Comments on: Playing Hooky

By: BillT

BillT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:42:22 +0000

Dad flew the F4U-5N at night on the Okinawa Picket line, with a later deployment to Iwo. He said the only reason he survived the war was that he flew from airfields and not carriers, because when you put the Corsair into a landing attitude, the only thing you could see in front of you was aircraft nose — and the only thing you could see in a landing attitude at night was *nothing*…

By: MaxDamage

MaxDamage — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:59:16 +0000

Holy cow! Robb White? SBD pilot, took a 20mm in the cockpit, slowly working his way back to the boat with a busted leg bleeding out, kept dreaming about “A stopper. With a long, beaded chain.”

I *remember* that book! The school library had it in paperback, I must have been in second or third grade when I read it. I certainly remember that the kindergarten baby rhyme was changed to:

Kindergarten baby, enlisted in the Navy.
Four tried to fly an SBD and now there’s only three!

(Hey! I was a kid! I didn’t say it was an epic!)

One of those childhood reads I’d like to read again, ‘cept I didn’t remember the author, the title, or much else besides the highlights of the story.

Some day I ought to pay more attention to who and what I’m reading rather than just the story.

– Max

By: Big D

Big D — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:00:33 +0000

My grandfather was a Marine mechanic for Corsairs; he deployed on Tico, right near the end. He once claimed that, at some point after the war, they deployed nukes on Corsairs. I never knew whether to believe him on that one; the mental image of an early nuke slung underneath that giant radial just does not compute.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:16:06 +0000

Really, I betcha there were no ground loops before paved runways and tailwheels were invented.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:08:00 +0000

Taildraggers always work better on grass, and better yet if there’s a skid to give some drag behind the C of G, instead of a silly wheel.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:03:35 +0000

P.p.s. White also wrote “The Lion’s Paw”, which was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, and supposedly the most popular out-of-print book ever, with copies going for $500. It has recently been republished privately by his family.