The Grand Canyon’s Original Airport Lies Abandoned Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: Atlas Obscura. Perhaps like many of you, I’ve always liked exploring old, abandoned buildings. As a kid growing up in a village outside of Cleveland, Ohio there was this abandoned mansion…it really was a mansion…called the “Andrews Mansion”. It was way back in…
36 Years ago Today in Aviation History Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com Courtesy FAA. Where were you 36 years ago today? Hopefully not on Aloha Airlines Flight 243. According to History.com, “On April 28, 1988, a seemingly routine, 35-minute flight from Hilo to Honolulu turned into terror when an 18-foot-long section of the upper…
Aviation history: the bloody Red Baron Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: Wikipedia, History.com “Curse you Red Baron!” Snoopy exclaims, shaking his fist at the invisible German fighter pilot who just put imaginary bullet holes in the Peanuts character’s dog-house-turned-biplane. Snoopy pretending to be a WWI fighter pilot is a lovable cartoon drawn by Charles Schulz. …
On This Day in 1978: KAL Flight 902 Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, Wikipedia.com We Americans tend—at least as far as our borders’ air defense is concerned—to ask questions first and then shoot if necessary. Not so the Russians, who seem to shoot first and then ask questions, the latest example being Malaysia Airlines…
Thursday Twofer: Tokyo and Beirut Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com, Wikipedia.com America was already at war with the Empire of Japan and it took four months to plan and execute the Pearl Harbor “revenge attack”, an audacious, risky, and uniquely American “suicide mission” requiring only volunteers (of which there were none lacking), all of…
On This Day in Aviation History: April 14, 1918 Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com The last edition of the Tideland News and the Carteret News Times…(out of Swansboro and Morehead City, NC…yes, we still take that paper as we did for 20+ years while living in eastern NC. Today, though, living now in the…
This Day in Aviation Friday Evening Twofer. April 12th. Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com This evening it’s all space, all the time for our aviation history vignettes and it’s a twofer to boot. And what a twofer it is and a what a day April 12th was in the annuls of aviation history! Two…
This Day in Aviation History: Flight Hardships and First Flight Around the World Contributor: Barry Fetzer Sources: History.com It’s hard to imagine and nearly impossible to remember given that to actually remember, we’d have to have been born at least 105 or 106 years ago (to be past the age of childhood amnesia) and…