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First Arc Light
Published on June 18, 2013 By Thomas C. Van Hare By 1965, the Vietnam War was rapidly expanding. US Military and South Vietnamese forces were deeply involved in a mix of counter-insurgency and open...
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Operation A-Go — Part 1 of 3
Published on June 19, 2013 By Thomas C. Van Hare Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo had gathered his forces in secret, creating the largest naval fleet Japan had yet assembled in the war. Two years after the...
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Operation A-Go — Part 2 of 3
Published on June 25, 2013 By Thomas C. Van Hare By dawn on June 19, 1944, the two opposing carrier groups were positioned with the Japanese to the west and the Americans to the east. To the south of...
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Operation A-Go — Part 3 of 3
Published on June 27, 2013 by Thomas C. Van Hare As the day ended, Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa left the stricken aircraft carrier Taiho for the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Wakatsuki. From there,...
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Make Mud, Not War
Published on July 5, 2013 By Thomas C. Van Hare On July 5, 1972, a five year long program in Vietnam culminated with a final flight by the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron from Udorn RTAFB,...
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Meacon and the Dawn of Electronic Warfare
Published on July 9, 2013 By Thomas C. Van Hare During the night hours of July 9 and early morning of July 10, 1941 — today in aviation history — a stream of German Luftwaffe night bombers were...
View ArticleThe Disappearance
Published on July 15, 2013 The Reading Eagle carried word of the mystery in its Sunday edition, on November 12, 1899, fully twenty-four years after a balloon accident that took place on July 15, 1875 —...
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In the Event of Moon Disaster
Published on July 20, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare On July 20, 1969, as Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin descended toward the surface of the Moon at a location that NASA and the astronauts termed,...
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Blériot’s Naval System
Published on August 7, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The news bulletin began innocently enough with the heading: “Bleriot’s New Launching Device.” What it described, however, was something that in other...
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The Circuit de l’Est — Part 1 of 2
Published on August 8, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The year 1910 was an auspicious one for aviation. Many new aeroplane designs were in the works and the early models of the 1908 and 1909 period, such as...
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The Circuit de l’Est — Part 2 of 2
Published on August 9, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare As it happened, of the ten pilots who made a showing to start the Circuit de l’Est from Issy, near Paris, just six would make it off successfully. First...
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The Atlantique Incident — Part 1 of 2
Published on August 10, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare Squadron Leader P.K. Bundela and his wingman, Flight Officer S. Narayanan, were sitting ready at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Naliya when the call...
View ArticleThe FPV Revolution
Published on August 26, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The heady days of the early 1910s are long past. Today, flying a plane or helicopter is expensive and challenging — it is also fun and amazing, of...
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The First Drone
Published on August 29, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The use of drones in military service has a long history. Many remember how German engineers created glide bombs during World War II. These ranged from...
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An End to the Age of Innocence
Published on August 5, 2014 by Thomas Van Hare One hundred years ago this week, the world descended into the conflict we know now as World War I. Soon to be called the Great War, it would prove deadly...
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The Right Stuff
Published February 18, 2015 by Thomas Van Hare Did you ever wonder where the term, “The Right Stuff” came from? Most people would say that it was a product of the X-planes testing program out in the...
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Hawaii to New Jersey for $75
Published March 9, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare On March 7 and 8, 1949, former USAAF pilot Captain William P. “Bill” Odom flew a V-tailed Beech Bonanza that he named, ”Waikiki Beech”, from Hawaii to...
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The Cigarette Club
Published March 17, 2015 By Thomas C. Van Hare These days, it seems that the only connection between cigarettes and aviation are signs in aircraft lavatories reading, “NO SMOKING”. Smoke detectors are...
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The Black and White Marble
Published on April 1, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare On September 12, 1962, at Rice Stadium in Texas, President John F. Kennedy spoke these words: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in...
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Surrender Flight to Ie Shima
Published on April 7, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare Most people, even most historians, would say that Japan surrendered to the United States at the end of World War II in a large ceremony aboard the US Navy...
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