Taking a break from planes today. Let’s go back in history. Way back. To the beginning.
First, the dinosaurs came. Then they died off and turned into oil. Then the Arabs got all the oil and started driving around in Mercedes-Benzes.
Bonus video #1: “Birth of an Oilfield”. Once again, not to be confused with “Birth of a Nation”.
This was produced by George Pal.
Bonus video #2: a promo film for the 1964 World’s Fair, with Lowell Thomas. Thing that pushes my button: he talks with Robert Moses.
I discovered this last night: it’s an odd bit of trivia that I didn’t know previously, and I thought it was worth sharing.
The last resident of 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles was Trent Reznor. Not only that, but he set up a recording studio in the house called “Pig”.
…was the site of recording sessions for most of the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral (1994)
Okay, so what, who cares? Well, 10050 Cielo Drive had a history…
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I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Nine Inch Nails, or Trent Reznor’s music, very much. However, the part of the Rolling Stone interview quoted in the Wikipedia entry is actually kind of thought provoking, and softens my attitude towards the man a bit:
Reznor moved out in December of 1993, and the house was demolished in 1994. The owner built a new house on the property, and had the address changed to 10066 Cielo Drive.
More planes!
I did briefly consider doing some more police stuff, but I thought I wanted a thematic break after the previous post.
First up, once again for RoadRich and the 1940 Air Terminal Museum folks: “6 1/2 Magic Hours”. That six and a half hours is how long it takes to reach Europe on Pan Am’s 707 Clipper.
Bonus: “Champion of Champions”, a documentary about the Convair B-58 Hustler. Yes, that is Jimmy Stewart: or, properly, Brigadier General James M. Stewart (United States Air Force – Reserve). I don’t think he gets enough credit for his military career, but that’s probably because he was very modest about it. Andy Rooney commented in one of his books that Stewart earned every promotion he got. (He enlisted as a private in March of 1941, and retired in May of 1968.)
(There’s a story about Stewart’s appearance in “The World At War” documentary series: he agreed to appear, but required that he be identified as simply “Jimmy Stewart, pilot.”)
Bonus video #2: “Escape and Survive”, about the development of the B-58’s ejection capsule.
Okay, one more: vintage video of the B-58 flying really low and really fast.
Today is the 34th anniversary of the FBI Miami shootout, perhaps the most studied (and most influential) gunfight in history. Very brief summary: eight FBI agents confronted two men who had been robbing banks and armoured cars. The confrontation ended in a firefight, in which two FBI agents (Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan) were killed and five more were injured (three of them seriously). The two suspects were shot and killed by Agent Ed Mireles, who was one of the agents seriously injured. (Agent Dove inflicted what would have been an eventually fatal wound on one of the suspects, but it was not an immediate stopper: the man Agent Dove shot kept fighting until Agent Mireles got in a finishing shot at close range.)
This is the second of the three events I mentioned in an earlier post. I went back and forth about doing a longer post on this event, and ended up deciding to do a short one instead. This isn’t a round number anniversary, and I’d really like to do more prep work before doing a longer post: next year is the 35th anniversary, and that seems like a good target. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let this anniversary pass without notice.
In the meantime, if you want to dig beyond the Wikipedia entry, I’d start with Ed Mireles’s book: I’m still in the process of reading it, but this has the “Hell, I was there!” factor going for it. Here’s a review of it (with bonus material) from great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn.
Massad Ayoob has written about this event multiple times in the “Ayoob Files”. His first article is in Ayoob Files: The Book (as a matter of fact, the cover illustration is a crime scene photo from the shootout). As I’ve noted before, you’ll get more value out of purchasing the 1985-2011 “Ayoob Files” PDF from American Handgunner, which contains the original article from 1989, “FBI Miami Shootout: An Update” from 1992, and “25 Years After the FBI Firefight: The Late-Emerging” (also online). There’s at least one more (I may have lost count) “Ayoob Files, “The FBI Dadeland Shootout: Hero Agent Ed Mireles Speaks“, tied to the Mireles book.
The other book I often see cited, and which has been recommended to me, is “Forensic Analysis Of The April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight” by W. French Anderson, which is violently expensive. Then again, this is kind of a specialized publication: I don’t know what it went for when it came out in 2006. (Plus, it was published by the now-defunct Paladin Press.)
“Dark Day in Suniland” was put together by Bob Gilmartin, a local TV reporter who also wrote the forward to Agent Mireles’s book. This documentary came out a year after the event.
