Film clip from the Austrian archives about the Wright Brothers demonstrating their plane in Italy in 1909. What is even more fantastic is there was an on-board camera on the Wright plane and the last part of this film shows it. Wilbur Wright is at the controls on both of the flights. It's a GREAT video considering it is 100 years old and the quality/weight of the equipment of that day.
This film clip is fascinating and in very good condition for its age being as it shows the Wright Bros demonstrating the Flyer to a group of European officers and officia ls in 1909. Only runs for 4 minutes. The shots of the plane in flight are the best I have ever seen of this machine showing a degree of speed and smoothness I did not think would have been possible. Excellent starting sequence with the linen covered props and easy start but the outstanding sequence: being the take-off along the rail. You can't see the actual weight drop to pull it along the rail but in some shots you see the tower. The small piece of string on the forward elevon was put there by the Wrights to ascertain degree of side slip as you are aware the plane basically turned flat, and although they eventually put in a form of wing warping it was always a difficult plane to handle in turns, so they kept it as flat as possible because any side slip over a certain angle was unrecoverable. This was the two seat version as you can see and designed for a hopeful military use. It could only fly in very calm conditions.
The in-flight shots were something else again and possibly the earliest aerial movie shots ever taken. When you think he had to fly the plane and also hand crank the camera, I think it must have been fixed in position as the camera stays motionless and in any case cameras were heavy in those times and the plane had little spare capacity but I could be wrong. Note the take off ramp. Loved the ancient Italian Roman ruins in the final shots the approach speed was very slow in deed.
When you get to the site, just double click on the picture of the flying machine, it loads automatically. The other vintage videos are entertaining, too.
http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/PY/322/fiche_technique.htm?ID=322
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Sunday, November 29, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dr. Bill Krissoff
Attached is a story about a truly wonderful man, Dr Bill Krissoff (as usual at least one error in the article – said he was a corpsman when he is a surgeon). This is the website for the story: http://www.10news.com/news/21725340/detail.html and this is the website for the great video of the channel 10 news story; http://www.10news.com/video/21725020/index.html . I felt very humbled sitting next to him at dinner at the San Diego Air & Space Museum two weeks ago thanks to Bob Jackson. I spent most of the evening talking to him and because of the seating arrangement, I was really sorry that I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to his wife Christine who is another incredible person.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
President George Bush Sr Agrees To Write Forward To Forthcoming DFCS Book
For nine years our oral historian, Dr. Barry Lanman, has been collecting oral histories for the purpose of publishing a book on DFC winners. President George Bush Sr, a World War II DFC winner, has just agreed to write the forward. The book should be published next fall and we hope by a major syndicated publisher. The book will cover DFC winners from the very first prior to WWII and then from all the wars including present day Iraqi operations. The book will be very diverse including women; Native Americans; and the Tuskegee Airmen.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Navy Pilot proved Soviets had missiles in Cuba
Retired Navy Captain William B. Ecker, age 85, passed away on Nov 5th at his home in Punta Gorda, Fla.
Captain Ecker received his DFC personally from President Kennedy for his close up photography of missile sites on Cuba. The proof of these sites resulted in the well known Cuban Missile Crisis and the confrontation with the Soviet Union which ultimately lead to the removal of all missiles.
Captain Ecker was portrayed by actor Christopher Lawford in the movie "Thirteen Days" starring Kevin Costner as an aide to kenedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Captain Ecker received his DFC personally from President Kennedy for his close up photography of missile sites on Cuba. The proof of these sites resulted in the well known Cuban Missile Crisis and the confrontation with the Soviet Union which ultimately lead to the removal of all missiles.
Captain Ecker was portrayed by actor Christopher Lawford in the movie "Thirteen Days" starring Kevin Costner as an aide to kenedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Boy Who Fled Vietnam War Returns as U.S. Officer
By SETH MYDANS
DANANG, Vietnam — Cmdr. H. B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a United States Navy destroyer, had just stepped ashore on a formal port call, making an emotional return to Vietnam for the first time since he fled as a boy on a fishing boat at the end of the war in 1975.
