Blog favorites on the birthday

At Black Mesa, March, 2012

Those of you who read this blog, which is now five years old, know I have some favorite topics.
Watercolors, art, traveling, New Mexico, books, family, trains, writing, a little religion. So as I started looking back over these 48 months of blogging, several articles and postings stood out. Here are my favorites.
My favorite--Best writing, humor, mingled with fun and tears--"Booth is a verb--A Love story," which stretched to more than 10,000 words in several posts over two months in August and September, 2009. Here's the link to the first episode, http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2009/08/booth-is-verba-love-story-prologue.html
Travel--lots of these but three are my favorites. First was a tie-- several posts about the USS Abraham Lincoln sailing from San Diego to Everett Washington in April 2011, thanks to former student and officer Steve Curry. When I was summarizing travel since the blog started, I left this out, and should have listed "Pacific." Sorry Steve. Here's the link to the opening post of seven about that "Pirate Proof Cruise" as I called it. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/04/tiger-cruise-part-one.html.
I'd be hard up to rank it ahead of several posts a year ago this month, on our trip to Alaska...one of the items on my bucket list. Here's the first of 13  posts  in May and June with photos and video and writing. Here's the first link: http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/05/alaska-itinerary.html
Also at the top of the list, or near it, was the flight I took on a WWII B-17 bomber on D-Day, 2010. Brother in law Jim Henry and I each paid $300 for the flight over Oklahoma City. They wouldn't let me bomb Republican headquarters, but the posting includes video as well as photos. What fun for a fan of WWII aircraft. Here's the link to one of about four related posts that month: http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/search/label/B-17
Other favorites in travel included the trip to India, in March 2011, and to hike Black Mesa in Oklahoma in March, 2012, each with several posts and photos.  http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/03/flight-timeindia-journal-thoughts-i.html
http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/03/to-top-of-oklahoma-and-back.html
Then there are other blog favorites, like humorous conversations with God on tenure, heaven's bar, and church services--check the months of Feb., 2010., Oct, 2011 and July, 2012.
Too many paintings, book reviews , photos and family history, and New Mexico to share. Yes, it's multimedia, but after all these years, it practices what I preach...you have to have good writing first. Thanks for reading. More to come.

Flying High on D-Day

It's been ten days since I took the ride of a lifetime in a B-17 WWII bomber, taking off from Wiley Post airport in Bethany, Memorial Day, fittingly on the 66th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. It was my Fathers' Day gift to myself...there are only about 12 of these Flying Fortresses still flying, and this plane is actually one year younger than me. It is a flying museum, and it's taken me this long to put together my thoughts. These are my videos and photos, as an American.

Click on the photos to make them bigger. I suggest you click on my music from the theme for the Memphis Belle for reading this, or on Glenn Miller.

It took $3 million and years to restore it, and they named it after The Liberty Belle which flew 64 missions over Germany in the war and was later scrapped. This one makes tours and is run by volunteers all. Brother -in-law Jim Henry went along for the ride and has as much fun as I did.

Except for strapping in for takeoff and landing, we were free to move around during the flight, and we spent time in the bombadier's seat. I looked through the bomb site and could have hit GOP headquarters. We shot down ME-109s from the waist guns, patted the bombs that were meant for Hitler, listened to the roaring radial engines, stuck our heads out of the open rear canopy into about 140 mile slipsteam.

The big thing gets off the ground slowly and doesn't climb fast at all. We were up to about 1,500 feet and flew out across Overholster, back north over the Kilpatrick Turnpike and over Arcadia and back...about a 30 minute ride.

All the time there was this old gentleman who just stood by the waist gun window, hands on the 50 caliber, looking out into memories. Wish I could get his story. I wonder who and what he saw from years ago.

I have a special affinity for the big bombers. Dad was a draftsman during the war, working in Fort worth for Consolidated aircraft and North American, which produced the B-24 Liberator and the P-51 Mustang. Been around them all my life.

