(B-29s with Mt. Fuji. USAAF picture.) November of 1944 was a tough month for all the rookie crews on Saipan. They had crossed the vast pacific in their virgin aircraft and were now confronting the dual enemies of distance and Japan. This month was the baptism of combat, since it included strikes against heavily defended […]

  (“Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault.” May 26, 1945. Army Air Forces picture)   Bill McCullough wants to get out the story of his first cousin, Harold. It was first told a long time ago in an Air Corps in-house organ commemorating the day the first two crews of Brigadier General Emmet O’Donnell’s bomb […]

(Isley Field, Saipan, filled with Super Forts. Late 1945. Army Air Corps picture)   Bill McCullough is a Great American. So is his cousin Hal, a survivor of Crew 17. I will tell you more about his crew tomorrow, but the stories of how they bombed Japan and survived their thirty-mission compact with fire and […]

(B-29 formation enroute Tokyo from Saipan under attack by Japanese fighters, 1944)   There is a lot to talk about this morning, but I don’t have time to get to it all. I had a throw-down in the Big Pink lobby with one of the Board members about the smoking ban at the pool, and […]

The Severe Thunderstorm Alert had passed and it looked like we were not going to get the Tornado that they had set a watch for earlier in the day, but you could sense the potential for violence in the swirling gray clouds that advanced from the west with short gusts of wind.   I just […]

    I was sitting with the Admiral the other night on the eve of the Battle of Midway, the Navy’s greatest triumph. I was embarrassed the significance of the date did not come up, and that was sort of strange, since the Admiral is one of the last people alive who contributed to the […]

(Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, USAF-Ret., the prospective Director of National Intelligence.)   The nomination of Jim Clapper spread like wildfire late yesterday, and in all the places Spooks gather there was animated discussion. My pal Phil heard the word out at Langley, where he was attending the elevation of a Marine general to his […]

(Bit of cold steel, shredded in 1966) We were at Willow- it is the Admiral’s first venture out since his left arm has turned back to a normal color. We secured the little sitting area at the end of the bar and relaxed. There was a lot to catch up on. The Admiral is still […]

(USS Olympia back in the Day. Official Navy Picture) For me, it is getting on to one of those calendar moments that force one to take brief pause.   I was conceived, best I can determine, in the fall of 1950. The Korean war was raging, and Dad was probably sweating the idea that he […]

(Bow of the USS Olympia. Oil on Masonite by Jeffery Alllon) Man, it is hard to come back to work, and particularly challenging after some international and transcontinental travel. There were sedimentary layers of dirty laundry and loose furniture all over the apartment, and an issue of a neglected Quarterly to get out the door […]