Another Famous E-mail

     Earlier this week, my friend Jeff forwarded me an e-mail that’s made its way around the ‘Net a few times.  I believe it started in 2004.  I’ll let the text speak for itself:

Subject: Reply from Lt. Col. Scott Pleus

Luke AFB is west of Phoenix and is rapidly being surrounded by civilization that complains about the noise from the base and its planes, forgetting that it was there long before they were.   A certain lieutenant colonel at Luke AFB deserves a big pat on the back. Apparently, an individual who lives somewhere near Luke AFB wrote the local paper complaining about a group of F-16s that disturbed his/her day at the mall. When that individual read the response from a Luke AFB officer, it must have stung quite a bit.  

The complaint: "Question of the day for Luke Air Force Base: Whom do we thank for the morning air show? Last Wednesday, at precisely 9:11 a.m., a tight formation of four F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall, continuing west over Bell Road at approximately 500 feet.  Imagine our good fortune! Do the Tom Cruise-wannabes feel we need this wake-up call, or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyn’s early bird special? Any response would be appreciated."

The response:  Regarding "A wake-up call from Luke’s jets" (Letters, Thursday): On June 15, at precisely 9:12 a.m., a perfectly timed four-ship flyby of F-16s from the 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base flew over the grave of Capt. Jeremy Fresques. Capt. Fresques was an Air Force officer who was previously stationed at Luke Air Force Base and was killed in Iraq on May 30, Memorial Day. At 9 a.m. on June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial Park in Sun City to mourn the loss of a husband, son and friend.  Based on the letter writer’s recount of the flyby, and because of the jet noise, I’m sure you didn’t hear the 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, or my words to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques as I gave them their son’s flag on behalf of the President of the United States and all those veterans and servicemen and women who understand the sacrifices they have endured. A four-ship flyby is a display of respect the Air Force pays to those who give their lives in defense of freedom. We are professional aviators and take our jobs seriously, and on June 15 what the letter-writer witnessed was four officers lining up to pay their ultimate respects. The letter writer asks, "Whom do we thank for the morning air show?  "The 56th Fighter Wing will call for you, and forward your thanks to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques, and thank them for you, for it was in their honor that my pilots flew the most honorable formation of their lives. Lt. Col. Scott Pleus Commander, 63rd Fighter Squadron, Luke AFB     

     Jeff was curious if I’d seen it.  I explained everything I knew in a separate e-mail. 

 Jeff,    

     Not only did I recieve this back in 2005 [It may have been 2004, now that I think of it – ed], I hopped on the global and sent a short message to the effect ‘Well said, sir!’ to Lt Col “Rolls” Pleus.  He sent me an even shorter reply (‘Thanks!’).      

     It turns out that Lt Col Pleus got so many replies that it crashed Luke AFB’s server.  The comm folks had to establish a separate account for him on a different server to handle the traffic.  Someone from the 63 FS told me he got well over a thousand e-mails (almost all positive).  He took a month or so, but he replied to every single e-mail he got.      

     What wasn’t said was that he initially wrote a pretty angry response, but tore that up and threw it away, and then went for the classier construct shown.  It was vetted through the 56 OG/CC (my old boss from the 22 FS, Col Strawther), 56 FW/PA, and through the Wing King, then BGen Rand (a freakin’ great guy himself–he was the 8 FW/CC over at Kunsan when I was there).  Some of my favorite folks had a hand in making it all happen.     

     I had the privilege of going through the F-16 requal course when Lt Col Pleus was still in charge.  I thanked him in person for getting back to me.  He left the 63d to go to Texas to work on either 19 AF or AETC staff, I forgot which.     

     And now all of you know everything I know about that! 

Posted in Internet, USAF | Comments Off on Another Famous E-mail

I Need a Better Metatag

     Distaint Cousin Dylan almost always comes up first when we Google the name ‘Penningroth.’  I guess I need to start writing books for publication if I want to catch up!

     I wonder who the Penningroth.com folks are? They have a nice house.  Christina wants to buy something like that in Bavaria someday. 

     And I wonder who Phil and Stephen are? There sure are a lot more Penningroths out there in the big wide world than the little enclave on the Mississippi that my kin and I grew up in! For decades there were only two entries in the phone book. 

     I don’t show up until page five, and then only because that one nice lady referred my blog to MilBlogging.com. 

