Common sense fail

Idiots and guns. Never a good combination.

SANFORD, N.C. (AP)—
Lee County sheriff's deputies say a Sanford man shot and killed himself while showing friends the safety of his new gun.

Deputies say the death of 23-year-old Randall Trent Butler was an accident.

Capt. Jeff Johnson says there is nothing to indicate foul play.

Johnson says some friends were in Butler's girlfriend's home when he showed them the safety features of his .22-caliber pistol.

The captain says Butler showed them the safety and how the gun would not fire. Johnson says after Butler pulled the trigger and it didn't fire, he showed them the slide action, put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger again.

Johnson says Butler apparently failed to re-engage the safety.

Ow, ow, ow...

So I was running this evening. (Side note: I just got approved for a new walking foot and they start work on it Tuesday. Yay! Funny how I can now run and ride bikes but not walk or stand for prolonged periods, eh?)

Anyway, I was into my fourth mile when I happened to see this woman with long read hair bending over to tend one of her yard plants. She was wearing a bikini top and a short, tight pair of black shorts. And she was in great shape. Did I mention that she was a red-head?

Thus distracted, I stepped off of the asphalt and put my foot into the gutter. My ankle flexed, my leg twisted, and I went down hard in the grass next to the road with numerous "pain" warning alarms going off in my head.

The Goddess I had been ogling admiring stopped what she was doing and came over to see if I was ok. And I think that she bought my claim of the setting sun being in my eyes as the cause of my mis-step. She thought that I should accept a ride back to my car instead of trying to run any more. I agreed, thinking that this could be the start of something nice.

But then she volunteered her husband to drive me back. And I'm not so sure that he bought the "sun in my eyes" excuse at all. Big sigh...

A good day for shooting

Today was a good day to go shooting.
Of course ANY day is a good day for shooting. But I had business out near the range today so I grabbed a couple of rifles at random and took them along.

First was my favorite FAL.
This one is a mix of Brazilian, Argentine, Belgian and South African parts. I call it my "We are the World" rifle. (Not to be confused with that stupid 1980's "group hug" song done by all those liberal entertainers.) Built by me from parts of destroyed surplus rifles, then destroyed again after a burglar stole it and buried it for a year, I've got more time invested in building, repairing and customizing this rifle than any other firearm that I own. But on the positive side of the ledger, I know it intimately inside and out, and even though it's not a beauty queen, when I squeeze the trigger, it always shoots.
This time the FAL is out just for fun, since I haven't shot it in a while. With it's European-style sights and trigger, it'll never be a match rifle, but it still put 23 of 25 rounds into a 4"x6" group at 100 yards, and the two flyers were totally my fault.
Not as light or precise as an AR, but the 7.62x51mm round hits a lot harder and it's ammo-compatible with my M60 so that's a plus. When I need a truck gun or a rifle for some rugged outdoor toting, this is still the first one I grab.

Then there's my MAS 36-51. You talk about a beat-up rifle with a hard luck story, this one takes the cake if I can believe half of what I was told when I bought it.

Yeah, yeah...I know. "Buy the gun, not the story." I don't put a lot of stock in the alleged histories of most firearms that I buy, but in this case it seems to make sense.

I got this one through a dealer that I know personally and trust. I believe him when he tells me things. He took it in from a Vietnam vet that he's dealt with for years, and the vet said that he picked this rifle up in Vietnam and brought it back home. He has no idea where it's bring-back paperwork went, but things do get lost over 30 years or so, and the dealer that I believe believes the vet. The rifle is beat to tar and virtually every part on it is a mis-match, but it all shows the same hard wear that comes from use and being out in the weather for a long time. It has no rust or pitting or signs of neglect though. Whoever put that wear on it obviously took care to keep it cleaned and oiled. Being a French rifle, it's quite believable that this rifle was captured by the Vietnamese from the French in the 1950's or otherwise left behind when they left Indochina. If the vet's tale is true, this rifle was used against American forces until it was captured again in battle, this time by the US Marines. Now I can't prove or disprove it, but just looking at this rifle, you know that it's been somewhere and done something. This is one of those instances where you take the story with a grain of salt but then you look at the rifle itself and you have no problem believing it just because of it's condition. If firearms could talk, and I could ask one any of mine about their history, this is the one I'd ask. There's no doubt that it has some stories to tell.

