The Adventures of Lt. Killian & the CAP!

Since I posted the pix of me and the Stearman Biplane, folks have asked questions about my experiences in the CAP (Civil Air Patrol) during WW-II. The CAP was structured as a civilian/military group of youngsters who were being trained to become future service pilots should the war continue for many years. The normal routine went like this: After school on Thursdays, all of us in our Cadet Uniforms were rounded up and bused to Morris Field (now Charlotte, NC’s main civil airport). There we drilled under the commands of a tough Drill Sergeant until almost dark. Then we went into classrooms where we attended “Ground School.” We were taught air navigation by visual means and used the famous E6-B “computer” which was a handheld device on which you could determine compass headings according to the expected wind drift. And we studied aircraft identification using flip cards of all the enemy aircraft. 

On the weekends we went flying under the instruction of Lt. Killian. We had parachutes, but on us they hung down to our heels. But we had them because they were the “seat cushions” in the Stearman Biplane. Nobody ever told us how to use them, and we never asked. In fact, we never said much of anything except “Yes sir” and “No sir” and “No excuse, sir.” We had a Gosport system of communication from the Stearman rear seat, where Lt. Killian sat, to the front seat where the student rode. But it was one way. He could talk to us – we couldn’t talk back. My experience with the good Lieutenant was that he hardly ever used that system. He’d simply pull the throttle to idle and yell obscenities at the student, telling us that we were no good and that we’d never learn to fly. Which just made me more determined. 

One of Lt. Killian’s favorite tricks was to taxi the Stearman out to the end of the runway. Then he would full throttle it but keep it just a couple feet off the runway while we raced toward the trees at the field’s boundary. When it looked as if we were going to smash those trees., he jerked the stick back and the Stearmean went straight up, like an elevator, until it almost stalled. Then he’d level it and take me out over the Catawba River and do stalls, loops, spins (in both directions), snap rolls, slow rolls, the whole gamut of aerobatics. He was a helluva pilot. Remember, he’d been overseas, and I don’t know what he flew but it was certainly a bigger more powerful aircraft than the Stearman trainer. After the aerobatics, he’d let me fly us back to the field, and I was supposed to use what I had learned in Navigation school to get us there.

At the time I thought Lt. Killian was an asshole. But I think what he was doing was to weed out those who could not become, or were not, suitable for flying. And he did. Our squadron got smaller and smaller as time went on. 

In the summer we had a two-week encampment assignment at Morris Field, much like the AF reservists have today. We slept in barracks, had meals in the mess hall and then were assigned to duties around the base. I mostly remember “latrine duty” where I had the pleasure of cleaning toilets. Those summer sessions were to acquaint us with life in the military and I don’t recall any flying during that period, although we did wash a bunch of airplanes and ran lots of errands for the Officers.

My brother was serving in the Army Air Corps so I fantasized doing my “preliminary training” to join him, should the war go on forever. But it didn’t. My brother was killed, the war ended, and so did my tour in the CAP. But what I learned helped me a lot in later life when I sought my own pilot’s license. I already knew how to fly. And it taught me something else that young people today have never had – it taught me discipline. That training served me well in many ways for the rest of my life and I’m thankful for the opportunity CAP gave me.

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The Pres and WW-II

It was entirely appropriate that President Trump referenced the men and women who fought in WW-II in his State of the Union address. America NEEDs to remember the days of our greatness, when young boys of 17,18,19, left their farms and factories and went off to save the world from Nazi and Japanese tyranny. Sadly, at least the last two generations have no idea of what he was talking about. So, let me give you a few stats from that war. I’ll contain my remarks to the U.S. Army Air Corps, and its mission in Europe, because that was the part of the service my brother fought and died in.

An eye-watering 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas including 22,948 on combat missions (18,418 against the Western Axis) and 20,633 attributed to non-combat causes overseas.

For instance, in a single 376 plane raid in August 1943, 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England. Remember, there were nine (sometimes 10) young men in every B-17 or B-24 bomber. And very few escaped when their plane was shot down. If they were able to parachute, they spent the rest of the war in a German concentration camp. 

In 1942-43 it was statistically impossible for bomber crews to complete a 25-mission tour in Europe. And then the number of missions was raised to 35 which made the odds of surviving even smaller. 

Most of these young men went to war with absolute minimums of training. Some fighter pilots entered combat in 1942 with less than one hour in their assigned aircraft. As in the case of my brother he spent his entire training in P-51 fighters, and as soon as the Invasions of France took place his entire squadron was switched to P-47 aircraft. Remember, these were extremely complex airplanes, no computers to aid the pilot. One squadron trained in P-51s arrived in England and were confronted with P-38 airplanes which they had never flown. Their commander told them, “You can learn to fly the P-38 on your way to the target in Germany.”