A youthful and smiling man of 39, he bore on his shoulders the weight of the symbolism of cautiously warming military ties between Vietnam and the United States in the latest of fewer than a dozen naval port calls since 2003.
But the symbolism quickly became more nuanced as his welcoming ceremony was delayed by a dispute between the sides over the display of the red Vietnamese flag with its gold star aboard the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, which had just pulled in to port.
Two hours later the flag was finally raised high on the yardarm, seemingly in accord with the Vietnamese demand and contrary to American naval custom.
The waiting generals began to smile again, the red carpet was rolled out, and Commander Le was free to proceed with his return.
“Stepping ashore was awesome,” he said after landing from his destroyer, the Lassen, which was anchored in Danang Harbor.
“To be able to return to Vietnam after 35 years and to be able to do it as commander of a United States naval warship was an incredible honor and a privilege.”
He was returning to a very different Vietnam from the one he fled at the age of 5 with his parents and three of his siblings. Most people in this young nation, like Commander Le himself, have no memory of the war.
In the last decade or more, Vietnam has opened its economy, increased trade with the United States and risen from postwar poverty even as the Communist government maintains control of the press and political expression.
The city of Danang today, with its four new bridges, its broad streets and its emerging high-rise skyline, is almost unrecognizable to those who were here during the war years.
Despite the changes, the flag-raising dispute and the background of Commander Le’s own story illustrated the complexities of a relationship that remains shadowed by the war even as it moves tentatively forward.
“Gradual and steady,” said Carlyle B. Thayer, an expert on the Vietnamese armed forces, describing the relationship. “The Americans see a glacier moving, and they call it progress.”
He said Vietnam had been slow to accept American overtures of closer military ties, hoping to balance Chinese influence in the region with an American presence but stepping carefully to avoid offending Beijing.
“The two considerations that govern the Vietnamese are worries about China and deep suspicion of the United States,” said Mr. Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. “Suspicion is the underlying feature that puts a brake on progress.”
The Vietnamese generals who greeted Commander Le — whose full name is Hung Ba Le — might have had reason to have mixed feelings.
Commander Le’s father, Thong Ba Le, who is now 68, was himself a commander in the wartime South Vietnamese Navy and for a time held a senior position here in Danang. In 1975 it was this same Communist military he was fleeing as his base came under attack by rocket and mortar fire. The family spent two days at sea before being rescued by a United States Navy vessel.
While he was able to take his wife and his four younger children when he fled, he was unable to rescue four older children, who were trapped in Hue, Commander Le said. Two of these sons spent several years in Communist re-education camps, he said.
After he reached the United States, the father’s story was a model of immigrant success as he worked his way up from busboy to manager of a grocery chain in Northern Virginia and provided for college educations for all of his children, including the four who followed eight years later in a formal departure program.
Commander Le is a model of the success of many children of refugees.
A standout scholar and athlete in high school, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1992 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He is married with two children.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “My dad got me out of the country. He did what he had to do. He gave us opportunities to have a good life in the United States.”
Aboard the Vietnamese tug that brought Commander Le ashore was a man with quite a different set of memories: Chief Engineer Nguyen Van Ne, 50, said that as a child he had been terrified of American soldiers.
“They burned down my parents’ house,” he said. “They burned it down because they thought we were Communists.”
But he said that those memories were in the past now and that he would like to visit the United States “just to go and have a look.”
“In America people are really good in their professions,” he said. “They get a good education and they get ahead, like Commander Le. He studied and he rose in his line of work.”
Like some second-generation immigrants, Commander Le never seems to have looked backward, learning only a little of the Vietnamese language and very little about his father’s past or his family’s history.
And so his visit on Sunday to his home city of Hue, 50 miles north of Danang, to meet the aunts and uncles who are his only relatives in Vietnam was a voyage of discovery of his roots.
“Something I recently learned was that my dad was not the first Vietnamese naval officer,” he said. “Back in imperial times, my great, great, great, great — four or five greats — grandfather served with the emperor. He was like an admiral.”