And that aside, 20 for 20 on a silhouette target at 200 yards. No real group to speak of, but they were all on the rings and that's good enough for me in the case of this tired old survivor.
After that, I shot a bag of .45 ACP through my Springfield Armory 1911A1 and called it a day. Now I'm tumbling brass and after I go for my evening run, I'm going to grill a steak then drink beer and clean guns on the deck.

And life shall be good.

Afternoon fun

Yesterday I took Murphy to the dog park, intending to do some off-leash work with him. Unfortunately, when we got there, the gate was locked with no explanation. So, as we drove home, I decided to take him swimming again.
This time, I let him swim without the leash, since he's been good at staying with me lately, and since he can only get out of the water at one spot. As soon as I got his fetch toy out, his eyes lit up.

Here he is, fetching his toy.
Good dog.

Here he is, just swimming for the sake of swimming, after biting the fetch toy in half. He just kept going back in and paddling around for the fun of it.Good dog.

But them he had to end the day be being Murphy again, waiting until my guard was down and running off down the road. Bad dog!

I'm thinking that someone's going to be getting a new shock collar in the near future.

How dogs survive in nature--canine wiles

Well Murphy's got his wiles running full-bore.

Yesterday I took him to Harpers Ferry, and while I talked to Sharon at the Swiss Miss ice cream shop, Murphy enjoyed his own ice cream cone. But that apparently wasn't enough for him, so when an elderly couple sat down on a nearby bench to eat their ice cream, Murphy sat right in front of them and put the sad eyes on the woman until finally she broke down and gave him the remains of her cone.

Where did he ever learn that?

Later that day, Murphy and I were invited to a neighbor's barbecue, and this time, when the sad eyes didn't get him anything, Murphy went for the direct approach--he bum-rushed the host as he was taking the first batch of burgers off the grill and nailed himself a freshly-made cheeseburger, snatching it right off the plate and skedaddling off into the yard with it.

And again, I have no idea where he learned that. Must have been one of his previous owners.

All I do know is that this dog is never going to starve to death if food exists anywhere around him. By hook or by crook, he'll always be eating well."Jes' keep misunderestimating me!"

I'm being followed

He's been with me the last five turns, and now I think he's gaining on me.

Thirty miles. Love my bike.

I took the bike out today.

I drove to Brunswick, MD with it, parked at the train station, and headed off down the C&O Canal, getting on at milepost 55. My goal is to top the last ride's 24 miles, and this time I'm shooting for thirty.

Almost immediately I was required to act to save a turtle.

The first mile of the towpath is actually a dirt road that goes to a sewage plant and a campground. Past the campground, it becomes trail again. As I pedaled down the road, I saw a little car ahead of my stop and a teen girl in the front seat jumped out and grabbed what turned out to be a huge painted turtle with a shell about a foot in diameter. She jumped back in the car with it as I rode up and I heard her exclaim "MY turtle!" In the car were four other teens who looked like typical teens for that part of Maryland--the kind that make you think that there's a pot farm or meth lab somewhere nearby.

"You need to put the turtle back," I said as I stopped next to the car. She ignored me but the driver turned to look at me so I repeated it. "Put the turtle back." He kept looking at me, so I said it a third time, this time doing my best to sound like Obi Wan Kenobi telling stormtroopers that they didn't need to see his identification. That seemed to work. He turned to the girl and said "We need to put the turtle back." Now they all looked at me. "You can't take wildlife off of the federal land," I said. This seemed to work as another boy got out of the back seat, took the turtle from her, and set it back down in the brush next to the road. "They make lousy pets anyway," I said as he got back in the car. They drove off--slowly--no doubt contemplating coming back for it after I rode away. Once they were out of sight around the bend, I picked up the turtle and took it through the thick brush down the steep, thorn-covered hill, and set it down in the muck next to the water in the bottom of the canal a short distance away, placing it under some brush so it'd be hard to see. Based on it's size, that old turtle had a lot of years on it and here this girl, who quite likely still lived with her parents, was going to snatch it up out of it's world and try to keep it in a box or aquarium somewhere as a novelty. I'm betting that the turtle would have died before she figured out what to feed it or how to keep it. It was only after I rode on that I realized that I'd forgotten to take a picture of the turtle. Doh!