A high-time P-51 pilot had 30 hours in type. Many had fewer than five hours. Some had one hour. Consider that in civil aviation it takes 40 (forty) hours for a person to obtain a Private Pilot’s license.

Despite these handicaps and hardships, AMERICANS won the air war and then the ground victory and literally SAVED TEHE WORLD. And our young people have never been taught the sacrifices in American lives that allow them to march for so-called “social justice” and to advocate communism and for our politicians to cheer a woman’s “right” to have her full-term healthy baby murdered.

We have reached the bottom in America when these things can happen without the citizens rising in protest. The democrats at least make their goals clear – they want to turn the U.S. into a communist country. The republicans continue to betray us. They tell us lies about their conservatism, and then vote with the democrats. We have NO representation in our government. Donald Trump alone cannot save us. It’s going to take another Paul Revere to awaken the true Americans to arise and retake their government. Oh…I forgot. Young people have no idea of who Paul Revere was. Okay, then. Goodbye America, it was nice while it lasted.

Hey! Let’s KILL some babies!

Some things are just impossible to believe, unless you see or hear them yourself. First there was the New York legislature cheering when they passed a bill which allows “non-doctors” to perform abortions and codified the right of a mother to have her term baby murdered if she decides she doesn’t want it.

But yesterday I heard the governor of Virginia voice the most barbaric proposal that I have heard since Hitler solved the “Jew” problem by trying to kill all of them. The governor said, and I will paraphrase it here, that If a mother gives birth and is “in distress” the live baby would be “made comfortable” and then when the mother was less agitated, she could decide to have the living baby “aborted.” That is not an abortion, that is the capital crime of premeditated murder.

I had to listen to that man twice to make sure that I had heard correctly. Make the baby “comfortable” and then kill it. Dear God! What kind of people are these? If you tried to kill a cat or a dog, you would be arrested and likely serve a jail sentence. But you can kill a live and viable baby and that is okay? Have we sunk to the basement of horrors where we place more value on the life of a pet than the life of a baby?

I’m sorry, but just speaking of such an atrocity makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve stated my views on abortion and they remain the same. As far as I am concerned an abortion is entirely a decision made between a pregnant woman and her conscience and none of my business. But we have gone far below that when we advocate murdering living babies.

There are childless couples in the U.S. who pay thousands of dollars to adopt a baby. There is no lack of people who wish to adopt a child. But we have now decided to kill the babies instead of giving them up for adoption. And there is not one politician who will speak out against these ghastly, horrendous proposals. I hope that God will forgive the governor of Virginia and the New York legislature. He must do it, because I will NEVER forgive them for murdering living children. The world would have been much better off, if the mothers of the Virginia governor and the members of New York’s legislature had aborted THEM.

 

New York’s Abortion Bill

The New York legislature just passed a bill that sounds like it is right out of Hitler’s playbook. Let me state, as I have before, my personal view on abortion. Until a man can have a baby (which might be soon if all the “transsexuals” get heir operations) I have no right to an opinion on what any woman does with her body. That is entirely between her and her conscience.

So I will just state in non-legal terms what this NY bill provides. It specifically allows abortions after 24 weeks or 6 months of pregnancy. Non-specially, a woman could be due on Thursday and have an abortion on Saturday and its okay with New York. That possibility comes under the “unwanted pregnancy” part of the law.

This brings up the problem of giving birth to babies who have gone to term. As I said, this bill has an “unwanted pregnancy” provision and there is “no protection” for that living baby   which basically means the baby can be murdered. There is a Philadelphia doctor (Gosnell) who is in jail right now for doing what the NY legislature just made legal. If I were him, I would be instituting a repeal of his sentence at this moment.

The NY bill also allows “non-doctors” to perform abortions. Does that mean that w e go back to women having coat hangers shoved up their wombs by back alley abortionists and likely bleeding to death? With this bill, I suspect, that Abortion Mills will spring up on every corner in NYC. Might be a new opportunity for us, right? No…I don’t think so.

I urge you to read the bill as I did, and you might have an entirely different perspective of it, which is fine. That is why we live in an almost-free country. For me, upstate New York is beautiful (except for Albany where the capital is) but a state that has an elected body that would pass this, in my opinion, draconian piece of law is not somewhere I would choose to live.

 

When Pelosi SPEAKS, you better Listen!

House of Representative’s Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been out of power for a while, so when she takes power, she really takes power. This was evident in her changes to the House rules. When Pelosi and the democrats took over the House in early January, she didn’t waste any time in changing the rules. The House, of course, oversees all “spending bills.” That is, they control how much money the government can spend of the taxpayer’s money. One rule Pelosi immediately instituted allows the new, liberal House majority to make debt limit increases unlimited, which means they will spend without any regard for the debt piling up for your children and grandchildren who will have to pay it. Our national debt is already 22 TRILLION dollars.