Commander Le prayed at the family’s ancestral shrines, visited their graves and learned of what he said were his family’s royal connections in the old imperial capital.
“I had noodle soup by the Perfume River, sitting on little plastic stools,” he said. “I definitely felt like a Vietnamese, just enjoying that food and the company of my family.”
Although he hardly mentioned the war to his children, Commander Le’s father has written accounts of his escape, bitter at what he calls the abandonment and failure of ideals of the withdrawing American military.
He has refused to return to Communist Vietnam, saying he fears for his safety, although it is unlikely that he would face difficulties. Though he is proud to be an American, he said in a telephone interview, he still honors the red and yellow flag of the former South Vietnam as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Here in Danang, the flags in dispute were the Stars and Stripes and the gold star of Communist Vietnam.
According to United States Navy custom, the flag of the host nation is to be displayed only on the quarterdeck, beside the American flag, said a public affairs officer, Cmdr. Jeff Davis of the United States Seventh Fleet.
The Vietnamese custom is to fly their flag high at a level equivalent to that of the visiting nation, he said.
In previous port calls, the Navy has bent its traditions in honor of Vietnamese custom, Commander Davis said. But this time the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, held firmly to American custom.
After two hours of unhappy discussions, the top Vietnamese military and civilian brass began to walk off the pier, abandoning the welcoming ceremony. At just that moment, their flag inched its way upward and began to flutter side by side with American flag.
“It’s beautiful,” one Vietnamese general said, looking up.
“Each country has its own customs.”
The next morning, though, reporters noticed that the Vietnamese flag was flying just six inches lower than the Stars and Stripes.
DANANG, Vietnam — Cmdr. H. B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a United States Navy destroyer, had just stepped ashore on a formal port call, making an emotional return to Vietnam for the first time since he fled as a boy on a fishing boat at the end of the war in 1975.
A youthful and smiling man of 39, he bore on his shoulders the weight of the symbolism of cautiously warming military ties between Vietnam and the United States in the latest of fewer than a dozen naval port calls since 2003.
But the symbolism quickly became more nuanced as his welcoming ceremony was delayed by a dispute between the sides over the display of the red Vietnamese flag with its gold star aboard the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, which had just pulled in to port.
Two hours later the flag was finally raised high on the yardarm, seemingly in accord with the Vietnamese demand and contrary to American naval custom.
The waiting generals began to smile again, the red carpet was rolled out, and Commander Le was free to proceed with his return.
“Stepping ashore was awesome,” he said after landing from his destroyer, the Lassen, which was anchored in Danang Harbor.
“To be able to return to Vietnam after 35 years and to be able to do it as commander of a United States naval warship was an incredible honor and a privilege.”
He was returning to a very different Vietnam from the one he fled at the age of 5 with his parents and three of his siblings. Most people in this young nation, like Commander Le himself, have no memory of the war.
In the last decade or more, Vietnam has opened its economy, increased trade with the United States and risen from postwar poverty even as the Communist government maintains control of the press and political expression.
The city of Danang today, with its four new bridges, its broad streets and its emerging high-rise skyline, is almost unrecognizable to those who were here during the war years.
Despite the changes, the flag-raising dispute and the background of Commander Le’s own story illustrated the complexities of a relationship that remains shadowed by the war even as it moves tentatively forward.
“Gradual and steady,” said Carlyle B. Thayer, an expert on the Vietnamese armed forces, describing the relationship. “The Americans see a glacier moving, and they call it progress.”
He said Vietnam had been slow to accept American overtures of closer military ties, hoping to balance Chinese influence in the region with an American presence but stepping carefully to avoid offending Beijing.
“The two considerations that govern the Vietnamese are worries about China and deep suspicion of the United States,” said Mr. Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. “Suspicion is the underlying feature that puts a brake on progress.”
The Vietnamese generals who greeted Commander Le — whose full name is Hung Ba Le — might have had reason to have mixed feelings.