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on I Need a Better Metatag

Eight Habits of Highly Effective Fighter Pilots

     My new friend Anwyn passed along this tag that asks us to list eight of our habits (and then ‘tag’ eight other bloggers, which I’m not going to be able to do because I’ve only got three other friends in the blogosphere).  I will honor the request to post eight of my habits.

     1)  People come first.  I know I have to put God first, but I personally tend to drop everything else when someone needs to talk.  I’m not quite as good at dropping everything else to do much other than listen.  I consider this habit a mixed blessing because I’m not really prone to action like many other more effective people are, but lucky for me a lot of times people aren’t looking for action, they’re looking for a shoulder.  I like to think this is the way God wants me to be.  I figure Jesus spent a lot of time listening, how else would he have known people as well as he did? Oh! Maybe it was inherent omniscience, being God and all.  Hopefully my dear Lord understands I don’t have that advantage.   

     2)  The J-O-B runs a close second.  Everyone by now has heard the axiom that "No one says on their deathbed they wished they’d spent more time at work."  That’s definitely not true in my business.  What I don’t know absolutely can kill me, and I’d hate to be going down in flames wishing I’d spent a couple extra minutes looking up exactly how to avoid whatever missile had just hit me.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m spending enough time at work. 

     3)  I follow the news pretty closely.  This kind of goes with the J-O-B.  I can watch world events unfold and have a pretty good idea why I’m getting a phone call in the middle of the night.  Surprisingly, this isn’t true of everyone in the military.  That said, I stop listening after the first sentence (or reading after the first paragraph).  I’ve found that journalists may get the basic fact correct (someone is shooting at me!) but then get the analysis completely wrong (the cease fire is broken! when there was no cease fire). 

     4)  I think I know what I’m doing when it comes to investing.  I’ve only recently (within the last four years) begun to invest in things that actually go up.  Watching Taser Int’l go up over a dollar per share a day back in early 2004 was a lot of fun! Selling it while it was crashing but still making a small profit was almost as fun.  I’ve been so busy for the past three years I basically pulled out of the market and had been mostly in cash, but when people were standing in line waiting to buy an iPhone, that was just too obvious a signal to buy my most recent addition.  It’s done pretty well.

     5)  I still love to play video games on my computer.  I refuse to elaborate further.  It’s too embarrassing. 

     6)  Speaking of games, I would rather participate in them than watch them.  This should hardly be surprising.  As Toby Keith would say "I ain’t as good as I once was."  This doesn’t change the fact I’d rather get out on the field.  Perhaps in another 10 years I’ll be happy to watch.  My son will not quite be in high school yet, so it’s probably an appropriate timeline. 

     7)  If an opportunity comes along, I’ll bite.  Once the opportunity is locked in, then I’ll probably procrastinate in getting to it.  Sometimes I even do this at work (Hey, I just had to go fly instead of programming that Excel spreadsheet, don’t you know!).  In principle it drives me up the wall when I do this, but on the other hand I don’t lose opportunities due to indecision.  And if one waits until the last minute, it’ll only take a minute to finish, right?! (Other dearly held corollaries are:  "There’s never time to do it right, there’s always time to do it over;" and "If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done!")

     8)  When I’m not on the computer, I’m probably reading.  Unfortunately, my net information input is a lot higher than my net output.  I was hoping the Blog would rectify this, but alas, I’m still a sponge rarely squeezed.

     There you have it! Eight habits, no waiting!

Posted in F-16 Operations, Internet | Comments Off on Eight Habits of Highly Effective Fighter Pilots

Whether or Not There’s Weather

     Today was the final day of our bilateral exercise.  The game plan for today was for our F-15Cs to join up with a four-ship of F-15Js from Chitose to play Red Air for another large-force employment exercise.  It was basically the same scenario as yesterday, except the Red SAM was going to actually play like a Patriot, which complicated our Wild Weasel mission significantly.  Today though there were to be four of us:  Cash would lead it with Shack (known then as FNG R) on his wing, with Scrappy and me as the second element.  We were to share OCA duties with a separate flight of F-15Js, with some F-4Js and F-2s as strikers again.  My friends and fellow schedulers, Pickle and Tequila, were to be in the strike package.  It was going to be a good mission!