I'm astounded by the bravery of the 18- and 20 year-olds who flew these planes into combat. Nothing between you but a thin metal skin. No pressurization of insulation at 20,000 feet. Flak and fighters trying to shoot you down. Out of more than 14,000 B-17's made, more than 4,000 were shot down. Ten crew members each. If you want to come close to their experience, watch the Movie "The Memphis Belle."

They are many of of the reasons I'm writing this in English, and not German.

 I just bombed Berlin!

Shooting down Nazi ME109s from the waist 50 caliber.

It's breezy up here at 140 mph plus, and the canopy open, 

and look at that huge tail in the background.

The nose view,inside and out.

The bomb bay...special delivery for Hitler, looking back from the cockpit and front of plane to the rear where the belly turret, waist gunners, navigator and others were stationed. Yes, you walk along the narrow steel path to get from front to back, and you can see sky through the body where the bomb bay doors open below you.

Awesome!

Brother-in-law Jim Henry by the waist gun where we shot down those Nazis!

Me in front of the business end of the lady, where we bombed the GOP and Nazis!

At the end of the day, portrait of a lady and a fighter.

This was the wonderful sound and motion of those wonderful engines, over Lake Arcadia. I wish I could do this for a living, full time.


And to remind us, that in spite of boyish excitement of the day, this really matters. July 4 is coming up. It's not just a three day weekend.

The sound of Freedom, B-17

Off we go, thanks U-Tube

This is from UTube...first person update later today.

"B-17," I yelled!

We were headed north from the house on errands, and there it was, big silver tail, silver lumbering across the hot and free Oklahoma sky. Straight wings. A long way off. It had to be a B-17.

My wife Susan thought something was wrong when I yelled it. I almost had a wreck trying to follow it rather than watching the road.

I'm used to the big AWACs jets sliding across the sky, slow for jet fighters but still faster than this. I recognized it immediately. That's what happens when you grow up in the aftermath of WWII.

I thought it was here for the air show, but that's two weeks away. Then I came home from more errands and Susan had its photo on her screensaver, thanks to UCO colleague Craig Beuchaw, who took its photo and posted it on facebook, asking how many other folks had a B-17 fly over the house.

Thanks to him, and others, and a website, I found out it's at Wiley Post airport today and tomorrow, "The Liberty Belle," one of only a few B-17's still flying.
Oh for a ride in it. My brother Jerry rode in one several years ago, and it cost $300 then. Now it costs $430--which helps maintain the historic aircraft that helped keep you and me from having to speak German.
I can't afford it, but I don't think  can afford not to. Here's the website, and you get to view videos as well.
http://www.libertyfoundation.org/

The last time I saw a B-17 was many years ago in Memphis, which had displayed The Memphis Belle of movie fame. Memphis has lost that Belle to Ohio for lack of support.

This is the "Flying Fortress," so well armed that it did well against Germany, and was famous for getting its 10 man crew home safely even when badly damaged. Of more than 12,000 build, 4,700 were shot down. Only 47 weren't scrapped at the end of the war, and today, only 14 fly.

Go see it. I will, and I know I'll cry.

History of the aircraft when I was 9 months old, safe in my bed in Dallas, Texas, from the website:

On September 9, 1944 the 390th Bomb Group attacked a target in Dusseldorf, Germany and suffered its second largest single mission loss of the war. Over the target just prior to bomb release, one of the low squadron B-17s was hit in the Bomb bay by flak. The 1000 lb. bombs exploded and nine of the twelve aircraft in the squadron were instantly destroyed or knocked out of formation.

Six of the nine went down over the target, one flew two hours on a single engine and landed at Paris, another "crippled plane" landed in Belgium and the other struggled back to its home base and landed long after the other thirty nine B-17s had returned from the mission. The one that came home was "Liberty Belle", she went on to complete 64 combat missions before being salvaged on February 18, 1945.