Extraordinary Career of RAF ace StanfordTUck-luc^s hard-won flying skills and a remarkable run of good fortune contributed to victory in the Battle of Britain. There is a low murmur among the crew members as the target is announced. Can you think of similar types of aviation memorabilia tbat document and illustrate aircraft and aviators but are not commonly regarded as aviation art?ī-24 Raid on Magdeburg-The curtains are pulled back, revealing a big map of Europe with red ribbons leading to our target-the synthetic oil refineries near Magdeburg. A.H.S.ĭiscussiomThis issue's "Art of Flight" department focuses on an unusual art form: airplane trading cards. Air Force Museum, as weO as to the many other forward-looking individuals who are working hard to make possible the rescue and preservation of one of the world's greatest aerial oddities. We tip our Aviation History hat to retired Maj. But a recent issue of Friends Journal, the house organ of the Air Force Museum Foundation Inc., published several photos proving that wonderful project had not only begun but was already well underway, with careful dismantling in progress for shipment to the museum, where a lengthy and arduous restoration will someday allow one of aviation's major artifacts to be put on permanent display for us all to gawk at-without getting in trouble for it and without getting a stiff neck in the bargain. However, just moving such a behemoth, to say nothing of restoring this largescale derelict, posed formidable challenges. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. In recent years I have been delighted to hear that there was some interest in acquiring the XC-99 by the world's oldest and largest military aviation museum, the U.S. What many of us who had seen that leviathan in action hoped for was a benefactor, a knight in shining armor that would rescue this aging, ratherplump, one-of-a-kind dowager from extinction. The bulky XC-99 was soon well on the way to the junk heap. More or less abandoned, it became the home of flying things with feathered wings, and the bird droppings it eventually collected probably outweighed some of the airplanes I flew. As time passed, there were some aborted plans to revive it for its intended purpose, to clean it up for display or to consign it to the scrap heap. The beautiful-in its own way-XC-99 would soon be put out to pasture and left to languish for years. That experience gave me a taste for what it would have been like to pilot the lumbering giant I had often gazed up at while I was sweating out basic training programs. I would eventually fly die Douglas C-124-a shorter, four-engine cargo airplane that had a similar fat fuselage and a cargo elevator behind the Only one XC-99 was ever built, and the manufacturer's hopes for a fleet of military or airline super cargo carriers never really materialized beyond polite interest on the part of the U.S. But it flew well, apparently, because I saw it pass overhead frequently, going to and from its base at nearby Kelly airfield. I used to wonder what it would be like to fly that big, lumbering tbing. Its six engines, when they were all running, made a distinctive throb in the sky, and it was large enough that it was easy to spot without looking all over for the source of the sound. The overhead distraction that made the biggest impression on me during those long-ago days, however, was not a sleek, deadlyfighter,but the ConvairXC-99, an aerial behemoth of a cargo plane created by adding a fat fuselage to B-36 wings and tail. Another result was loud rebukes for airplane gawking that was considered irreverent inattention to the training by my tech instructor (drill instructor elsewhere), who seemed to enjoy any excuse to bark at us scum-of-the-earth recruits in our unsnazzy, sweat-stained fatigues. (Taking basic twice?Yes, only the second session had a fancier name, "preflight training," but turned out to be no more fun.) The latest, hottest fighter, the North American F-lOO Super Sabre, was going through operational introductions at the time, and I would frequently find myself with a stiff neck from stealing glances upward when I should have been paying strict attention to my training curriculum. This occurred all too frequently when I was enjoying the "pleasures" of Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas-once in 1955 and again a year later. Thing flies overhead (and often wonder why everyone else doesn't), a habit that sometimes gets me in trouble when it interrupts a conversation with someone who expects my undivided attention. You'll find much more about Aviation History on theV\feb's leading history resource: One of the world's neglected aerial oddities gets a reprieve.
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