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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

This one's for mmulk...

During the evacuation of Saigon, this army observation plane landed on the deck. Crazy good pilot managed to evacuate a couple of civilians, IIRC.[&o]

If I recall the story , the RSVAF pilot managed to cram his whole family aboard. For some reason 13 is the number that sticks in my mind. This used to be at the Naval air museum in Pensacola.(Which is where I saw her). It makes sense that they's send her to Midway , as that's the CV he landed on.

Their placards...

Here's an image from "Midway Sailor"'s website-operation Frequent Wind:

His family lives in Florida, so that would make sense why you may have seen the OE-1 in Pensacola, Steve.

http://midwaysailor.com/midwayfreqwind/

Here's the plane at Pensacola...

Oops...try that again...

Tonight's carrier class quiz-top to bottom:

A bit from a California paper during a recent reunion of the evacuees:


Amid the chaos, he said, “here comes a little observation airplane circling the ship, a single engine, looks like a Cessna 152. And he’s circling the ship and we’re watching him, and there’s no radio contact. If that had happened today, we’d have shot him out of the air as a terrorist.”

The pilot made three passes. The first two came in low, maybe 100 feet, and the pilot dropped a note each time, but they blew into the wind.

On the third pass, a leather gun holster with a note wrapped inside fell, Jumper said. It read: “Can you move those helicopters to the other side? I can land on your runway. I can fly one more hour. We have enough time to move. Please rescue me. Major Bung, wife and 5 child.”

Landings on a moving runway are perilous, anyway, but this carrier was loaded with nearly twice its usual population.

Chambers ordered the helicopters, valued at $10 million, cleared off the decks to save desperate pilots who were running out of fuel.

Ly made his first carrier landing safely. When he climbed out of the plane, he was followed by his wife carrying their baby, and their four other children.

People on the flight deck burst into tears and applause.

Not a single life was lost in the mission.

Here's the whole story about the reunion in 2010 from the Humboldt Observer. It chokes me up just reading about it...

http://humboldtonline.com/blog/37827/us ... e-airlift/

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

Tonight's carrier class quiz-top to bottom:

Wasp and Enterprise CVAN-65

With a nice profile of the Long Beach CLGN-9 near the Big "E".

Are you still in San Diego?

Hi Keifer,

No. Back in Minnesota. Just posting a few pictures a day from the visit.

By the way-neat newspaper headline!

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

Wasp and Enterprise CVAN-65

With a nice profile of the Long Beach CLGN-9 near the Big "E".

Well, Mr. Smarty pants-you're right (again). [:)]

Tell me-how were you able to differentiate the Enterprise from the Nimitz class?

ETA: What made you so sure it was Wasp class for that matter?

Wasp has a smaller smoke stack then the Yorktown class. Enterprise, after her refit in the late 70's had the "crown roast" (a unusual ESM suite) removed, giving her a square , Nimitz style island. It's considerably smaller though, and square vice rectangular. As she's the only one of her class, you know that when you see a CVN that's not a Nimitz , then it's Enterprise.

Wasp and Enterprise placards

Whistling death-1 of 3:

2 of 3:

3 of 3:

And tonight's carrier quiz-top to bottom, please...

This is a little bit tougher...

USS Rendova. Commerce bay class.

The last is a toss up. Either Bogue class or Cassablanca class. I'll take the later.

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

USS Rendova. Commerce bay class.

Nope.