But there are lots of other turtles. Practically every log sticking out of the water has one or two on it. Like these guys.
Here's Lock 28. It's dry now, but you can see all of the stonework that was cut and laid by hand. The whole 184-mile canal was dug and built by hand, using contract workers, indentured servants from Europe, and rented slaves. They died by the hundreds from disease while building it.
So what do you do when your canal comes to a river that you want it to cross, all while maintaining your level course and keeping your canal a closed system? You build an aqueduct and take the whole canal over a bridge, mules, boats and all. This is the Monocacy Aqueduct that takes the canal over the Monocacy River.The Park Service is rebuilding this aqueduct now and you can see the dry bed where the water use to run and hopefully will run again someday.

Here's the span from the east end. Sorry about the group of Frednecks in the picture (Rednecks from Frederick, MD). I tried to wait them out but they showed no sign of leaving any time soon.
And here's Lock 27, about half a mile past the Aqueduct, with a view that shows the lock keeper's house. The lock keeper had to be available to operate the lock any time of the day or night so the canal company gave him and his family a house, a small garden plot, and a minimal salary. Usually his family supplemented their income by selling vegetables from the garden to the canal boat crews or trading them for coal.
This is what I saw when I got to Lock 27. Water! There's water in the canal again!Now this is what the canal used to look like, only without the trees between the towpath and the canal--they would have interfered with the mules trying to pull the canal boats. And off to my right, the Potomac River flows about 25 feet away.

Milepost 40. I'm 15 miles away from my vehicle now. This is the planned turn-around point.I really do want to ride on. These last few miles in particular have been beautiful and it looks like more of the same ahead. But I keep hearing the voice of one of my early role-models reminding me that "a man's got to know his limitations", coupled with the knowledge that it's a long ride back and I have things to do. So with one more wistful look down the canal, I turn my back on the potential sights and adventures that lie that way and head back. But I SO wish that I were still going this way.
And here's the view heading back up the canal. So peaceful. I half expect to see a canal boat coming down.
These guys think that the canal is just ducky.

When you ride quietly and pay attention on remote parts of the towpath, you'll see that you're seldom alone.

Finally I arrived back at my vehicle, not quite four hours after heading out. (I stopped on the way to check on the turtle I saved. It seems to have moved on...hopefully not to some teen girl's bedroom.)
It was a great ride, and I topped it off with an excellent Burrito from my new favorite Brunswick eatery, El Sloppy Taco. I'm fairly tired but very little can ruin this day now.


"BYE!"

Saturday Man Movie

The year was 1947, and a young Richard Widmark was playing what many considered to be his most famous role: gangster Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death.

Pretty heavy for 1947.

Shooting the Old and the New(ish)

Range time again today.

This time I reached deep into the gun safe and found this nice Finnish M-39 Mosin rifle.This beauty, chambered for the 7.62x54R (rimmed) cartridge, was a re-work of an older Russian Model 1891 Mosin Nagant that, according to the date on it's receiver tang, was originally made in Russia in 1896. Somewhere along the line, the Finns acquired it, either through purchase or capture during the Winter War with Russia (1939-1940) and it was rebuilt in 1941 at the VKT arsenal, which is known today as the Valmet arms factory. All of that information can be ascertained from it's new barrel markings here:Top to bottom: SA = Army Acceptance stamp. VKT = manufacturer. D = barrel reamed for Finnish D166 cartridge. Serial number. 1941 = Date of Manufacture.

Most of the Russian Mosin rifles are and always have been garbage. They were knocked together for illiterate conscript peasants and weren't capable of very good accuracy even if properly cared for, which most of them subsequently were not. But these Finn reworks...works of art. Excellent barrels, adjustable sights front and rear, well-fitted and robust stocks, and trigger jobs that are a dream compared to most military surplus rifles make these some of the best-shooting surplus rifles out there today. And this one lost no time in reaffirming that for me.

Someone had thoughtfully left a clean target at 100M with one of those nice Birchwood-Casey 8" "Shoot-n-C" reactive decals on it and this rifle put ten for ten on that disc without me even trying. I also had a silhouette target back at 200 yards and put the last 30 rounds in the chest area of that target, it's smooth trigger and large adjustable sights making it such a pleasant rifle to shoot.

Now a word about range etiquette.

