Special thanks to Bill Readdy of Silver Wings Speakers Luncheon: Space Partners - NASA and his adventures in space.

This photograph was taken after our March meeting. L-R Carol Sue Coupland, Randy Brandt, Joan Stalk, Charlie Stallworth, Debbie Gallaway, Bill Readdy, Ron David, Admiral Feightner

Click here to check out all of Yasmin's photos from our March Meeting

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Silver Wings Speakers Luncheon: Richard Kirkland Author, Pilot, Aviation Executive, January 28th.

Richard Kirkland was a kid who grew up in the California wine country, and flew 103 combat missions in P38s with the famous Flying Knights squadron in New Guinea during World War II. He is credited with One kill, a Zero, at about the same time Charles Lindberg, also scored one in the same general area.

Kirkland was later involved in atomic bomb testing on Eniwetok Atoll in 1950 and 51, then migrated to rotary wing operations and signed on with the famous 8055, which became the model for the better known 4077th of television fame. Kirkland told us that Dr. Sam Gilfand, a very brave man with a caustic wit, was the real-life model for Hawkeye Pearce, the MASH surgeon on the television show. An interesting note: in those days MASH pilots were based with their MASH units.

Kirkland flew 69 daring combat helicopter missions with the 8055th.

During his military career he was awarded two DFC, five air medals, the Air Force Commendation Medal and two Presidential Citations.

After his Air Force career, Richard joined the Aircraft Division of the Howard Hughes Company where he became National Sales Manager and subsequently a Division Manager at McDonnell Douglas. He then joined Helisource as Vice President for Marketing.

Following the war, Kirkland studied creative writing and Art at the Universities of Nevada, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Washington State. He has published many articles and stories about his war years and also written and published four non-fiction books. Several are available here today.

Richard is married to his life partner Maria, also an accomplished artist. They have nine children and 15 grandchildren.

Kirkland's most ambitious writing effort, a 903 page historic novel was also recently completed. On January 28th Mr. Kirkland will tell us all about it.

Ron David

'08 Flyer Desktop Screensaver

This screensaver has quickly become quite popular and is yours for the asking.

I took the photograph with a Canon SD500 camera balanced on a wooden partition using a three second exposure. Email me at rondavid@gmail.com and I'll gladly send you the full sized file.

Don't be startled by the enormous size of the picture when you receive it, because when you save it as a screensaver, or desktop image, your computer should automatically resize it appropriately. - Ron

From '08 Flyer Desktop Screensaver from Ron David

A Heart Pounding Salute to old Kai Tak

Special thanks to Steele Lipe (SW) for sending this video with an introduction from veteran airline pilot Jim Morehead.



Jim Morehead's Letter About Flying In and Out of Kai Tak:
"Ah...what a wonderful experience. I did it many times in a 767 from Delhi in the early morning. We often didn't have to do the loop or follow anyone and were #1 coming from China. I recall being at 16,000 feet ( + or - as they used meters) and then landing straight in with the airport about 25 miles away with the gear out and the speed brakes out. We'd sail in and out of the valleys looking up at apartment buildings and ladies' underwear on the clothes lines.

"On Landing and parking, every so often, we would get a gate! Otherwise, it was remote parking with a bus to the terminal. Then the airplane would sit there until 9:00pm and go back to Delhi.

"I was junior in the operation and I got stuck with a line, where the senior guys bid reserve and never went anywhere.

"Back in the day..

"I recall hitting the second soccer field at low altitude after leaving the checkerboard.

"The worst was with an approaching typhoon giving us a strong gusty crosswind from the right. Some good memories here."

Jim Morehead
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Here is an additional note from Pete Sofman with information about the person who created the video and a brief history of Kai Tak:

24 November 2007

First of all, this is a collection from YouTube...

I would like to thank all the enthusiasts from YouTube especially Mr. Boyd Kelly (airboyd of YouTube) which I used their best fragments to make this special Kai Tak video.

Kai Tak Airport VHHH (1925 - 1998) VHHX (since 1998) was the world's busiest international airport.

The growth of Hong Kong put a strain on the airport's capacity. The airport was designed to handle 24 million passengers per year but in 1996, Kai Tak had already handled 29.5 million passengers, plus 1.56 million tonnes of freight, making it the third busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and first in terms of cargo.