Over at Karl’s site, he has another video that combines the FBI reconstruction video, “Firefight” and another video with personal reflections from the agents.
There is a made for TV movie, “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” based on this event, but Agent Mireles states in his book that “dramatic effect apparently took precedence over some of the facts”.
The other agents involved were:
SA Richard Manauzzi.
Supervisor Gordon McNeill (seriously injured).
SA Gilbert Orrantia.
SA John Hanlon (seriously injured).
SA Ronald Risner.
Everybody likes planes, right? Especially great and good FOTB RoadRich!
Here’s some more vintage video targeted directly at his interests.
First up, “Birth of a Jet”. This should not be confused with “Birth of a Nation”: this one is about the DC-8, and dates from 1958.
Bonus video #1. This is a throwback video: “Tomorrow’s Airplane Today: The Story of the Stratocruiser”, from 1946. The 377 Stratocruiser was a Boeing airliner, based on the C-97 Stratofreighter transport (which, in turn, was based on the B-29). Apparently, the airliner was not entirely successful.
Bonus video #2: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m partial to the F-4 Phantom. “F-4 Flight Characteristics”.
As the YouTube notes point out, there’s some really amazing footage of an F-4 in a spin about 24 minutes in.
Since I was a little selfish yesterday, today’s videos go out to great and good FOTB RoadRich, and to the good folks at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum in Houston. May they re-open soon.
First up: “The 707 Astrojet”, a 1961 co-production of American Airlines and Pratt & Whitney Aircraft.
Bonus video #1: “The F-4 Phantom Joins the Fleet”, from 1962. From the YouTube description, for all you military aviation buffs: “The film features Fighter Squadron SEVEN FOUR (VF-74) aka Bedevilers flying from the nearly-new aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59) along with the rest of Carrier Air Wing EIGHT (CVW-8).”
Bonus video #2: “Grumman at War”, from 1944.
Hal Willner, who the Times describes as “matchmaker, yenta, fan, longtime music coordinator for the sketches on ‘Saturday Night Live'”.
I have a couple of those Willner tribute albums. “Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill” in particular is a swell album, and I wish someone would re-release that digitally.
Lawrence sent over an obit for Thomas L. Miller, TV producer. (“Full House”, “Family Matters”.)
Linda Tripp. For my younger readers, Ms. Tripp was a central figure in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal of the 90s.
When Ms. Lewinsky confided in Ms. Tripp that she had had a physical relationship with the president, Ms. Tripp got in touch with Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent who had once reached out to her for information on Vincent Foster, the White House lawyer who committed suicide in 1993.
More recently, Ms. Tripp had been working on a book proposal tentatively titled “Behind Closed Doors: What I Saw Inside the Clinton White House.” Now she had a hook.
Ms. Goldberg suggested, among other things, that Ms. Tripp tape her telephone conversations with Ms. Lewinsky. That was legal in the District of Columbia and in 39 states, but not in Maryland, where Ms. Tripp was living.
More than 20 hours of audiotapes were turned over to Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor handling the Clinton investigation.
Damn.
I wouldn’t say I was a big Prine fan, but he did a fair number of songs that I’m partial to. Here’s one of my favorites:
Edited to add: Borepatch has a nice tribute up, with some of Mr. Prine’s deeper cuts.
Robert Barth. He was a pioneering Navy diver: he was the only person involved with both the Genesis dry land test and all three iterations of the Sealab underwater habitats.
The dangerous experiments Mr. Barth took part in paved the way for exploits of deepwater espionage, undersea construction and demolition projects around the world.
He never achieved conventional fame, but he was the “ultimate aquanaut,” said Leslie Leaney, the executive director of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame. “His contributions benefited the world of science and national security, but also the economies of all nations that explored for offshore oil.”
In 2010, the Navy named its aquatic training facility in Panama City for Mr. Barth. “Nothing that Navy divers do is one guy,” he said at the dedication. “There is always a whole bunch of people involved in it.”
By way of Lawrence, Allen Garfield. He was in a whole bunch of stuff, including “The Conversation” and “Nashville”.
Also by way of Lawrence, George Ogilvie, co-director of “Max Max: Beyond Thunderdome”.
The paper of record finally got around to publishing an obit for Ira Einhorn.
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It was a measure of his ability to make important connections that after he was charged with murder, his lawyer was Arlen Specter, the city’s former district attorney who was then in private practice and who went on to become a United States senator.
