I haven’t thrown FotB RoadRich a bone in a while, so this one is dedicated to him. It combines two! two! two! things in one: planes and Japan!
“So Small My Island”, a 1960s Pan Am promo film for travel to Japan.
Bonus: More Pan Am! From 1959, “Jet Terminal”, about the opening of Terminal 3 (aka “Worldport”) at Idlewild.
Bonus #2: Heh, heh. He said “Idlewild”.
An assortment today. No unifying theme.
Police videos have been kind of skimpy recently because they haven’t been popping up in my YouTube recommendations. If I narrow the topics down to just “law enforcement”, I get…nothing but “Live PD” clips. Now, I have nothing against “Live PD”: I don’t watch it, because we don’t have cable, but I’ll certainly sit through a YouTube clip. In a private window in my browser, not signed in to YouTube, so why are these clips showing up in my recs? And if people want to watch “Live PD” clips, you all know where to find them, right?
Anyway, I finished the book great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn recommended back when I posted about the Newhall shootout: Newhall Shooting – A Tactical Analysis: Survival Lessons from One of Law Enforcement’s Deadliest Shootings (affiliate link) and I do recommend it, with some small quibbles.
One thing I learned from that book: in addition to the CHP Newhall training film, the LA County Sheriff’s Department made their own training film. I think you are better served watching the CHP film first, as the quality of the transfer on this one isn’t that great, and I have questions about the accuracy of LACSD’s film. In the interest of the historical record, however, here it is:
Totally unrelated: ever wonder about astronaut weightlessness training in the days before the “Vomit Comet”? Yeah, I do, too. Wikipedia says that the Mercury astronauts trained in a C-131. But this purports to be vintage film of Glenn, Grissom, and Shepherd training in an F-100F (not all three at the same time, obviously):
And speaking of the F-100: “TAC On Target”, from 1962, which features various aircraft in action (including the F-100, F-104, F-105, and F-4C).
I’ll just note: for those of you who work for, or deal with, a certain large company in the computer networking area (hi, Borepatch!) “TAC On Target” may have an entirely different connotation for you.
I feel like I’m in a transition between Memorial Day observance and getting back to (what passes for) normal.
So here’s some military aviation videos that I think are interesting. First off, this is apparently a promo film for Northrop’s YB-49, aka “the Flying Wing”.
This is where I mention that the YB-49 never saw active service: the Air Force went with the B-36 instead.
Bonus video #1: “Instrument Flight”. In the T-38-A Talon.
I’ve always been fond of the T-38. If I had the money and ability to fly jets, I’d love to own and fly my own T-38. (Wikipedia says there are seven privately owned ones in the US.)
Bonus video #2, just because I’m feeling extra geeky: a training film about the F-111’s terrain following radar.
Pan Am was founded in 1927. By an obscure mathematical property known as addition, this would mean that 1977 was their 50th anniversary.
So they decided to do something special. Pan Am flew a 747-SP1, the “Clipper New Horizons” around the world from San Francisco…
…over the North and South Pole. The flight took 54 hours, 7 minutes, and 12 seconds.
Here’s a Pan Am promo film/documentary about the flight.
Bonus video #1: would you like to watch a reasonably attractive blonde in a Boeing promo film for the 747? Then “Assignment 747” is for you!
Bonus video #2: If you want something with a little bit more substance, “The New Era: Flight Testing the 747 Superjet”. Personally, I think I’d watch this one before I watched the one with the blonde, but that’s just the kind of hairball I am.
Would you believe the Central Intelligence Agency has a YouTube channel? Probably.
Would you believe the (even more secretive) National Reconnaissance Office has one? Maybe.
A couple of short ones today, and a longer one:
“Development of CORONA, The World’s First Reconnaissance Satellite”. This is on the CIA’s channel, but was apparently prepared by the NRO. I’ve touched on CORONA before, but this is a more recent, better quality, and declassified look.
Bonus video #1: From the NRO itself: “The Last Bucket Catch”, about the film retrieval from CORONA. As you may recall from the previous CORONA video, they were basically snatching containers of undeveloped film out of the air.
Bonus video #2: Because we all love it, “Angels in Paradise: The Development of the U-2 at Area 51”. From the CIA in 1960: according to the YouTube notes, “This video was made for family members of the people working on the Angel reconnaissance plane to explain the workers’ long absences from home.”
There are times when I just can’t believe this stuff is out there…
Phyllis George, former Miss America and former co-host of “The NFL Today”.
Hired as a co-host of CBS Sports’s weekly pregame football show — which featured the high-profile hosts Brent Musburger and Irv Cross and the gambling commentator Jimmy Snyder, or Jimmy the Greek, as he was known — Ms. George immediately became the most prominent woman in sportscasting.
But with her beauty-queen background and her modest television résumé, she was criticized for lacking the traditional sportscaster credentials. She was not a former sportswriter, like Mr. Musburger, and she was obviously not a retired football player, like Mr. Cross.
She responded to her critics by saying that she knew enough about sports, especially football, to get by.
“I’m from Texas,” she told People magazine in 1976, “and down there you follow the Texas Longhorns and the Dallas Cowboys or you don’t belong.”
Excuse me?
She was married twice: to John Y. Brown Jr., former Governor of Kentucky, and Robert Evans.
Captain Jenn Casey, Royal Canadian Air Force. She was a public affairs officer with the Snowbirds demonstration team: the plane she was in crashed during a demo in Kamloops yesterday. The pilot, Captain Richard MacDougall, ejected but suffered serious injuries.
