Inside Information

Flight Journal, Oct 2004 by Davisson, Budd

ARE WE GOING TO BE ACCUSED OF RUNNING airplane pornography just because this month's "Gallery" features portraits of a lady named Jenny in her birthday suit? I doubt it. In fact, John Dibbs's provocative photo essay on the Curtiss JN-4D sans covering that's at the Museum of Flight in Seattle is very much in keeping with this issue's inadvertent theme: many of the articles give inside looks at events and hardware we thought we understood but maybe didn't. The Jenny is a case in point.

We seldom get such a close-up look at an icon in which its every detail is revealed. While you're looking at the pictures, spend a little time digesting the nuances. For instance, notice how, because of the rudimentary state of structural engineering at the time, the wires provide the primary stabilizing force in many structural areas. Also notice how many hundreds of tiny fittings are required to hold the Jenny's fragile wooden bones together. Crude? By today's standards, yes; but at the time, this was state-of-the-art structure.

And speaking of inside information: did you know that William Holden and Mickey Rooney were not actually involved in the attack on the bridges of Toko-Ri? In fact, as Warren Thompson points out, the bridges at Changnim-ni and Majon'ni were the models around which James Michener wound his fictional Korean War drama that eventually morphed into the 1955 movie, "The Bridges at Toko-Ri." Michener recognized that he needed more pronounceable names, and Toko-Ri rolls off the tongue, so .... Regardless of the name, however, as you will see, the real bridges were some of the costliest, most difficult targets of the Korean War and required modified tactics to allow the new mix of jet and propeller-driven aircraft to work together.

And then there's Bill Gabella's personal tale of a midnight foray across the Arabian Desert on a mercy mission ("To Save a Prince"). In one of those obscure events that is almost always lost to history, Gabella puts us in the cockpit of his helicopter while he and his crew fight the combined demons of low fuel and long distance to save a badly injured member of Saudi royalty. If their mission failed, and the prince died, they probably would, too-an obvious incentive to do the job right, even though it became increasingly clear that they had bitten off more than their helicopter could chew.

Barrett Tillman ("Taming the Corsair") takes us back to the early days of the Corsair and inside the painful process that was required to whip that airplane into shape. It began life as a cantankerous bird that hated carriers, but through lots of sweat and scary moments, it became the legendary fighter-bomber that was the mud Marine's friend in two wars.

Pete Purvis's first assignment as a Navy test pilot was to investigate the viability of recovering downed pilots by snagging them with a hook dangling from a low-flying airplane. Sound insane? The Navy didn't think so, and Purvis ("Fulton Skyhook") takes us along as he flies its initial tests.

Even the "Tailview" for this issue gives us inside info on something we barely knew anything about: Warren Bodie talks with one of the pilots of the XB-15, the largest prewar bomber fielded by the U.S. Army.

So strap in and get ready for a fun ride.

Budd Davisson, Editor-in-Chief