     The first sign of trouble was when we stepped, a JASDF T-4 had flown out to the airspace to do a weather check for us, and reported that the area was pretty much socked in, with only about eight-thousand feet usable.  So the F-15Cs decided to go train on their own in some clearer airspace elsewhere, and the F-4Js and F-2s just plain fell out.  The squadron at Chitose that was going to play Blue Air with us decided to train on their own, leaving us with a four-ship of Red Air and the Patriot. 

     My first jet for the day had a bad battery charger, so I ended up stepping to a spare aircraft (a D-model with only a centerline tank and no HARM Targeting System Pod, or HTSP).  That meant only three of our aircraft could take good HARM shots, although I could still lob them at a point in space where we guessed the Patriot might be.  It didn’t turn out to be much of a factor except I was carrying a whole lot less gas than the other three, so I ended up ultimately going home first.

     We pressed on out to the airspace, just as we did on the three previous days.  We called "Fight’s on!" and pointed at the F-15Js who obligingly pointed at us, too.  The F-15Js did the exploding cantaloupe maneuver yet again, so once again we only got to shoot them down two at a time.  I think the only thing that happened that was a bit extraordinary was that apparently everyone but me forgot about the Patriot, so I called for the shot while also trying to work the air-to-air stuff.  It was only a little thing, but it seemed to have impressed Shack (I told him later that it really will get easier after you’ve done it a couple hundred times).  Once we’d finished dealing with Red Air, we proceeded to our SEAD CAP and peppered the site with HARMs while we pretended the F-4s and F-2s were hitting the target like they did yesterday.  After we finished, we pressed out through the Red Air guys who’d reset and made us fight our way out.  That was a little tough on us, and by that time I was out of gas, so Scrappy and I RTB’d, followed by Cash and Shack.  The weather at home had improved greatly, so the three of them did two or three practice simulated flameout approaches before callling it a week.

     Afterward, we all sat down to talk about the day’s mission.  Scrappy was more fired up and enthusiastic than I’d seen him all week.  We all learned a little bit from the flight, this one and the rest from the other bilateral exercises.  After we finished our discussion, we all cruised over to the club for a social with the F-15Cs and the JASDF who’d all played in the exercise. 

     It was a good end to a good week.  I’d gotten to fly four out of five days.  I can’t remember the last time I got to fly that much.  I think it was Sep 2003.  It was a week long overdue for me! I just hope I’ve got more weeks like this in store!

Posted in F-16 Operations, Rest of World Military, USAF | Comments Off on Whether or Not There’s Weather

A Need for SEAD

     Scrappy and I got paired up again today to help a strike package perform a simulated attack on a surface-to-air missile site.  The plan was for a four ship of USAF F-15s and our two-ship of F-16CJs to take out an eight-ship of F-15Js simulating Red Air and proceed to the target area.  The F-15s were then to defeat any additional Red Air that showed up (and magically the F-15J Red Air guys would regenerate on our way out).  We were to suppress a Patriot battery which was to play Red SAM.  Then a four-ship of F-4Js and F-2s would perform a simulated bomb run on the Red SAM. 

     This mission went fairly well for the push.  While we pushed on in, the F-15s cleaned up Red Air on their side, and kindly left a couple for us to deal with, which we did.  Scrappy and I then lobbed a couple AGM-88s at the Red SAM to convince it to shut down, which seemed to work.  Then while the F-4s and F-2s screamed in to the target area, the F-15s tangled with a few Red Air while Scrappy and I kept the Red SAM suppressed by lobbing our remaining HARMs into it.  Within a couple turns in our CAP, the strikers were on and then off target.  We called the Red SAM destroyed and proceeded out of the target area.  Red Air regrouped and gave us fits trying to fight our way out.  Get out we did, and we had to run one of them down, running ourselves down to bingo fuel in the process.  We safed everything up and headed home with one more bilateral mission under our belts. 

     This time I’d like to point out that the F-15Js actually did their DCA tactics while on defense.  I think I was right yesterday.  They do the tactics they’re used to.  It almost worked for them today!

Posted in F-16 Operations, Rest of World Military, USAF | Comments Off on A Need for SEAD

Counter Air – The Best Defense

     I learned today that sometimes the best defense is your opponents’ defense.