Another new rule Pelosi made will eliminate the requirement that bills, such as the extreme “Green New Deal” proposal, be analyzed for how they will affect the economy. It’s as if Speaker Pelosi learned nothing from the last ten years, where regulations and excessive government spending stifled economic freedom and growth. Congressional liberals want to throw accountability out the window so they can spend and regulate outrageously, without checks on their power. Hold on to your wallet for the next two years; Pelosi intends to empty it.

 

A Diffeernt kind of Immigrant!

I don’t have to explain to anyone why we need a wall along our U.S. southern border to secure our nation from the dregs of central and South America illegally entering our country. But it might be enlightening to explain the “difference” between those European immigrants who entered this country legally in the preceding centuries from those sneaking across our border today.

My grandfather, on my dad’s side, came to Texas from Hamburg, Germany in the mid-1800s and settled in Kerrville, TX where my father grew up. My Dad was an apprentice to a blacksmith where he learned his trade. He didn’t consider himself a German-American. He was an American, so when. our country entered WW-I with Germany he enlisted in the army and went to France. After he fought in WW-I (where he might have been killing his own relatives) he married my Mom and they lived in North Carolina where I was born and raised.

As I grew into teen years, I was curious about my heritage and I often asked my father to teach me some Germany language. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know any. His father (my grandfather) would NOT ALLOW German to be spoken in his house. His children had to speak English. And that is one major difference in the immigrants who legally entered the U.S. in the 1800s and early 1900s and those who now illegally cross our southern border.

Those early immigrants were determined to become Americans. They had left the oppression of Europe for the advantages that our country offered and they worked to become a part of our culture. They readily accepted our customs and our flag. They WANTED to be Americans!

The trash who now sneak illegally into the U.S. or use children as pawns to gain access, have no interest in learning English or accepting our culture. They remain Mexican or Spanish and expect us to pay for interpreters when they apply for free housing, free medical care, and free food stamps. If they work at all they send their money back to Mexico, it doesn’t improve our economy. They have no interest in our National Anthem or respecting our Flag. They fly the Mexican flag and celebrate Cinco de Mayo. They live in barrios (ghettos) where they maintain their foreign beliefs and only comingle with their own kind. And, as we have seen, many of them came from a criminal society and they maintain it here in our land often killing innocent American citizens.

Our President is right. Border security is vital. But not only for our safety but to reclaim AMERICAN culture. If we permit political correctness and inclusiveness to let our nation be overrun by foreigners, we will become a country of “separate tribes.” This land will cease to be America. That is not what Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and George Washington wanted for us. We must reject the socialist liberals who want to make our country a polyglot of. foreign nationalities. America has always welcomed those who wish to accept our culture and embrace our traditions and speak our language. The garbage now coming in over the southern border has no interest in that at all. If we want an America full of Americans, we must stop this invasion and we must stop it NOW. It is as vital and as serious as that.

 

The book review that Amazon REFUSED to accept!

This is a review I did of a book called “How Democracies Die.” And Amazon REFUSED to post it. Apparently, you can only post favorable reviews of books by Trump haters.

jb

I think I can save you $13. This is basically a Trump-hater book thinly disguised as a 9th and 10th grade Civics lesson. At 10% in the authors (without naming him specifically but making it clear who they are describing) call Trump a demagogue. At 12% in they called him a tyrant. Give them credit for temerity, though – they seriously state that republicans should have voted for Hillary Clinton (a shameless criminal who committed treason for selling 1/4th of America’s uranium supply to Russia) for the sake of our “democracy.” (Thank God we are not a democracy, we are a representative republic.)

After rambling through political systems in Europe, Spain, Venezuela, Chile, and Peru they get around to condemning Newt Gingrich, notably one of the great statesmen of the 20th century, for starting the lack of civility in politics. There has been no civility in politics since this nation was formed. Of course, they advocate the impeachment of our president. Lacking that, they feel he should resign. I struggled through this book looking for what the title implies. I never found it. But I did find the authors’ solution to saving our “democracy.” An this is an actual quote.

“President Trump fails politically.: He either loses public support and is not reelected or, more dramatically is impeached or forced to resign. The implosion of Trump’s presidency and the triumph of the anti-Trump resistance energizes the Democrats, who then sweep back into power and reverse Trumps most egregious policies…. This is certainly the future many of us hope for.”

I suppose those egregious policies are the lowest unemployment since 1973, the best economy since Ronald Reagan, and trying to protect Americans from illegal immigrants over running our nation and destroying our culture. If you are a Trump hater you will love this book. If you are a patriotic American, you will recognize it for what it is – democrat propaganda.