How Newbie can you be?

[Walt's Daughter]

Unk John:

 

So glad you told me all about your long stint. I really do like hearing about it. A very fascinating history too, including the mention of one of my heroes, Chuck Yeager. I have a signed book by Chuck and have always admired him. When The Right Stuff appears on TV for the thousandth time, I am always glued to the TV screen. So did you get to know him at all? If so, what were your impressions?

 

Ah I can see right now that you will make several of my pilot buddies very jealous. Why you ask? Well because you got to fly the beloved P-51's. Several pilots I talked to say that that was their one regret; not being able to fly that baby.

 

My father-in-law was a pilot too. He flew at the end of WWII and through the Korean War. He flew:

 

Hellcats

Wildcats

Bearcats

Corsairs

Banshees

 

He had quite a scare once and was lucky to come through it alive. He flew off carriers and one afternoon came in for a landing. Well this time things didn't go so smoothly and he missed the first trip wire, then the second and the third and the camera was rolling the whole time and caught his plane doing a compete forward roll. He DID land on the carrier and about the only thing that was hurt was his pride. Said it scared the piss out of him. I imagine so. We still have the photos. I should try scanning them this week and placing them on the site.

 

So you speak Rooskie? Wow, you are full of surprises. Russian is quite a tough language to master. I am duly impressed.

 

Glad you got to experience the combat engineers doing thier THANG. A pretty impressive group of soldiers. I'm pretty darned proud of my ol' man. The more I learn the more I shine!

 

Well, we are going to get along just fine. I see we will have all kinds of subjects to talk about. My husband is a real aircraft fanatic and is extremely knowledgable on all kinds of aircraft, especially WWI and II. He was a primo scale model builder and when we lived in Detroit, had his works on display in hobby shops. Let's say he had the eye and the touch.

 

I bought him a signed copy (by pilot) of the Memphis Belle crew and a signed copy by artist Craig Kodera, titled, This is No Drill. It is also countersigned by Brigadier General USAF (Ret.) Kenneth Taylor and Zenji Abe, a Lt. Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who took part in the raid and are pictured in this painting. I don't know if you know the story, but the pilots went on to become friends and have met many times in person after the war.

 

Well look what you've done now. You got me started. Oh God forbid. See I told you we'd be good for each other.

 

Are you the brother of Robert Burr Smith, Susan's father?

 

Till later my new friend...