During our first mutually-agreed cease fire period to allow shooters to check or change targets, a new club member showed up. He actually got out of his car and walked over with his gear just as we put the "no shoot" light on and people began going downrange. I notice that he had his targets in his hand, but rather than immediately put one on a target backer and take it downrange, he set it down and just commenced to dithering with the rest of his crap. He made no effort at all to go put his target up while the range was cold and everyone else was tending to their targets (except me, because I'd already put my targets out and was checking them via a spotting scope), and he continued to fuddle around even after I tactfully suggested that he go put a target up. Naturally, when the others came back up and made ready to shoot again, the first words out of his mouth were: "Hey, do you all mind if I go put MY target up?" Another five minutes stolen from each and every other shooter on the line because Mr. Thoughtless couldn't be rushed to take his target down when everyone else was doing it.

And then it seemed that he didn't want to actually shoot--he just wanted to talk to the guy sitting next to him. The light went off, the range went hot, and curse my electronic earmuffs, but all I could hear was this joker sitting down at his slot talking about hunts that he's been on and rifles that his son has.

To quote Tuco: "If you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

I finished my rounds there and moved over to the pistol range, swapping out my vintage classic for an Austrian classic that's just as effective if a whole lot less aesthetically appealing: The Glock 23 in .40 Smith and Wesson.This particular Glock was a law school graduation present from myself that I'd bought down in New Orleans. It's a great shooter--it's just ugly. But I burned another bag of ammo through it practicing my shooting while moving, reload drills, and single-hand shooting with both dominant and support hand. When's the last time you shot with your left hand alone if you're right handed or with your right if you're a lefty? These emergency skills don't develop automatically, you know. Train, train, train!

All fun, and good practice. And now I'm back at the Lair with Murphy, getting ready to grill us a steak.

Every day he gets better and better.

Ah, Murphy. Still a handful at times, and always reminding me that he's still a work in progress, but he is getting better.

He's finally consistently alerting to people approaching the house. And there's no doubt that he takes personal offense when anyone approaches "his" deck. He barks, he snaps through the rails...he's not playing in the least and I'm starting to worry that eventually he's going to figure out that the plastic baby gate keeping him up on the deck is just...well...a plastic baby gate.

He's protective of my SUV when he's in it now, too. People are allowed to walk past it, but anyone who gets too close or makes prolonged eye contact with him gets seriously warned off fast. It's obvious that he considers the deck and the truck to be "his" property now and he's not shy when it comes to defending either of them.

He's obeying better, too. Yesterday he got out of the house when I left my back door ajar. As expected, he went over to the crazy cat neighbors' house and chased their multitude of feral cats around for a few minutes. (This would include the two kittens that the cat woman captured last week, took to the vet and dropped $300 dollars on, and then re-released them behind her house and mine instead of trying to find them real homes.)

He chased them for a few minutes, and then when I went out with his leash to try to corral him, he actually came to me when I called him and let me leash him up. I was shocked. This is the first time that he's actually turned himself in and didn't make me trick him or corner him.

And then there was today. Today I took him swimming because it was so hot outside. This first few times, he was apprehensive and had to be dragged into the water on his training lead before he's swim. This time though, as soon as I walked into the water, he followed me in, and then swam past me and paddled around like he'd been doing it all his life. This time I actually needed his training lead on him to keep him from swimming away, he was having so much fun. But every time I called him, he'd turn and swim right to me.
This also is new behavior.

I found a piece of floating plastic and started throwing it out into the river for him, and he'd go right after it, grab it and bring it back. As with any toy that he fetches, he doesn't want to give it up yet, but at least he's fetching, and that too is new.
And he did so well that the last fed throws were off the training lead. I finally got to the point where I suspected that he'd come back to me instead of running off. And he proved me right. Good dog.

The only worrisome part was when a man parked his truck nearby, opened the door and asked me if the dog bites. "Yes he does," I replied. Murphy is still not good with strangers and I prefer people to keep their distance unless I can devote full time and attention to them interacting with him, which I didn't care to do right that moment. But the guy immediately walked right down to where I was sitting on the edge of the dock with Murphy. Murphy looked at him, gave him a low, serious growl, and climbed up on the dock to place himself between this man and me. He was suddenly in pure "protect" mode. His eyes were locked on this man and he was literally shaking as I reached up and grabbed his collar firmly.

