Another B-17

[Sarge]

I've been up in a B 17 (CAFs Texas Raider) 3 times. I've Never been in a B 17 when it landed. 3 jumps at 2 different airshows in Texas many yrs ago. Our C 47 jump A/C blew an engine enroute to the first airshow so we used the B 17 and did a free fall jump - the 8 or 9 most experienced jumpers in the group - the first day. Jerry rigged a statik line for the next day and used it 2 weeks later at another airshow.
I also have jumps from C 119 - jump school, C 46, C 47, C 123, C 130 and 3 or 4 civilian puddle jumpers. Never got a chopper blast nor a jet jump. Almost got to jump the CAFs B 29, but it was cancelled the day before.
My first airplane ride was at the age of 5 in an old open cockpit bi-plane. Don't remember what model.
I have a private pilots lisc. I learned to fly in L4 & J3 Cubs. I have flown the Aronica 7AC Champ, Cessna 152 and Mooney Mk 20 among others. I've got flight time in Navy P2V Neptunes, SNB 2 eng transport - learned to fly insturments in that, Fiesler Storch, JU 52, C 47 and high speed taxi time in F4U -4 Corsairs - fast enuf to have the tail off the ground.
I've also got flight time in an H 13 as a passenger - my first helicopter ride & Hueys - including both time as a door gunner and as infantry getting dumped in the jungle on little excursions called "Combat Assaults."
Flying is a Blast!!! Jumping is more fun!!!
Sarge

[Niner Delta]

Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft ranks right up there with getting a tattoo.............
every time I got drunk enough to do it, I passed out........

So far I have kept the same number of take-offs and landings.....

.

[DuncaninFrance]

Landings are only controlled crashes

[Niner Delta]

And any landing you can walk away from, is a good one..........


The old instructor takes a class of new air cadets out to the runway and
stomps his foot down hard and says...............
"This is the ground, all flights begin and end here..."

.

[Niner]

Riding the floor of a huey skimming over the tree tops with your feet hanging out is fun when I was young and dumb. Then going into a hot lz with plinking sounds of bullets going through the shell of the chopper above the roar of the motor, sounding like bb's through a beer can takes some of the luster off. Then being in a chopper and the pilot learns he missed the arty air warning and he cuts the motor off and goes into a banking steep dive and the centrifical force that was holding your butt to the floor suddenly gives way and you have to grab a chair brace and hang on tight to keep from being dumped out of the chopper is a sudden scare. And then watching a gunslick crusing in to cover an extration and getting too close to a scragly tree top and watching it crash and shatter in front of you like an egg dropped on a sidewalk removes whatever little was left in your system about the joy of flight.


I can't stand commercial flights in airplanes either. Once I'm in and they lock the door I have to fight the clostrophobic feeling. I'd rather face a root canal than a flight to anywhere. I haven't felt the need to fly anywhere in fifteen years now.

[Niner Delta]

Yup, those were the good old days, weren't they. We knew how to have fun back then.....

.

[Sarge]

Yep, draggin the skids thru the tree tops or having to climb to clear a rice paddy dike is a blast! It's called "pipe lining."
It is a physical impossibility to jump from a "perfectly good" airplane, and yes there is such a thing. A "perfectly good" airplane is the one setting on the flight line with the battery disconnected and no homo stupid close enuf to touch it! Once said homo stupid connects the battery and gets in and starts the engine it becomes a mechanical monstrosity just waiting to break!
I will gladly jump out of that beast at the first opportunity! By doing so I also avoid the single most hazardous part of flying - the landing. Very few A/C crash on take off and it is an extreme rarity for 2 of them to collide in the air.
I'd rather fly than eat AND I'd rather jump than fly! So call me AIRBORNE, All the Way!
Sarge

[Niner Delta]

As we used to say, while on the ground looking up.........

"Only 2 things fall out of the sky, bird shit and airborne."..............

-----------------------------------------


"Once said homo stupid connects the battery and gets in and starts the engine it becomes
a mechanical monstrosity just waiting to break!"

I always thought that applied mostly to helicopters, as in.....

"If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to."

.

[Sarge]

Yep and both will make a mess on you. The Airborne just dso a lot better job of it, especially if you are where they want to be.
Why do you think they call helicopters "Fling Wings?" When in the air they are busy trying to beat the surrounding air to death. That is why Air Assaults are so much fun - you get on the ground and away from them. Then all you have to worry about is the guys shooting at you - not whether or not your ride will fall out of the air.
Sarge

[Niner]

I agree Sarge. Coming into a hot LZ and getting on the ground removed a few of the potential ways to be killed. And the ground wasn't going to explode all of a sudden.... if you didn't land on a mine. And when you were prone on the ground that limited the number of places for an entry wound....although it did make you a stationary target. And...unlike in the air there likely would be some kind of cover you could get behind that wasn't going to move....unless an RPG or mortar round hit it. Come to think of it .....the only relatively safe place in a war was back in the rear with the remfs and the gear. But... I did feel a lot safer on the ground, all the above exceptions being said because trading a chopper that you could hear bullets plinking into for the unknown of the ground seemed always like a good trade. .

By the way, when was the last time airborne rangers ever parachuted into a war? It was only done once that I remember reading about in Viet Nam....and that was more a stunt than anything else.

I know they still train airborne rangers and, after a lot of hard training, instill in them great pride and a sense of elan that us ordinary guys, who only wanted to do what we had to do, stay alive and get the hell home from the war and become a civilians again didn't have.

Oh.... you know that famous 506 Infantry from WWII? Great movie. Band of Brothers. Now those were really parachute infantry. But.... I spent my last three months in Vietnam in 1970 with the 3/506, 101st Infantry. By that time half of them weren't even jump qualified... I sure wasn't. And they didn't need to be. But... I don't think the grunts of my time were any less brave than the WWII guys. And because the of the way the Viet Nam 506 worked many of them never got enough combat insertions to earn an air medal.