Commander Le’s father, Thong Ba Le, who is now 68, was himself a commander in the wartime South Vietnamese Navy and for a time held a senior position here in Danang. In 1975 it was this same Communist military he was fleeing as his base came under attack by rocket and mortar fire. The family spent two days at sea before being rescued by a United States Navy vessel.
While he was able to take his wife and his four younger children when he fled, he was unable to rescue four older children, who were trapped in Hue, Commander Le said. Two of these sons spent several years in Communist re-education camps, he said.
After he reached the United States, the father’s story was a model of immigrant success as he worked his way up from busboy to manager of a grocery chain in Northern Virginia and provided for college educations for all of his children, including the four who followed eight years later in a formal departure program.
Commander Le is a model of the success of many children of refugees.
A standout scholar and athlete in high school, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1992 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He is married with two children.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “My dad got me out of the country. He did what he had to do. He gave us opportunities to have a good life in the United States.”
Aboard the Vietnamese tug that brought Commander Le ashore was a man with quite a different set of memories: Chief Engineer Nguyen Van Ne, 50, said that as a child he had been terrified of American soldiers.
“They burned down my parents’ house,” he said. “They burned it down because they thought we were Communists.”
But he said that those memories were in the past now and that he would like to visit the United States “just to go and have a look.”
“In America people are really good in their professions,” he said. “They get a good education and they get ahead, like Commander Le. He studied and he rose in his line of work.”
Like some second-generation immigrants, Commander Le never seems to have looked backward, learning only a little of the Vietnamese language and very little about his father’s past or his family’s history.
And so his visit on Sunday to his home city of Hue, 50 miles north of Danang, to meet the aunts and uncles who are his only relatives in Vietnam was a voyage of discovery of his roots.
“Something I recently learned was that my dad was not the first Vietnamese naval officer,” he said. “Back in imperial times, my great, great, great, great — four or five greats — grandfather served with the emperor. He was like an admiral.”
Commander Le prayed at the family’s ancestral shrines, visited their graves and learned of what he said were his family’s royal connections in the old imperial capital.
“I had noodle soup by the Perfume River, sitting on little plastic stools,” he said. “I definitely felt like a Vietnamese, just enjoying that food and the company of my family.”
Although he hardly mentioned the war to his children, Commander Le’s father has written accounts of his escape, bitter at what he calls the abandonment and failure of ideals of the withdrawing American military.
He has refused to return to Communist Vietnam, saying he fears for his safety, although it is unlikely that he would face difficulties. Though he is proud to be an American, he said in a telephone interview, he still honors the red and yellow flag of the former South Vietnam as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
Here in Danang, the flags in dispute were the Stars and Stripes and the gold star of Communist Vietnam.
According to United States Navy custom, the flag of the host nation is to be displayed only on the quarterdeck, beside the American flag, said a public affairs officer, Cmdr. Jeff Davis of the United States Seventh Fleet.
The Vietnamese custom is to fly their flag high at a level equivalent to that of the visiting nation, he said.
In previous port calls, the Navy has bent its traditions in honor of Vietnamese custom, Commander Davis said. But this time the Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, held firmly to American custom.
After two hours of unhappy discussions, the top Vietnamese military and civilian brass began to walk off the pier, abandoning the welcoming ceremony. At just that moment, their flag inched its way upward and began to flutter side by side with American flag.
“It’s beautiful,” one Vietnamese general said, looking up.
“Each country has its own customs.”
The next morning, though, reporters noticed that the Vietnamese flag was flying just six inches lower than the Stars and Stripes.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tricare Future Threatened
Tricare For Life was instituted to correct the broken promise that military retirees would recieve free health care coverage for life and it covers the Medicare co-pay. Now a heavy assualt has begun on Veterans/Retirees benefits to pay other programs our President promised during the campaign. And it is a high priority of his admiistration.
Please pay attention to what is happening and contact your congressional representatives to protect our benefits.
Please pay attention to what is happening and contact your congressional representatives to protect our benefits.
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