"What's the matter dog?" the man asked. "You cold?"

"That's adrenaline," I told him. "You need to step back from him right now." I knew that Murphy was getting ready to go for this guy and I was hoping that I could keep a grip on him when he did, but when I told him that it was ok and stroked his neck with my other hand, he relaxed a bit. He never took his eyes off the man, who finally figured out that he was not exactly safe and backed off, but he listened to me and calmed down. Murphy hasn't had a problem with older men like this walking up to him before, but it was clear that he wasn't going to let that man walk up to me while I was sitting on the dock edge.

It's little things like these, happening more and more, that indicate that Murphy now trusts me and looks at me as his Alpha. He's doing more of what I want him to do and less of what he wants to do, and he's definitely willing to step up and fight when he thinks that I or my property are being threatened. He's really changing from being "the dog that lives in my house" to "my dog".MY dog. It's taken a while, but he's almost there.

Missouri Man's Mosin Makes Mob Move.

Not my first choice for a defensive arm, but hey--it got the job done.

KANSAS CITY, MO.—
Roger MacBride says that he's used to looking out for trouble in his old Northeast neighborhood. But usually the problems involve prostitutes or drug addicts, and he says that he wasn't ready for what he calls a mob of young troublemakers who threatened his home and family.

Witnesses say that a group of 25 to 30 young teens terrorized the neighborhood on Wednesday. MacBride says that the teens kicked in the door to a neighboring home and broke windows inside. He says when he yelled at the group to get out, they turned on him.

 
Take that, wanna-be flash-mob punks.

Dogs...

So I've got some brats on the grill and I'm inside folding laundry and tending to other chick-work around the house. (Note to self: find a chick to do this stuff.)
Naturally I'm not paying attention to the grill, but when I happen to look, I see thick smoke roiling off the grill. The brats had caught fire.

Now back in the old days, Lagniappe would have been barking his fool head off to warn me. Lagniappe knew that fire is bad, especially when it's my dinner. He always barked when my food was burning, be it on the grill or in the kitchen.

But Murphy? Not so much. He was actually sitting in front of that grill, staring at the smoke like that stupid RCA dog looking at the Victrola.


Fortunately I was able to save my food, no thanks to my "faithful pal".



Hey! If those are too burned for you to eat, can I get one of those with mustard?

Maybe he's not as dumb as I thought.

Range time

Yesterday I hit the range with new (but good) shooter Proud Hillbilly.

As can be seen on her blog report, she brought out two nice but very old guns--an H&R 929 .22 revolver and a Nazi-proofed Browning Model 1922. A cursory check showed them to be complete (except for a missing hinge screw on the H&R that had been half-ass replaced with a brass wood screw long ago) and safe to fire so she gave them a good work-out. I also brought out a 1911, a Ruger 10-22 rifle, and a Smith and Wesson Model 10 that hasn't been out of the gun safe in years. This one was a nickel-plated 5" revolver bearing a Detroit Police Dept. stamp on the backstrap.Back in the early 1990's, when that department went to Glocks, had a number of these to dispose of. Now many departments would have let their officers buy their own guns back, but not Detroit. Then City Council President Maryann Mahaffey--never a bright bulb--held a press conference to announce that to "keep these guns from ever winding up back on the streets", the city was going to sell them to a law enforcement wholesaler. They sold thousands of these to a wholesaler for $15.00 each, and the wholesaler turned around and sold them to any dealer who wanted to buy them, with the result that gun stores and gun shows and even small kitchen-table dealers like I was at the time were awash with these pistols.

At the same time, the city destroyed 10 vintage Thompson submachine guns by crushing them with a steamroller in front of the news cameras to show how serious they were about keeping "dangerous weapons" off the streets, and this at a time when the city was laying employees off. They might as well have crushed ten new police cars because that's what those guns were worth. But hey--it's only the public's money, right? So why sell or trade those to a federally-licensed dealer or collector?

Anyway...I helped Proud Hillbilly get a bit more comfortable with her stance and aiming and she had a good time, and I worked on some more drills for the next AFHF course, managing to have a good time myself. That old Smith still shoots as good as it did back when it was helping preserve law and order in Detroit.

And then we went and had lunch and drank some good Oatmeal Stout. And life was pronounced to be good.

