Late last summer I had the good fortune of sitting in a Hellcat. Something I had done hundreds of times before. But that was 66 years ago when I was in the Flight Test Hanger of the A&R Department in Jacksonville, Florida.
We’d take the newly remanufactured planes and do taxi tests. Run hydraulic checks, electrical checks do compass deviations and align the gun patterns. So I’d be starting F- 6s two or three times a day. You never gave it much thought.
But when I sat in the plane last summer, I’ll be darned, I had forgotten all the settings for Prop, Throttle, Mixture, even where the prime button was and which switch was for the Coffman starter. The pilot set me straight. But it showed how much you memory dims over the years. I can remember some things.
The skipper’s dog biting the contrail caused by the propeller. The FG1D that Bob Hansen jumped out of, when it caught gloriously on fire, releasing the toe brakes. Robby Robinson diving his new Bearcat in the runway right in front of me. But little details escape me.
So I look at some of these latter day writings about what happened in World War Two with great deal of doubt, even though someone writes it that had part in the action. Kids that write things that happened 40 years before they were even born, they’re way out of line.
For instance the SB2C was never called *** Second Class. It was always a "Two See" or Helldiver. Unlike the SBD, the Helldiver had to do it’s teething in wartime. But they corrected the errors and it became a great airplane and sank more shipping than any other aircraft. It continued on after WWII and was used by the French during the Viet Nam war.
But I am surprised and sort of angry, at what I thought I had down pat, was lost to me. In my mind, I can still ride a bike. But now, at my age, I don’t know.
We’d take the newly remanufactured planes and do taxi tests. Run hydraulic checks, electrical checks do compass deviations and align the gun patterns. So I’d be starting F- 6s two or three times a day. You never gave it much thought.
But when I sat in the plane last summer, I’ll be darned, I had forgotten all the settings for Prop, Throttle, Mixture, even where the prime button was and which switch was for the Coffman starter. The pilot set me straight. But it showed how much you memory dims over the years. I can remember some things.
The skipper’s dog biting the contrail caused by the propeller. The FG1D that Bob Hansen jumped out of, when it caught gloriously on fire, releasing the toe brakes. Robby Robinson diving his new Bearcat in the runway right in front of me. But little details escape me.
So I look at some of these latter day writings about what happened in World War Two with great deal of doubt, even though someone writes it that had part in the action. Kids that write things that happened 40 years before they were even born, they’re way out of line.
For instance the SB2C was never called *** Second Class. It was always a "Two See" or Helldiver. Unlike the SBD, the Helldiver had to do it’s teething in wartime. But they corrected the errors and it became a great airplane and sank more shipping than any other aircraft. It continued on after WWII and was used by the French during the Viet Nam war.
But I am surprised and sort of angry, at what I thought I had down pat, was lost to me. In my mind, I can still ride a bike. But now, at my age, I don’t know.
God bless you, friend...
