http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_bombing
In the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (February 26, 1993) a car bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists in the underground parking garage below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,056-lb (680 kg) urea nitrate-fuel oil device killed six and injured 1,042 people. It was intended to devastate the foundation of the North Tower, causing it to collapse onto its twin.
This was my 27th birthday when I was a Prisoner of War in Libya.
From 3/3/1986 to 4/19/1995 is: 3334 days
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/17/07 6:40 PM
According to this article, Murrah died 2 days before my launch from Earth on 11/2/75. That building named for him was finished in 1977, according to the article, but I don't know the exact date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Murrah
Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 - October 30, 1975) was an American attorney and judge. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was named after him, was destroyed in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F21.html
Marge: Say, I've got a neat idea! Why don't you go in and pick up my mother and we'll all go out to dinner?
Abe: I'll be back in a jiffy!
[comes back with a woman in a wheelchair]
Marge: That's not my mother.
Abe: I'll be back in a jiffy!
Woman: Can I come too?
[Homer rolls up Marge's power window]
Woman: [disappointed] Oh...
-- Too many cooks, "Lady Bouvier's Lover"
Maybe it was a Hawkeye or Sentry airborne early warning radar I was guarding on 6/19/1968.
Her feet are in the water, too, in those screenshots where Phoebe is sitting on the diving board. I probably had her do that, too, to represent me flying a Tomcat over the ocean. I noted earlier how that ramp on the front of an aircraft carrier resembles a diving board.
http://gallery.phoebe-cates.com/v/movies/fast_times/fast_times027.JPG.html
http://www.virtualwall.org/dd/DuncanRR01a.htm
As the cruise progressed, VA-85 increasingly found itself tasked with night single-aircraft missions over North Viet Nam -- exactly what the aircraft was designed for. However, the inability of the A-7As and F-4Bs to operate effectively over land at night meant that there were fewer aircraft over the beach, and consequently these few aircraft drew more concentrated attention from NVN's anti-air defenses.
The A-6B tactics evolved accordingly. An A-6B would launch with the attack birds, and everyone would go their separate ways . . . the attack birds at low level and the A-6B wandering around feet dry at 20,000 feet or so. If and when the NVN gunners lit off their fire control radars, the A-6B would attempt to engage them with either Shrike or Standard ARMs. Given the limited number of A-6Bs, these missions grew to "double-cycles" -- launch and go over the beach with the first batch, go feet wet to refuel when they went home, and be back in position as the second wave came feet dry.
http://www.amazon.com/Feet-Wet-Reflections-Schiffer-Military/dp/0764302841/ref=pd_sim_b_2/102-0899748-6964139
Feet Wet: Reflections of a Carrier Pilot (Schiffer Military History) (Hardcover)
Book Description
Paul Gillcrist was a navy carrier pilot for almost thirty years, from the early days, of flying propeller planes from straight deck carriers, to the days of high-tech, lethal "teen" jets and supercarriers. In his remarkable career - from "nugget", to competent jet aviator, to test pilot, to Vietnam fighter pilot, to air wing commander, to head of "Fightertown, USA," Gillcrist flew the F-8 Crusader, F-4 Phantom, F-14 Tomcat, and a myriad of other tactical aircraft. He took part in the Navy's transition to jet aircraft, when accident rates were high and many feared that jets would not be able to operate in the harsh, demanding environment of "blue water ops." Gillcrist saw the introduction of critical innovations - the angled deck, steam catapult, optical landing system - that saved carrier jet aviation from extinction. Few aviators have had such varied and fascinating experiences, and few could write about them with such eloquence. Available now in a new hard cover reprint edition, Feet Wet (aviator talk for reaching the safety of water) is a chronicle of adventure, heroism, courage, and humor, with some of the most exciting passages ever written on flying. From his magical first flight - the sheer exstasy of being airborne, to the heart-pounding excitement of his first night "trap," the terror of ejecting from a test plane spinning out of control, to dodging SAMs and jousting with MiGs over Hanoi - Gillcrist takes the reader into his world and vividly conveys what all pilots live for - the tremendous "high" of all-out flying. As part of his absorbing stories. Gillcrist shares technical information on carrier aviation; the reader sees, step-by-step, how an airplane is launched, and then trapped again on a small deck aboard a moving ship - this, the most dificult feat in aviation. Paul gillcrist retired in 1985 after a 33-year career as a naval aviator. He commanded a fighter squadron, a carrier air wing, a major jet base, and as a flag officer, the Pacific Fleet fighter wing. He flew 167 combat missions in three Vietnam combat deployments, for which he was awarded seventeen combat decorations. Paul Gillcrist is also the author of Tomcat! The Grumman F-14 Story, Crusader! Last of the Gunfighters, and Vulture's Row: Thirty Years in Naval Aviation (all three titles are available from Schiffer Publishing Ltd.).
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing; 2Rev Ed edition (August 1997)
http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter23/in021203free.html
Re: Finally Free
From: POW-MIA InterNetwork
Date: February 12, 2003
"February 12, 2003
POWs will get another homecoming, 30 years later
By Brian Kelly
Herald Writer
OAK HARBOR -- Two words. A snippet of a sentence, a phrase that lifted them higher than the lumbering Air Force C-141 could ever soar.
"Feet wet!" came the call. And in plane after plane, shouts of joy erupted as each "Hanoi Taxi" crossed the coastline of Vietnam.
Thirty years ago today, the first wave of prisoners of war came home from Vietnam. Dubbed "Operation Homecoming," it saw the release of almost 600 of the 801 Americans captured during the war.
Today at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, the freedom flights will be marked by a symposium and panel discussion hosted by a half-dozen or so Vietnam POWs. It's a hot ticket for people in uniform: Roughly 400 or more sailors and Marines are expected to attend.
Richard "Skip" Brunhaver, the pilot of a Navy A-4 Skyhawk, recalled being on the second flight out of Hanoi on Feb. 12, 1973. He spent 2,729 days, more than seven years, as a prisoner of war, most of them in Hoa Lo prison, better known as the "Hanoi Hilton."
He was 25 when he was captured -- his fighter-bomber went down because of mechanical trouble in August 1965 -- and 33 when he went home as part of Operation Homecoming.
No cheers came from on board when his plane took off from Vietnam, bound for Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.
"We had developed so much cynicism over such a long period of time, you never knew," Brunhaver recalled. "You thought there might be some trick going on."
Brunhaver, now 62, said the mood changed once the plane crossed the coast.
"When we hit 'feet wet,' we knew it was for real. About that time, your brain clicked over and said it's time to start living again."