Some watchdogs take it more seriously than others

Locked and loaded and range card is complete, Boss!

CATS IN THE WIRE! CATS IN THE WIRE!

The scariest thing in the house...

So on Friday, I was over at the home of some friends and we were eating dinner in their living room. After looking at me for much of the day (I was wearing shorts), their adorable young daughter finally worked up the nerve to come over and ask me what happened to my leg.

I tried the old "When I was your age, the monster under my bed tore it off" line that works so well with young kids (Sorry, Misty) but she wasn't quite buying it. So I asked her if she'd ever seen anyone take a leg off before. She said no, so I pulled mine off. I held it out to her, but she backed away, although she remained totally fixated on it. I put it back on and then she asked: "Did that really come off?"
So I took it off again for her.

She turned to her mom and said: "I think that's the scariest thing in this house."

Kids...

My Dad...On Fathers Day

As a young man growing up, I couldn't help but notice that my father never had much luck with his cars.

I think that it began when I was just a young child. We were driving along one day, me in the passenger seat, and I said "Hey, look at this picture that I drew today." (It was a really good picture of a steam engine, if I recall.) He turned to look at it and steered his 1975 Mercury station wagon into a parked car.

Bummer, Dad.

A few years later, he had to help me out with my paper route because my paper route bike was busted. He was a little upset to say the least at 3 AM, and when he went to put his Buick Skylark into reverse, the gear shift knob, which had been loose for some time, came off in his hand. Losing it for just a second, he slammed the knob down onto the dashboard, only to have it bounce up and star the windshield, cracking it from one side to the other.

That one I'll remember as the morning that I felt a need to laugh like never before, but was forced to suppress even the slightest smirk lest I be slaughtered on the spot.

And then I got my driver's license, figuring that I could take some of the burden off of him. I mean, if he didn't have to drive me places all the time, he wouldn't wreck his cars so much, right? Well not so much.

The very first time that I went to move his Skylark out of the garage so that I could get the lawnmower that was in front if it (because he had parked way too close to the lawnmower), my foot slipped off the clutch and the car shot backwards, right into the new addition that we'd just put on the house. No real damage to the car but rebuilding that wall wasn't a whole lot of fun for either of us.

And then the next year, he got a new car after the Skylark's little 4-cylinder engine inexplicably burned out. (OK, the fact that to a sixteen year old boy, EVERY car is a potential race car might have had something to do with it...) He got a brand new Dodge Aries--a K-Car. (My dad sure had style, didn't he?) That car wasn't three weeks old when I had it out with a couple of my friends and another car hit the front end of the new Dodge and took off. Wow--that was fun bringing that car home and commiserating with my dad over his tough luck, let me tell you.

But none of these were as bad as the luck that he seemed to have with his Pontiac Bonneville diesel. A rule that he imposed was that if I was going to drive his car, I had to put fuel in it. Well I was young and still in high school. I had no job. So I would usually scour the couch cushions for change and hit my no-account friends up for gas money, and usually I'd wind up putting a dollar or two into the gas tank, at least technically complying with his edict. I always put enough in the tank to get the car home. Alas, one day I did not put enough into it to allow it to actually reach the closest gas station when my dad took it out, and he unfortunately ran out on the way to the station. Ever try to prime a diesel engine that's been run out of fuel? He had a heck of a time getting that car started again, if I recall.

But that wasn't near as bad as the night that I was out driving with a couple of pals and decided to go down a dirt road that I'd never been on before. I mean, how could I know that the road ended in a big pond, right? And as I stood there later next to my dad (prudently out of arm's reach, of course) I could not help but feel sorry for him and his never-ending bad luck with his cars as we watched the wrecker driver pull that Pontiac back out of the water.

But he seems to be doing much better these days for some reason. Knock on wood, and Happy Father's Day, Pop!

Wright-Patterson Museum visit, Pt. 8.

I was able to find a few photos that I'd overlooked, and I cleaned up a few others. This will be the last batch in this series, but I'll still have a few other stray shots that I'll post every now and again, so you'll just have to keep checking back if you want to see them.

For starters, here's a Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zero" fighter that was found on Papua, New Guinea after the fighting there was over. Crude in that they lacked armor and self-sealing fuel thanks, they were a lot more agile in the sky than anything that we had at the time. This would change before long, however at the Japanese learned the hard way that it was foolish to underestimate America's resolve and ingenuity...at least back then.

