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I can assure you the seating in modern military transports has improved not a whit. I wish I had a nickel for every mile I’ve flown sitting sideways crammed into a windowless, too cold or too hot, noisy, fluid reeking trash hauler. I wouldn’t have to still be bending wrenches on 60+ year old C-46’s and DC-6’s……

I’d buy one 🙂 Hire p2 to be my mechanic. How do you feel about B-25s and Hurricanes? Cause I’d buy one of each. Soon as I win the lottery. And a P.T. boat.

I have very fond memories of my first several airplane rides as a kid. This was 1959-61 when my father, a U.S. Navy submarine officer, was sent with family for three years in Argentina to teach the Argentines how to run and fight those boats. I was 10-11-12 years old.

The U.S. military advisory group had assigned to it an Air Force DC-3. Not a C-47/Dakota, but the same plane with normal seating and WINDOWS!

I got to go on some family-oriented junkets – the pilot and crew needed air/training time, dont-ya-know – and the most memorable was to Iguazú Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil.

Our Air Force pilot was a frustrated fighter jock, it seems. He flew us up the river towards the very extensive cataract at about 250 feet and pulled three or four 360°s just slightly above the upper level, partly through the mist. The view was spectacular and utterly unforgettable.

We later found out that the minimum flight altitude around the falls was something like 1,500′ because of severe clear air turbulence that had caused multiple plane crashes.

God bless all those poor bastards from 75 years ago.

My first love was given to Mossie, that foreign dame the De Havilland Mosquito.

Though I was later tempted for a bit by that Fork Tailed Devil, the P38 Lightning.
But my secret love? The P47D Republic Thunderbolt, the flying jug.

And the heros? – I look at the photos and they all look so much older than they really were and too many of them never got any older.

Deborah HH – the poor Hawker Hurricane – always in the shadow of it’s more glamorous sister the Spitfire.

Hurricanes were far more numerous than Spits and did better than half the work driving off the Luftwaffe in the dark days of 1940 while the Spit got all the recognition.

An unsung wood and fabric hero.

As a thought – these guys were flying around in what was some top of the line tech for the time.

Poor bastards then were the guys who had to go up in Fairey Battles, Brewster Buffaloes and Bolton Paul Defiants.

For those who like airplanes, ships, other military hardware (and sometimes other stuff), modern and vintage, check out:
https://retrowar.tumblr.com/
Lots of interesting stuff.

I visited an Air Museum once which had the nose section of a B-24 and which allowed visitors to walk inside it.

I was -shocked- at how thin the aluminum skin was…. literally no thicker than it had to be to keep the air out. When you look at the planes in pictures, they seem big and heavy and give the illusion that they would offer fliers some protection. Up close, you realize that a 12-year-old could punch right through that skin with a pencil.

Brave, brave men.

My locals:
https://www.valiantaircommand.com/

I believe they pranged their C-47 once, but they’ve got it flying again!

They have a yearly airshow around St. Patrick’s Day…

Some years ago, I and my dad toured the Collings Foundation’s B-17. He showed me where he sat as a bombardier (30 missions including two over Berlin.) “Flying Fortress”… Yeah, right.

BTW, that plane is still flying – it was here in Chicago last summer and I saw (and heard) it overhead.