Flying High This Past Week

This is a new little feature for the blog I thought I'd start doing on a weekly basis called "Flying High This Past Week". I've noticed in following the stats and page views for this blog that sometimes some unexpected past posts become popular for a variety of reasons ranging from an external link on a forum or another website to Google searches that direct folks to a particular topic. Think of this little feature as a way of finding some past articles I've written that you may have missed that might feed your inner avgeek!

• The Marine Corps Bet On the Harrier: This is the latest article posted on 21 February, this one takes a look at how the Marines adeptly navigated the treacherous waters of military procurement to get their hands on an aircraft that would not be picked up by any other of the US military branches. "We want to buy a whole slug of them and get started and have a meaningful program! - General McCutcheon, USMC Deputy Chief of Aviation in 1969, in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
• The Sud-Ouest SO 6000: France's First Jet Aircraft: Posted 16 February, this article takes a look at the first French jet aircraft that had a rather unique development story and unique among pioneering jet aircraft of the day, might be well considered the very first VLJ.
• The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet Takes To the Air Again: Posted on 1 February 2011, this article looks at a Komet glider replica built by Josef Kurz, a glider enthusiast in postwar Germany. The replica glider was as close to the original Komet as possible (minus the Walter rocket engine, of course) and was first flown in 1996 and is part of the EADS Heritage Flight. 
• Operation Ranch Hand and Agent Orange: I had posted this article on 7 April 2010 on the background and operation of the airborne spraying of defoliants in Vietnam. The unfortunate legacies of Ranch Hand still linger in the health problems of many who were exposed to the Agent Orange herbicide during the flights that were conducted from 1962 to 1971.
• The Genesis of the Predator UAV: Posted on 26 February 2011, this article took a look at Abraham Karem, an Israeli immigrant and inventor in the United States, who in 1982 secured DARPA seed money to create a long endurance UAV that was quite unlike any of the prior long endurance UAVs that had flown before. Please also note the comments from some of my readers in this article that corrected some of my errors in the original article in regards to the operational deployment of the first Predators to the Balkans.
• The Turboprop B-17 Flying Fortress: From 19 June 2010, this is what happens you take a surplus B-17 and fit it with the Rolls Royce Dart engines from a Vickers Viscount!