I don't like to out people, but .... his airplane looks remarkably
similar to the #3 in my photo on page 1. Say "hi" to him for me!
Kevin was a "flying captain". Nothing wrong with that. Dear Old
Dad - another "flying captain" - tried to kill C R Slemon one day,
in a Harvard. Not on purpose, you understand. Things like that
just happen. It's a good thing he didn't, because much later in 1960:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Slemon
On 5 October 1960, warning lights in Cheyenne Mountain Complex indicated that the BMEWS site in Thule, Greenland was detecting a possible ICBM attack. On the five-position scale, the reports were level three, requiring Cheyenne to contact NORAD headquarters, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Canadian Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Strategic Air Command (SAC). The commander on duty at that time was Colonel Robert Gould, whose first call was to NORAD's commander General Laurence Kuter, who was at that time flying and could not be contacted.
His next call was to NORAD's second-in-command, Slemon, then located in Cheyenne's counterpart at CFB North Bay. While the call was being connected, the alert status went to level 4, and then 5, indicating the BMEWS site was almost positive an attack was underway, and giving Slemon the authority to order the immediate release of SAC's Airborne Alert force for attack on the USSR. By the time the call was connected, Brigadier General Harris Hull, NORAD's chief of intelligence, joined the call. After the situation was explained, Slemon asked where Khrushchev was at that moment. Hull replied that he was in New York City attending the United Nations. Slemon considered it extremely unlikely that an attack would take place that would likely kill Khrushchev, and asked Hull if there were any intelligence indications that such an attack was being prepared. Hull answered no, and Slemon broke protocol to call off further escalation of the now level-5 alert.
Slemon then ordered that the BMEWS based be contacted directly. When they did, it was discovered that the signals were indicating an attack by as many as 1,000 missiles (at that time the Soviets had four ICBMs in service) but there were oddities about the signal.
In particular, the signal timing seemed to indicate the targets were at a very long distance, while the computer was reporting they were about 2,200 miles (3,500 km) away. After much confusion, it was discovered that the radar was detecting the rising Moon.
On further exploration, it was found that the computer program that reported distances was dropping digits, so only the remainder of the digits were being displayed, leaving what appeared to be a credible measurement
You thought you had software problems? You worry about your wife seeing your browser history,
back in 1960 computers were trying to kill everyone. Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
never owned an automatic in my life
Wow. I don't think they even sell cars with manual transmissions any more, do they?
I used to drive the huge snow plow truck at my old airport. I have no idea why they
let me. I figured out how to do a bootlegger 180 on ice in it, to save time turning
around. Anyways, it had no synchros. You needed to match your upshifts and downshifts
exactly 500 RPM every time. Nowhere was this written, you had to figure it out, after
you had to come to a stop and start over again after you screwed up a shift. Had this
funny red lever on the gearshift to switch between low and high overdrive. Pretty cool.
I miss that truck. It was kind of a worn-out rusty piece of shit, but it was
my piece of shit.
Here's a bunch of us, a while back, building a new shed for it:
That's Lt Gen Dave O'Blenis in the green shirt, an old friend. He did the NORAD thing like C R.
He's dead now, so I can mention that he did great aerobatics in his Grumman Cheetah. I'm
the guy working construction in the spandex shorts and no hat. I never wear a hat. My
dermatologist told me I don't need to. Really.
- I knoiw that even automatics are creeping into the big rigs but there is the issue, people don't understand, floating gears is so much fun ---