However extremely busy Kai Tak was located in the city center, the Kowloon City (The city of nine dragons "city surrounded by nine mountains"), around by high density buildings, numerous skyscrapers and rugged mountains reaching an altitude of 2000 ft. with single narrow runway close to taxiway jutting out into Victoria Harbour, and further less than 10 Km is Hong Kong Island, another densely populated area with hills up to 2100 ft., the airport was infamously difficult to land at. However, due to the same reason, only experience pilots were chosen for the challenging approach and air crash incidents rarely occur.

The low altitude manoeuvre was so spectacular that crowded streets of people, multi-storey buildings, vehicles and pavements can easily be "touched", you can hear "WOW" or "My God" from passengers when they see the flickering of televisions even children say "Hi" to them through apartment windows as their aircraft approached the airport's landing strip. In this video, you can find the most extreme landings, but these happened several hundred times per day, and were just the real daily life of Hong Kong people.

Thanks to Admiral Whitey Feightner, Everyone Who Attended Our Meeting Last March Is Now Ready To Fly The Quirky Corsair

Why does Whitey Feightner have only nine confirmed "kills" in the Pacific Theater during World War Two. I thought he had more? (Unofficial tally: 31)

I was asked this question again recently and offered this answer: the Armed Services want "proof" of a kill (i.e. gun camera footage), or receive reports from reliable eyewitnesses, before verify a pilot's after-action report. (Some folks have been known to exaggerate, you know.)

One of Whitey's frequent tactics was a daring but effective one, however, it was nearly impossible to verify.

After flying a captured Zero he was quick to realize its controls became very "stiff" above 300 miles an hour. Whitey would "allow" an enemy to get on his tail, then "ease" his Hellcat into a diving spiral. With tracers whizzing past his canopy, Whitey would tighten the spiral just enough to make his enemy keep missing, but continue to pursue him. Whitey would dive and spiral toward the ocean until his Grumman fighter was well above 300 miles per hour, then pull up sharply. The pilot in the pursing Zero would only then realized he was doomed.

Unlike spectator sports, there was almost never an eyewitness around who could say with certainty that he saw the dogfight, usually because everyone else was just as busy as Whitey was ... dogfighting.

This also wasn't Whitey's only tactic. In the final accounting Whitey was credited with nine planes confirmed, nine more probable and four damaged. Anyway you cut it, Whitey was one helluva Hellcat pilot who should have at least 18 planes to his credit. (Although Whitey would be the last one to care.)

Who is this "super"pilot, you ask? Well, he is the same mild-mannered Silver Winger who addressed our March luncheon.

Whitey Feightner is a legend. He soloed his first airplane in 1938 with only and hour and a half of flying time and one landing to his credit, and if that sounds incredible, you will probably fall off your stool when I tell that the airplane he soloed was a Ford Tri-Motor Transport.

In May or June Whitey and I will begin recording his whole story. It will be a treasure we will all be able to share forever.

We are grateful to Whitey for sharing stories about flying the F4U Corsair at our luncheon on March 22nd. He recalled some entertaining memories for us and presented a very detailed company film about the F4U ... the same plane that was made famous by "Pappy" Boyington in the South Pacific.

By the way, Whitey and Pappy flew together at Guadalcanal.

62 Silver-Wingers and guests attended our luncheon, the 74th luncheon since our chapter was formed by Charlie Stanton and Bernie Geier more than twelve years ago.

As usual, Yasmin was our "official" photographer. For the few who may not know, 27 year old Yasmin David was born with Down Syndrome. Had she been born without this nasty, little genetic anomaly, she would have been a wonderful pilot. As it is, she is world's greatest co-pilot. She is content to fly from the right seat, thinks all my take-offs and landings are "great", and falls asleep in flight with the next chart in her hand ready to pass it over when tapped on the shoulder. (She also laughs at all my jokes.)

Within our Silver Wings Chapter membership we have pilots who have flown almost any plane you can think of, from the Jenny, the Cub and the Ford to the Space Shuttle ... and the Zero.

Off the top of my head, I can think of members with wartime experiences in nearly every mainline fighter, bomber, transport and trainer in the the U.S. inventory, including turbine-powered aircraft, and Silver Wings is not even a military organization.

Major General Mike "Lancer" Sullivan, USMC (ret.), is a friend of Silver Wings who shared the wonderful Corsair video with us. It is a copy of a film produced by Chance Vought in 1944 that really puts YOU in the cockpit as you put the F4U through stalls, dives, and even a field carrier approach. With that sudden stall, it is no wonder quite a few Corsairs and their pilots bought the farm during landings ... especially carrier landing. "Lancer" advises that the video is now available on the web. You can click here to view it or download it.