100s. Said in his time working on those, only lost 4 planes, and 2 of the pilots returned safely. Still choked up, though.