Mr. Specter managed to get Mr. Einhorn’s bail reduced to $40,000. To be released from custody, Mr. Einhorn had to put up only 10 percent, or $4,000. It was paid by a Canadian socialite, one of several well-off people who supported him financially and who doubted he could have been involved in murder.
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But his darker side and a monumental ego were emerging, most noticeably during the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, when 20 million people across the country gathered to draw attention to environmental problems.
As two environmental activists later wrote in an op-ed in The Inquirer, Mr. Einhorn had made himself unwelcome at organizational meetings in advance of Earth Day, and then, at the actual event, he “grabbed the microphone and refused to give up the podium for 30 minutes, thinking he would get some free television publicity.”
He later falsely claimed to have been a founder of Earth Day, a title generally accorded to Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat.
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I think I’m just going to do a straight up two-fer today.
One for RoadRich:
And one for Lawrence. In color!:
Shifting gears here, since I brought everyone down earlier. These go out to great and good FOTB RoadRich, who is to submarines and aircraft what Lawrence is to tanks.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I wonder how I can get out of a submarine that’s under water?” Of course you have.
(I actually learned somewhat similar techniques when I was taking scuba training.)
Bonus video #1: I’m putting these next two in as bonus videos because they’re a bit longer than my 15 minute target. With our Saturday night movie group in lockdown, we’ve been reduced to watching broadcast TV. Interestingly, H&I is showing “12 O’Clock High” (the TV series) at 10 Central on Saturday nights. We watched the movie a little less than a year ago, and I thought it was an extraordinary film. I don’t have enough episodes under my belt to be able to judge the series yet.
Anyway: how do you fly a B-17?
Bonus video #2: how do you stop flying a B-17? For example, if you have to ditch at sea?
For those of you who don’t read the YouTube notes: both of these videos feature Arthur Kennedy, who played “Jackson Bentley” (the journalist based loosely on Lowell Thomas) in “Lawrence of Arabia”.
Okay, bonus video #3, which I just happened to stumble upon: for the moment, the pilot episode of “12 O’Clock High”, “Golden Boy Had 9 Black Sheep” is available on YouTube. Those of you who have seen the movie might recognize some similarities in plot.
Fifty years ago today, just before midnight on April 5, 1970, two California Highway Patrol officers, Walt Frago and Roger Gore, stopped a car with two men in it. There had been reports that a similar vehicle had been involved in a road rage incident a short time before.
The two men in the car, Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, were heavily armed criminals. They had been planning the theft of explosives from a construction site near where they were stopped. Davis had dropped Twinning off earlier in the evening to scope out the construction site (other sources say that they were testing walkie-talkies they planned to use in the robbery, and that Twinning was taking some target practice), made an illegal U-turn across a highway median, and brandished a firearm at a driver he nearly hit. The display of the firearm was what prompted the call to CHP: the responding officers had no knowledge of Twinning and Davis’s criminal past, their plan to steal explosives, or of the weapons they had in the car. As a matter of fact, the initial report stated that there was only one occupant in the car.
When they were stopped, the two men initially refused to exit the vehicle. Gore managed to clear Davis from the car and started to frisk him. But before they could get Twinning out of the car, he shot and killed Officer Frago. Officer Gore shot back at Twinning, but was shot by Davis at close range.
Two other officers, James Pence and George Alleyn, were nearby and responded as backup for Gore and Frago. They got to the scene just after Office Gore was killed and immediately came under fire from Twinning and Davis. Alleyn fired on Davis with his issue shotgun, but was unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of rounds. He then drew his issue sidearm and continued to fire on Davis, but was hit with multiple rounds of 00 buckshot from Davis’s sawed-off shotgun and killed.
A nearby citizen, Gary Kness, tried to help the officers, returning fire with Alleyn’s service revolver, but was also unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of ammo.
Officer Pence emptied his revolver at Twinning and had to reload. CHP did not issue speed loaders at the time. He loaded six rounds and was closing the cylinder on his revolver when Twinning snuck up behind him and killed him.
Twinning and Davis fled as a third CHP unit arrived. Davis broke into a camper, pistol-whipped the occupant, and stole the vehicle. CHP was informed, stopped the camper, and Davis (who at this point had no loaded guns) surrendered. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. He apparently committed suicide in his cell in August of 2009.
Twinning broke into a house and took an occupant hostage. The house was surrounded by police, and after a several hour standoff, they deployed tear gas and stormed the house. Twinning killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from Officer Frago.