     Scrappy, Cash, Bender, and I all went out to defend an imaginary lane in the sky today.  Four F-15Js from Chitose were to play our adversaries.  Their job would be to try to shoot us down or get by us in order to assist red strike aircraft to proceed to an imaginary target area behind us (quintessential offensive counter-air).  The four of us had to prevent that from happening.  After a simple briefing and uneventful ground ops, takeoff, and departures, all eight aircraft entered the airspace in our opposite corners (in this case the north and south sides of the airspace).  We each began holding in our respective combat air patrol (CAP) areas.  At the prearranged time, we radioed "Fight’s on!" to our respective ground controllers, who called one another to confirm the war had started; immediately our two four-ships pointed at one another at a closure rate of something like 1,400 mph. 

     As the F-15Js pressed downtrack, we continued our commit out of our CAP and prepared to shoot BVR.  Suddenly (and without warning, even) the F-15Js performed the exploding cantalope maneuver (so called because when you sketch the engagement with a red pen, it looks a lot like someone threw a cantalope at the whiteboard).  The four of us quickly recovered from our shock that OCA was performing a standard DCA maneuver.  The shock was primarily that we expected them to attack us, not to bait us.  This simplified our problem of not letting the offenders get by us.  They didn’t appear to even want to get by! So Cash and Bender fired off a simulated salvo of missiles at whomever was flying directly at us, then turned cold back to the CAP.  Scrappy and I then turned around to make sure that 1) Cash’s and Bender’s simulated missiles simulated worked and that any dead Red was turning around and squawking the correct dead-man code, and 2) that the previous Red Air that exploded backward was not coming after us now.  Happily for us, Cash’s and Bender’s missiles ‘worked,’ and even better, the remaining two Red Air were in fact coming after us.  Scrappy and I fired off a simulated salvo of our own, and within another minute the lane was ‘clear’ of Red Air.

     Since the first engagement was so much fun, we asked the F-15Js if we could try it one more time.  So we all set back up again, called "Fight’s on!" and pointed all eight noses at each other once again.  We figured this time they’d come out Mach schnell and try to mow us down for sure.  But no kidding, as we approached each other from a distance, they did the same thing as before.  We obligingly handled them pretty much the same, only this time we were lower on missiles, and our ground controllers with dice in hand let us know that this time some of our missiles hadn’t worked.  So Cash and Bender ended up pitching hot one extra time and cleaned off their rails, and one of the Red Air managed to get a couple shots off at Scrappy before all Red Air was defeated. 

     All in all, it was a decent day’s work.  Unfortunately, we were hoping to get to some visual merges.  It had been a relatively clear day, Scrappy thought he saw one about 10 miles away from him.  Cash, Bender and I never did get tally on any of them.  All we ever saw was blips on our radars.  After we all bingoed out, we safed our simulation switches and proceeded back home. 

     As we debriefed the events of the mission, we wondered aloud why on earth the F-15Js kept trying to do defensive tactics when they were supposed to come after us or try to get around us.  As best we could tell, our Japanese allies haven’t really been doing any offense since, oh, about 1945.  We figured we’re going to have to teach them eventually, otherwise we’re never going to get any practice playing defense while we’re stationed in Japan!

Posted in F-16 Operations, Rest of World Military, USAF | Comments Off on Counter Air – The Best Defense

B, F, and M

     Upon return from our journey to the summit of Mt Fuji, Paul and I RTB’d to the home-drome to discover that we were scheduled to fly a BFM hop together! Could life possibly be any better?

     We decided to try to do some high-aspect BFM vs a ‘limited thrust’ bandit.  Basically, we took turns being blue and red.  I won the coin toss and got to play the blue fighter first. 

     After a quick but thorough briefing about the flight, we walked back to life support and went through the dress-up.  The Sea of Japan is finally warm enough that we don’t require anti-exposure suits to survive if we had to take a swim, so we happily bypassed the cumbersome and awkward ‘Poopie Suit’ and went straight for our G-suits and survival vests.  After chucking our harnesses over the vest and testing our masks for good comm and seals, we beat-feet for the ops desk, picking up our tapes on the way.  At the desk, we copied our parking spot and tail numbers down (D-models with centerline tanks. . . what happened to our clean C-models?! Drat! So much for getting to a sustained 9.0 G today!).  Top-3 gave us the scoop on weather (not too bad in the area, and IFR-Hachinohe, so we’d be able to use most of our gas to actually train instead of shoot instrument approaches at the field).  After his spiel, we clambered up out of the squadron and after a brief drive thanks to the crew van, we arrived at our jets.  We were across a bend in the taxiway from each other, so we individually pre-flighted our jets, cranked the motors, ran through the litany of systems checks, programmed the INS so they would remember where home was, and loaded up our simulated weapons.  After a short taxi to the arming area and a brief delay while a ground crew gave our jets their last once-over glances, we finally got our takeoff clearance and blasted off to the airspace. 