This is kind of a three-way tip of the hat to:
“The Story of Willow Run”, from FoMoCo. Willow Run was where Ford built the B-24. They initially were turning out parts that Consolidated and Douglas put together, but that turned out to be troublesome. In October of 1941 Willow Run got permission to build complete planes, and ran the line until May 1945. At peak, the line was turning out a finished bomber every 55 minutes.
Bonus video: unrelated to the above, but related to something earlier in the week. From 1937: “Boulder Dam”, a film from the US Archives about the construction of the dam that later became known as “Hoover Dam”.
Priority override Archimedes.
The Thunderbirds did a flyover of Austin and San Antonio yesterday.
I shot this video from our back porch. I wasn’t sure which direction they’d be coming from or what altitude they would be out, so I erred on the side of shooting at a wider angle.
One of the things I feel lucky about in my life: I visited Las Vegas before 9/11. Which means Mike the Musicologist and I were lucky enough to tour the Thunderbirds museum before it was closed off to anyone without a DoD ID. We were also lucky enough to be able to take the Hard Hat Tour of Hoover Dam. I need to dig out my hard hat from storage.
(I still have never actually seen the Thunderbirds at an air show. The Blue Angels, yes, when I was really young.)
Bonus video, just for the heck of it: “Odyssey 1977”, video of the F-18 prototype at the Paris Air Show that year.
We’re all looking forward to travel again, right? Flying on luxurious airliners, with plenty of legroom, free (and excellent) meals, and just a few short hours to an exotic destination like Hawaii.
(This is also targeted content for great and good FOTB RoadRich and the 1940 Air Terminal Museum, who I haven’t done anything for in a couple of weeks, at least.)
We’ll get there. But first, your coffee break historical bite: “Sentinel in the Sky”, from 1955. A Pan Am promotional film about radar: how it works, and how Pan Am plans to use it in their aircraft.
Bonus video #1, which is a little longer: “Holiday in Hawaii”, from an airline that still exists (for now). This is from sometime in the 1950s: a promotional film for United Airlines, the DC-7, and travel to Hawaii. As the YouTube notes say, this is a relic of a time before jet travel made going to Hawaii fast, easy, and (I guess relatively) affordable.
Bonus video #2: giving equal time to the (now defunct) competition, “Wings to Hawaii”. A video on a similar theme, but this time from Pan Am. You know, the folks with radar?
From the 1950s, Shell’s series of “High Speed Flight” films. Lots of video of vintage airplanes, for those of you who like that sort of thing.
“Approaching the…….Speed Of Sound”:
“Transonic Flight”:
And “Beyond the Speed of Sound”:
There’s also a “simplified” version for those with short attention spans (and, possibly, children) that compiles stuff from all three films:
There is a delightful book that came out in 2014, and which was adapted into a Netflix series. Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War is about John Ford, George Stevens, John Huston, William Wyler, and Frank Capra, and their WWII experiences making films for the military. I enthusiastically recommend this book, which is available for a very reasonable price on Amazon in a Kindle edition and used.
I’ve wanted to watch pretty much all of the wartime films Mark Harris talks about in that book, and I’m happy to report that some of them are available on YouTube in very decent quality.
“Thunderbolt” was made in 1944, but wasn’t released until 1947. Harris goes into the reasons for this in detail, but it basically amounted to: the war ended before the film was edited. William Wyler was, shall we say, distracted during the post-production: he’d suffered a total loss of hearing during a B-25 flight (in an attempt to “film more ‘atmosphere shots.'” for the movie.) He did eventually recover part of his hearing, and continued working as a director until 1970 with the help of hearing aids.
I would be negligent if I didn’t mention that, before “Thunderbolt”, Wyler directed what may have been the most famous WWII propaganda film: “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress“. Especially since tonight is “12 O’Clock High” night. (Hi, RoadRich! Miss seeing you!)
Tomorrow: Science Sunday!
We’ve heard from various organizations and individuals in this series. But do you know who we haven’t heard from until now?
The intelligence community.
Unless you’re as geeky as I am (or more) you’ve probably never heard of CORONA/DISCOVERER. CORONA was an early satellite reconnaissance program: DISCOVERER was the name of the disinformation program associated with it, which claimed to be a technology development program.
CORONA shot photos on film – actual, physical film. But how do you get the film back from space for development? CORONA would eject a capsule containing the film, which would re-enter the atmosphere…
…and get caught in mid-air by a C-119 “Flying Boxcar”.
Here’s a vintage video from Lockheed of “DISCOVERER”, which (of course) doesn’t discuss CORONA at all. But it does show the capsule retrieval process.
Bonus video #1: “Oceanography: Mining Minerals In The Ocean” from Martin Marietta. This is pretty much what it says on the tin: exploring deep undersea using early remote operated vehicles to find deposits of underwater mineral nodules.
This video also features the Hughes Glomar Explorer. You may remember the Glomar Explorer as “the ship that was supposedly built for mining underwater minerals, but was actually intended to recover the K-129 in Project Azorian“.
I can’t tell when this video was made, so I’m not clear on whether it was pre or post the Project Azorian revelations. I’m guessing it was some time during the 1970s, because that music.
Bonus video #2: from 1964, “Undersea Pilot”, about the Reynolds Aluminum built deep sea vehicle Aluminaut. This doesn’t have quite as many intelligence implications as the other two videos, but Aluminaut did see some military use. (It is a well known fact that it was used in recovery operations after the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash. Some other books I’ve read on Navy deep sea operations in the 1960s and 1970s lead me to believe it was involved in other classified missions as well.)
I thought Aluminaut and Trieste and Alvin were incredibly cool, back when I was in the single digit age range. (I’m pretty sure I read about them in a How and Why Wonder Book, thought I don’t remember which one.)