This is the North American A-36 Apache low-level dive bomber. Produced for export to England and powered by an in-line Allison engine initially, it was considered something of a dog and wasn't terribly popular.But then someone came up with the bright idea to ditch the dive brakes and mate it to the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that were going into the British Spitfires and suddenly the P-51 Mustang was born--an aircraft that would one day be considered one of the best piston-engine fighters ever.


The Bell P-63E Kingcobra is painted up as an RP-63 "pinball" training aircraft developed late in WWII. Aerial gunnery students fired at these manned target aircraft using .30-cal. lead and plastic frangible machine gun bullets which disintegrated harmlessly against the target's external armor plating. Special instruments sent impulses to red lights in the nose of the "pinball" aircraft, causing them to blink when bullets struck the plane.Me personally, before flying on one of those missions I think I'd be checking every student pilot's ammo trays to make sure that it contained the special ammo and not the standard mix of ball, armor piercing and incendiary rounds.

This is a Martin B-26G medium bomber. Not to be confused with my personal fav, the Douglas A-26 (and later, B-26).This little hotrod was known as "the incredible prostitute" because they said, it's wings were so short that it had no visible means of support.

It's a plane...it's a boat...it's a...flying boat. This Consolidated OA-10 Catalina PBY amphibious plane was used for Search and Rescue work, snatching downed American pilots out of the water all around the globe.

It isn't terribly well known, but American forces in World War Two flew a number of foreign-made aircraft. Thei British-made Bristol Beaufighter stands as a prime example. USAAF forces flew over a hundred of these as night fighters, hunting down German raiders that flew after dark.This once apparently scored three Jerries.
This is a British Supermarine Spitfire Mk.V, done up nicely in USAAF colors. These were flown by a number of American pilots early in that war, starting with the Eagle Squadrons made up of American volunteers who joined to fight before America entered the war, risking their US citizenship to do so.
A bit later, the U.S. Army Air Forces' 31st and 52nd Fighter Groups flew them first during Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa in November 1942.Behind the Spitfire, over it's wing, you can see the American B-17G heavy bomber Shoo, Shoo Baby.

This is a later variant of the Spitfire, the PR. XI, which is a Mk. XI Spitfire modified for photo reconnaissance.The U.S. Army Air Forces' 14th Photographic Squadron of the 8th Air Force operated Spitfire Mark XIs from November 1943 to April 1945, flying hazardous long-range reconnaissance missions over mainland Europe.
Now these aircraft were just cool. The DeHavilland DH8 Mosquito was made of wood--plywood with a balsawood core. They didn't carry guns but they were light and fast and made excellent photo recon planes and night fighters. The US Army Air Force used a batch of them for both roles.This one's still sporting the black and white invasion stripes under it's wings to let allied gunners on D-Day know that it was a friendly plane.

This is a Kawanishi N1K2-Ja Shiden Kai, otherwise known to Americans as a "George". Coming along late in the war, it was every bit the equal of many of our US Navy fighters and posed a credible threat to our B-29 bomber crews. But it was another case of "too little, too late" and only 400 were produced before the end of the war. This is one of just three survivors left in the world.

I found a usable picture of the museum's other F-100, this one a two-seat F100F used as a trainer and a Misty Forward Air Controller (FAC) plane in Vietnam.This particular F-100F (s/n 56-3837), was a Misty FAC aircraft assigned to the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing at Phu Cat Air Base, Vietnam. It was flown in combat by several notable USAF figures, including Gen. Merrill McPeak and Gen. Ronald Fogleman (former USAF chiefs of staff), and Col. Richard Rutan (the chief pilot of the first around-the-world unrefueled flight).

Yay! A usable shot of the F-105G. This beauty flew combat missions out of Thailand for five years, operating as both a fighter-bomber and a "Wild Weasel" strike aircraft that targeted enemy surface-to-air missile launchers. It also knocked down three enemy MiGs while it was over there. Damn, I love the F-105.
And on the "Bad Guys" side of the ledger, a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21F of the North Vietnamese Air Force.

And just because I've got nothing else for now (but keep checking back), here's a dog wearing a parachute.

But if you still want more plane pics, there are a few here from my visit to Florida's Valiant Air Museum last year.