Flight Journal - August 2013

editorial
Were the Wrights wrong? Should we worry about
North Korea? What was Zorro doing in Laos?

Are answers in this issue? by Budd davIsson It’s dIffIcult for people who actually have a life to imagine how crazy the last-minute rush to get a magazine to the printer can be. Each article, column, department, paragraph and caption becomes a crisis. Almost nothing goes smoothly and this issue was no exception. It gets so crazy that it’s easy to forget the big picture because you’re so busy shoveling minutiae against the tide. Then something wakes you up and

We’re pleased to present the nocturnal photography of phil High to the world in this issue. Go to “Gallery” to see some of his incredible photographs. (photo by phil High)

reminds you what you’re working on. In this case, it was the
simple task of preparing to write this editorial. As I sat down to
write, I jotted down the following as article reminders:
• Wrights/Whitehead
• Long /Short missions
• Hellcat Ace
• Tony
• Zorro
• Night Camera
• North Korea
Then I scanned back over them and laughed out loud. How
in blazes did we wind up with the “Was Whitehead First to
Fly?” controversy between the same covers with an expert’s
analysis of the North Korean situation and the art of taking
airplane photos after dark? And the same holds true for just
about everything in this issue: lots and lots of esoteric subjects,
all of them interesting and varied.

undisputed encyclopedia, Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, come right out and say that the Wrights didn’t fly first. Gustave Whitehead beat them by two years. On the other side, we have the Smithsonian Institute defending the Wrights and their throne. And if you don’t think the fur didn’t start flying, you’ve never been to a cat fight. We’ve tried not to take sides. In fact, we’ve accumulated the arguments and nastygrams from both sides in an effort at stirring it all together and letting readers make up their own minds. We’ve condensed the salient points into Barrett Tillman’s overview of the situation but put the rest on FlightJournal.com, where we’re not space-limited. Incidentally, we’re certain both sides are going to be angry with us. Oh, well … sometimes there’s no way to win.

And then there is Barrett’s synopsis of the longest and shortest fighter missions ever flown. Those incidentally range from Pacific missions that lasted a matter of seconds, takeoff to ordnance away, to the eight-hour, butt-busting Mustang B- 29 escort missions flown out of Iwo. And how about the Me- 163 Komet that roared off the runway into incoming bomber formations at 30,000 feet with around seven minutes of fuel on board? Crazy stuff!

The Hellcat missions described by James Busha in “Bad Kitty” point out lesser known risks of aerial warfare. Here, pilots such as ace Lin Lindsay, could look forward to facing death during combat with the Japanese only to turn around and hope to find their tiny ship in the middle of a big ocean. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

I’m glad we got Joe Picarella’s article on the Ki- 61 Hein (Tony) into this issue. Going back to my modeling days as a teenager, I’ve always thought it to be a beautiful airplane. And still do. Joe gave us some incredible vintage photography to go along with his informative words, so I’m loving it.

And then there’s one of my favorite features: five full pages of Phil High’s nocturnal aircraft photos. A lot of guys, most of them names familiar to readers, have long-ago moved air-to-air photography into the art arena. Few, however, work at making ground photos into art … mostly because it’s difficult to do on the ground. Phil, however, has jumped in and given us true art. It’s important that you know that there’s no Photoshop involved here. This is just the way the shutter, which was open for as long as five minutes, saw the airplane. Beautiful stuff, as you’ll see.