     Upon arrival in the training area, we turned all of our avionics and weapons on, started up the tapes, pressed the G-suit test button one last time to make sure everything would work, and gave ourselves two warm-up hard turns.  Paul called out that he was good to go, I parroted his call.  Two Viper pilots were ready to practice the knife fight in the phone booth! We got oriented one last time, I flew out to 1.5 mile line abreast, we checked 45-degrees away from each other, and once we got to 3 miles separation, we called ‘Fight’s on!’ 

     Next thing to do was to set up the first high-aspect pass, so we pointed our jets roughly at each other and flew past one another going a combined total of about 1,100 mph.  I wanted to force a 2-circle fight, so I started a break turn toward him, hoping he’d do the same.  I waited about a half-second too long, and as we passed, Paul turned the other direction.  Great! a one-circle fight.  I smacked the throttle back to IDLE and threw out the speed brakes to get the jet down to a better corner velocity in a huge hurry! In retrospect, I probably didn’t need the brakes, and I ended up taking an extra thousand pounds of gas to make an extra one-and-a-half circles through the sky to finally get to a gun WEZ.  (Yes, taxpayers, I’m sorry, but my error cost me enough gas to drive your SUV for the next two months.  Please buy a hybrid! I can guarantee you I’ll get the bad guy, but I can’t guarantee it will be done absolutely pristinely every time!).  After my convincing and clearly permanent arrival at Paul’s six-o’clock (and not a few simulated gunshots that would have put a few holes in his jet), we decided ‘Desired Learning Objectives’ were met.  We terminated that fight, dumped our noses low, accelerated back up to 350 knots (indicated), climbed back up to 18,000′, and reset with me as the ‘red’ fighter.

     Most folks playing the role of a thrust limited bandit like to try to drive a one-circle fight.  So as Paul and I passed again at 1,100 mph, I did a better job than previously and turned toward him early enough that he pretty much had to go two-circle with me (that, and you normally want to go two-circle against a thrust-limited bandit).  Now most people seem to think this is a bad idea for the thrust-limited bandit, but I’ve found I’ve had some success with this tactic (probably because everyone else thinks it’s dumb, so no one expects me to do it).  Usually it really is dumb, because Red Air usually pulls all the G’s they can and he ends up going 200 mph after the first circle while the blue fighter is up around 400 mph.  There’s absolutely no way to recover from that if you turn across tails for the second circle, so you do have to transition to one-circle and hope the other guy doesn’t try to out-stack you (9 times out of 10 he does, and you lose).  Me? I pull about 5 G’s on the first circle and keep about 350 mph on the jet after the first circle.  Blue and red end up with no real visible advantage on each other (actually, the blue fighter should have about a 50+ -knot advantage, otherwise all he did was wore himself out turning a higher G, smaller radius circle).  He probably has a few angles (his nose has turned 180-degrees while yours has only carved out 175-degrees), but many folks don’t quite see this at the first pass (the ones who do are usually the weapons school grads who have done so much BFM that they’ve seen everything, although this has worked against at least one patch-wearer).  Typically, the blue fighter will try to go two-circle one more time because he’ll figure by the middle of the next circle he’ll have a huge advantage and will be able to transition to offense.  Not so fast, amigo! I didn’t bleed off as much energy as you thought I did, and by the way, I still have a lot of altitude to work with.  I will start taking the fight downhill and may or may not pull more G’s on the second circle; usually I both go downhill and ratchet up to 5.5-6 G on the second circle.  The blue fighter can still definitely win this, but he’ll be easing up from 8 G down to 5 G, while all this time I’ve been pulling a nice, comfortable 5-6 G for the past 20 seconds.  At the end of the second circle, where most blue fighters will start to see a noticeable winning trend, it won’t be apparent when I’m fighting my way, and this is where I’ve seen a couple folks give up.  Paul actually figured out what I was doing at about this point and took the fight vertical, which was good, but I had just enough energy left to pull my jet directly underneath him and he lost sight of me and rolled the wrong direction.  Net result – it would have taken him another 2,000 pounds of gas to get to an offensive position, and we wanted to try to knock out some 3K’ perch sets, so rather than spending the gas proving he could eventually get onto my tail, we terminated that fight and set up for our 3K’ gunnery practice. 

