3rd Gen Magnetic Gray Thread

He flew B-25's and PBY's in WWII, then Sikorsky's during the Korean debacle. He was never in theatre, except late WWII he was in Okinawa, shortly after they dropped the bombs. It was there that the powers that be decided that most material of war was to be scuttled and used to make artificial reefs, not returned to the United States. His brand-new B-25 was inventoried down to even the wheel chocks, loaded on a barge and taken to Guam where it was sunk. No more B-25's, but the pilots were still required to fly 4 hours a week to retain their flight pay. So what did they have left to fly? F4U Corsairs! The United States still needed to burn off all the AV gas that had been marshalled on Okinawa and other islands to prepare for the invasion of Japan, but was no longer needed to prosecute the war. Therefore, they needed planes flying to burn it up and that was what pilots were expected to do for their duration. Dad said that his F4U flight training was him sitting in a running Corsair on the flight-line with a seasoned Corsair pilot standing on the wing showing him where everything was located, then he bails off the wing and you taxi out to take off! No classroom instruction. No practice landings. You just took off. In the United State's premier carrier-based fighter. Dad was 22. Do you remember being 22? I do. And to have a Corsair handed to you at that age!?! He said for a while it was a hoot: He and a bunch of his buddies would all take off, go up and split into two sides and have mock dogfights. Can you imagine? Twenty-two years old and "given the keys" to the Marine's premier fighter plane? To play cowboys and indians? That's like today being given the "keys" to an F-18 and told, "You gotta' go fly this thing for at least four hours. We don't care what you do with it during those four hours, just bring it back. And oh yeah, almost forgot: We're going to PAY YOU a lot more money if you do". He said after a few months of that they loathed having to go fly one for four hours. WTF!? He got all uptight with me when I starter roadracing shifterkarts, calling out the danger and that I could get hurt (which I eventually did). All I had to do to shut him off was ask, "Dad, when you were 22 what kind of stupid shit did you do in those Corsairs?"

He was re-activated when Korea blew up, as a F4U fighter pilot because of all the hours he had logged in it. He knew about the MIG's success jumping Corsairs flying low ground support. He also knew he'd have to drop napalm and probably inadvertently kill a lot of innocent people as a Marine ground support pilot supporting Marine ground operations. That's not my dad. He doesn't have the killer instinct that a top-tier fighter pilot must possess. (But he LOVED strafing practice in the B-25's with the twelve forward-facing 50cal machine guns. Said when you fired them all off at the same time it was like the plane almost came to a stop and you thought the plane might stall.)

So he asked the Marines what his other options were. They said helicopters, but the fatality rate was very high (piston-driven at that time, only 70mph.) They so much as told him he'd probably get killed as many chopper pilots were dying quick in Korea. That's what he chose. He had been top of his class at Pensacola. Was the first person to ever score a perfect score on the dead-reconning navigation test. Helicopters gave him fits though. He almost washed out because he couldn't hover. The day before the final certification test his instructor risked his own life to help dad learn how to hover: He took them both into a back corner of a pasture surrounded by trees, not much wider than the tips of the blades. He hovered them about ten feet off the ground and very close to the trees in front of them and told my dad, "Now, HOVER!" He said he stared at those trees in front of them for a full hour, hovering, and scared shitless. He graduated, not far from the bottom of his class, but he graduated! He got better: Dad was a Sikorsky squadron commander when he bailed for good after Korea. He also had a 35mm camera through all of this. I've got over 10,000 color slides that he shot from 1942 through 1953. I just bought an Epson V600 picture scanner so I can digitize them. I'll post some up.

 

My step-father, the abusive drunk that he was, was a B-24 pilot in WWII and flew over 60 missions in the south Pacific; he said he never once saw an enemy plane.

 

What islands did he fly from?

 

I don't remember, my mother divorced him back in 1973; my half-brother has some of his stuff, it might be in there.

 

@tonykarter , great story could be a book then a movie

 

Third pic, this was roughly 15 miles off the Alaska Highway and 30 miles south of the Yukon border. Apparently three were skuttled on a swamp after one developed problems.

I took this picture in 1982, the following year it was gone. Heard a museum had slung it to the highway and hauled it out.


https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...und-in-the-woods.200991/page-76#post-26601398

 

Hauling mulch for a Boy Scout fundraiser.

 

Just got my 22 MGM Pro on Tuesday. Head to Moab on Saturday for Spring break. Big change from the 06 my son now drives.

 

Testing the 35s

 

Dude, you don't have to do that to get the tank full.

 

This looks like me, right before the girlfriend starts yelling "Was that you? Holy fuck, light a candle!"

 

with gas prices almost $6 here need to get that full tank any way possible lol

 

My girl was the one who pushed me to get them . Told me man up and do it, don’t be a bitch

 

Meso red taillights

 

Latest pic of my MGM

 

Reds look good

 

Not a Taco, but it came out too good not to share with my MGM cousins. If you haven't heard of it already, I'd highly recommend Shine Armor's Fortify Quick Coat. Took almost an entire bottle on this behemoth, but at $20 it's still totally worth it.

 

First pic post.

Helped haul mulch yesterday for our youth group fundraiser. First pic is around 990 lbs in the trailer and 600 lbs in the truck. Second pic is around 900 lbs in the bed. That, along with 5 people in the cab, we were definitely on the bumpers a few times over some bumps in the road.