Of all the pics I have posted on here, this might be the one pic that is more important to me than any other. I left it big so you can see it well!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Some more history...
You have seen pix of my grandmother. The man that taught her to fly is in the pic below. The one with the flipped up hat in the back row. Al Leitch, my grandfather. Years after teaching her to fly he flew the P-38 as a test pilot in the 40's. I wish I could have known him. On the original pic that I scanned is the glued on hand typed list of every man in the picture. My hat's off to all of them.
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You know Dave, in all the years I've known you, you never told me about your grandparents.
ReplyDeleteI think this is pretty fucking cool, especially your grandma.
Counter-rotating props. One turns this way, one turns that way. Thus, no weird torque in flight. Hi tech for the time. P-38 took big brass balls to fly - especially if you're a test pilot tryin' to shake the bugs outta her.
ReplyDeleteWow Dave. Cool as fuck. Much respect to those test pilots. My uncle flew P 38s. Got 40 kills. I love all things P 38.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pic.
brad
Dave-
ReplyDeleteI hope you saw the post I had on COC..."Heroes of the Horizon" has a chapter on my grandfather's cousin, Howard Hunt...to this day, he still pilots planes and helicopters in and out of CA. to Alaska...LIFE magazine did a feature on him years and years ago floating a downed military plane out of the arctic with straw on it to keep the ice from melting...i just feel fortunate to have meet Howard twice in my life time...like a lot of your family, they're very rare and thinning fast...these men and women deserve a great deal of thanks for their service...