     After two sets of jinking and gunning, we re-learned that the centerline tank adds a lot of inertia to the jet and it won’t roll nearly as crisply as a clean jet, so jink early, jink often! By then we were bingo, so we safed everything up, turned the cameras off, and headed back to homeplate.  We landed, taxiied back to our respective hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), shut down, signed the forms, got out, and met back in the squadron, smiling ear to ear. 

     I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Man, do I love my job!

Posted in F-16 Operations, USAF | Comments Off on B, F, and M

If the Mountain Won’t Go to You

     Last Thursday our friends Paul, Andrea, and their kids, plus my wife and I all took a nine-hour bus ride to Tokyo.  The next day we all got up really, really early (that would be early as in "What does the ‘O’ in oh-three-hundred mean? ‘O-my-goodness it’s early!"), we handed the kids off to my wife for babysitting, and Paul, Andrea, and I all jumped aboard the tour bus to Mt Fuji!

     The bus stopped at the fifth station trailhead at about 0600 (that’s 6:00 AM for you non-military types).  We got out, bought ourselves one each official Mt Fuji walking sticks, and proceeded up the mountain trail at 0620. 

     The trail was well-marked, mostly in Kanji, but sometimes in English.  Besides, once we got to the northern side of the mountain, you could see the huts all the way up the mountainside.  The ascent to the summit took me six hours, Paul and Andrea were in better shape for such things and could probably have gotten topside within five-and-a-half.  They always stopped to wait for me, which was nice of them.

     One of the unique things on the Mt Fuji trail was the ‘stamps’ you collected on the ascent.  Most of the huts had someone with a small fire and a branding iron that they would use to burn a ‘stamp’ into your walking stick.  The idea was that you could prove how high you got after the fact by the stamps on your walking stick.  The odd thing was the hut topside gave us the ‘Sunrise’ stamp, although we didn’t make it up there until about 1215.  Some people actually hike up one evening and then stay overnight at the hut either at the top or at the eigth stage (where it’s considerably warmer!).  These folks then awaken at 0300, finish the climb, and watch the sun rise on top of the mountain.  While that would have been cool, it wasn’t part of the package deal we paid for, and none of us brought camping gear anyway.  We settled for simply walking over to the edge of the crater and taking pictures.  I was asked if we saw a lake in there.  If there was a lake, it was way farther down than any of us could see.  We spent about an hour-and-a-half at the mountaintop, partly because we were sore from the ascent, partly because we were hungry and eating lunch, partly so we could see the crater, but most importantly because at about 1130 the weather got a little bad, and we had to trudge through some freezing drizzle for the final 45 minutes prior to arriving at the summit. 

     Overall the hike reminded me a little bit of the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon.  Both paths were about 12 km, it took 5-6 hours to go up and 3 to descend (obviously the Grand Canyon was the other way around, a descent followed by an ascent).  The Grand Canyon path was certainly more developed.  Mt Fuji had a plowed-out descent over pea-gravel sized igneous rock that ultimately shredded the soles of my way-too-old Gore-tex boots.  The ascending trail was slightly technical at times, but it was easily managed. 

     The legend among the USAF is that if you are stationed in Japan and do not climb Mt Fuji, you’ll get stationed here again.  I may have just written myself out of a follow-on assignment in Japan. 

 

Posted in Asia/Pacific, Fitness & Health, Travel | 1 Comment

Rabid Fox on FoxNews

     From FoxNews.com (who else!?):  A five-year old took down a rabid fox and kept it from attacking six other kids.  Nice going, Rayshun!

Posted in Media, What\'s Right | 1 Comment

Another Legend Gone

     Weltanschauung joins QandO in saying a final farewell to Adm Eugene B. Fluckey.  He was perhaps the most successful WWII submarine skipper.  His book Thunder Below was totally inspiring (even for an aspiring Air Force fighter pilot).  [Hat tip to HoyStory]

Posted in Military Affairs | Tagged | Comments Off on Another Legend Gone