Four CHP officers died that night. This was one of the deadliest days in the history of California law enforcement. (Four officers were killed in Oakland in 2009.)
None of the officers had been with CHP for more than two years. Three out of the four probably would have survived if they had been wearing soft body armor, but this was 1970: bulletproof vests at the time were heavy and bulky, and Richard Davis didn’t design the first Second Chance vest until 1976.
This is one of those moments in history that justifies the use of the phrase “agonizing reappraisal”. After the incident, CHP authorized, and then started issuing, speed loaders. CHP also reevaluated their training, and shared their investigative findings widely. Ultimately, the Newhall incident was one of the events that kicked off the “officer survival” movement in the US.
California Highway Patrol training video:
I can’t find Massad Ayoob’s original article about Newhall online: it is reprinted in Ayoob Files: The Book but don’t pay those prices. (You can get the full set of “Ayoob Files” from 1985-2011 from American Handgunner in PDF form for $35.00.)
Mr. Ayoob’s followup, “New Info On Newhall“, is available online at the AH website, as is a third article focusing on Gary Kness and Daniel Schwartz (the camper owner): “The Armed Citizens Of Newhall”.
2016 article from The Atlantic focusing on post-Newhall changes.
I’ve been looking at California newspapers thinking there would be a retrospective, but I haven’t found one. If I do, I’ll add it here.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, Gary Kness is still alive (he’d be around 82 today). He was honored by CHP for his efforts to save the officers, and is regarded as a hero by the California Highway Patrol to this day.
If anybody has anything to add about this incident (hi, Karl!) please feel welcome to leave a comment. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, but some of the information out there is contradictory, incomplete, or inaccurate.
Rear Adm. Edward L. Feightner (United States Navy – ret.).
In his 34 years of Navy service, as a combat pilot in the Pacific, an instructor and a test pilot, Admiral Feightner flew more than 100 types of planes.
While he was a junior Navy officer, he twice shot down three Japanese planes on a single day and took part in battles in the Caroline Islands, the Marianas and the Philippines.
In the late 1940s, he became one of the early test pilots at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. He flew or analyzed the systems for fighters, transports, helicopters and just about any other type of aircraft envisioned by the Navy.
He became the head of the Navy’s fighter design program and was twice awarded the Legion of Merit for his testing and administrative activities. He received four Distinguished Flying Crosses for his combat exploits.
In the early 1950s, Admiral Feightner was a member of the Navy’s Blue Angels, whose close-formation flying and acrobatics thrilled crowds at air shows.
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Admiral Feightner was credited with his first “kill” when he shot down a Japanese dive bomber off the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. He downed three torpedo bombers off Rennell Island on Jan. 30, 1943, and became an ace (a pilot with at least five kills) when he shot down a Zero fighter off the Palau island chain in March 1944.
He shot down another Zero off Truk in April 1944 and downed three Zeros off Formosa (now Taiwan) on Oct. 12, 1944.
Admiral Feightner was 100 when he passed.
Ira Einhorn is burning in hell.
Steven Levy’s book on the case, The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius is available in a Kindle edition, and that’s probably the way to go if you want to read it. (As far as I know, that’s the only book about the case, though it was written before Einhorn’s capture and extradition: I don’t know if Levy updated subsequent editions or the Kindle version.)
Today’s video goes out to Lawrence, who (among his other virtues) is a tank fan.
Here’s another bonus entry for today: “Crack That Tank”.
Continuing with the “random stuff that popped up in my YouTube recommendations” theme, here’s one of those Navy training videos. This one is actually better quality than some of the other ones I’ve been watching, and contains a lot of nice action shots: “The Job Of The EA-6B Prowler”:
Bonus video #1: this actually wasn’t a random YouTube recommendation, but something McThag linked to a while back that might be interesting to some folks: “Defensive Electronic Countermeasures”, a 1962 training film about various then current ECM gear. It is a little longer than I’d like (close to 30 minutes instead of 15), but I think it is a nice historical artifact.
Bonus video #2: also not random, and nothing to do with military aviation. I actually saw this on whatever the broadcast game show channel was this morning, and was amused: Robert Moog (and two other guys) on “To Tell the Truth”:
It particularly amuses me that the first question asked…is about P.D.Q. Bach.
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Boris Yaro, LAT photographer. He famously took multiple photos of Robert Kennedy immediately after the shooting.
There’s another story about Mr. Yaro’s photography: that one involves a suicidal man and Muhammad Ali, but you’ll have to read the obit for that one.