I wanted something a little bit lighter than cop stuff and military aircraft for Easter. Then this popped up in my YouTube suggestions. I’ve wanted to see this ever since I read about the event in Tex Johnston’s biography.
Bonus: original Boeing promotional video for the Dash 80.
Stirling Moss died “quietly on Sunday at his home in London”. He was 90. McThag beat me on the tribute watch.
“To race a car through a turn at maximum possible speed when there is a great lawn to all sides is difficult,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1961, “but to race a car at maximum speed through a turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — ah, that’s an achievement!”
He raced for 14 years, won 212 of his 529 races in events that included Grand Prix, sports cars and long-distance rallying, in 107 different types of car.
He set the world land speed record on the salt flats of Utah in 1957. He won more than 40 percent of the races he entered, including 16 Grand Prix. For four consecutive years, 1955-58, he finished second in the world Grand Prix championship. And in each of the next three years, he placed third.
The man was a class act. And I don’t mean in terms of style (although he apparently was rather stylish):
…
In 1962 at the Goodwood Circuit racetrack in England’s West Sussex County, a plume of fire shot from his Lotus 18/21 car. The crowd gasped. As Moss tried to pass Graham Hill, his car veered and slammed into an eight-foot-high earthen bank.
It took more than a half-hour to free Moss from the wreckage. His left eye and cheekbone were shattered, his left arm broken and his left leg broken in two places.
An X-ray revealed a far worse injury. The right side of his brain was detached from his skull. He was in a coma for 38 days, and paralyzed on one side of his body for six months. He remembered nothing of the disaster. He considered hypnosis to recover the memory, but a psychiatrist said that might cause the paralysis to return.
When he left the hospital, he took all 11 nurses who had treated him to dinner, followed by a trip to the theater. A year later, he returned to Goodwood and pushed a Lotus to 145 m.p.h. on a wet track. He realized he was no longer unconsciously making the right moves. He said he felt like he had lost his page in a book.
Though he believed he remained a better driver than all but 10 or 12 in the world, that was not good enough. He retired at 33.
Moss was more than his talent. He was a beautiful name, one that still connotes high style a half-century after his crash, evoking an era of blazers and cravats, of dance bands and cigarette holders. One legend had him driving hundreds of miles in a vain effort to introduce himself to Miss Italy the night before a big race. His 16 books cemented his legend.
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Lawrence emailed an obit for Tim Brooke-Taylor, British comedian:
Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV’s At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.
The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.
I apologize for the quality. But: this is (according to YouTube) actually from “At Last the 1948 Show”.
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…
…
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.
Colby Cave, forward for the Edmonton Oilers. He was 25. According to the reports, he had emergency surgery on Monday and was placed in a medically induced coma.
I am seeing unconfirmed reports that John Horton Conway, noted mathematician, has passed on, but I don’t have any links or anything that I’d consider confirmation yet.
National Buy a Gun day is April 15th, which actually falls on Wednesday this year.
This is kind of a weird year for BAG Day, for obvious reasons. At least in Texas, gun stores are considered “essential businesses”. There are two near me that are open, but taking the standard precautions (limiting the number of customers, sanitizing surfaces, enforcing social distancing, etc.) Cabela’s website says they’re open and doing the same thing, but I haven’t had a chance to run down there recently.
If gun stores in your area aren’t essential businesses, you can still order online, but you’ll need to find someone with a Federal Firearms License that’s open, willing to accept your shipment, and willing to do the transfer. Good luck with that, though Gunbroker does offer a “Find an FFL” service.
The other problem is that everyone is stocking up on guns while they can. I visited the shop nearest me last weekend: they still had some handguns and long guns in stock, but the handgun case was noticeably emptier than it had been. They were also pretty much cleaned out of the most popular ammo, though they were taking signups for 250 round boxes of 9mm FMJ, which they expected to come in this week.
I haven’t really found anything I want at the moment, to be honest. That same shop still has a nice S&W 38/44 HD, but they’re asking $1,300 for it. That’s probably reasonable, but I don’t know that I want to put out that much money for that S&W yet. I haven’t found a 4″ N-frame in a caliber starting with .4 at a price I want to pay, or a Beretta in .25 ACP or .32 at a good price. Don’t get me started on that S&W 1076 of my dreams…
This may be another one of those years where instead of buying a gun, I cross some more accessories off my list. I’d like to put some ghost ring sights and slings on both my social shotgun and my social lever gun. There’s some other smaller stuff I’d like to pick up as well, if I can. So unless I make it to Cabela’s and find something compelling and affordable, that’s probably the way I’m going to go.
I did pick up something in the past month. While it technically doesn’t qualify as a BAG Day purchase, I may post photos of it on BAG Day just for the heck of it. Look for that on Wednesday, if the weather is nice and I can get some pictures taken.
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.
Mort Drucker, one of the great Mad Magazine artists.
A self-taught freelance cartoonist who had worked on war, western, science fiction and romance comic books as well as personality-driven titles like The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and The Adventures of Bob Hope, Mr. Drucker came to Mad in late 1956, soon after Al Feldstein succeeded Harvey Kurtzman, the magazine’s founder, as editor. Mad had run only occasional TV and movie satires, but Mr. Drucker’s arrival “changed everything,” the pop-culture critic Grady Hendrix wrote in a 2013 Film Comment appreciation of Mad’s movie parodies.
“No one saw Drucker’s talent,” Mr. Hendrix wrote, until he illustrated “The Night That Perry Masonmint Lost a Case,” a takeoff on the television courtroom drama “Perry Mason,” in 1959. It was then, Mr. Hendrix maintained, that “the basic movie parody format for the next 44 years was born.”
From the early 1960s on, nearly every issue of Mad included a movie parody, and before Mr. Ducker retired he had illustrated 238, more than half of them. The last one, “The Chronic-Ills of Yawnia: Prince Thespian,” appeared in 2008.
Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)
The meat of the story:
Yes. Not only was he stealing guns (which is a Federal crime) but he was selling them…to cops!
According to sources, the police officers and sheriff’s deputy purchased the guns without legally required federal paperwork and probably at steep discounts, which could expose them to criminal charges.
“They knew what they were doing,” said a person familiar with the investigation. “You know when you’re buying illegally and well below market value.”
…
This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)
LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:
The club derives its revenues from the gun store, a gift and uniform shop, a cafe that is open to the public and rentals of its facilities on the storied Elysian Park academy campus, as well as membership dues from active and retired LAPD officers.
The gun store has been closed since Mayor Eric Garcetti’s March 23 stay-at-home order classified it as a nonessential business. The swimming pool, weight room, basketball court and other facilities used by LAPRAAC members are also closed, and the cafe is open only for takeout orders.
And, of course…
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.
Sort of a break today. These are kind of police-related videos, but they’re also directly relevant to my interests, and I hope to the interests of at least some of my readers.
First up: “The Fundamentals Of Double Action Revolver Shooting”. This has Air Force/DoD tags on it, but it looks like it was produced by the FBI and dates to 1961.
Bonus video #1: “Shooting for Survival”, a FBI video from sometime in the 1970s, back when they were still using revolvers.
Bonus video #2: Sometimes the short ones are the best. “Training With the Speedloader”, a 1988 Indiana State Police video on how to use the revolver speedloader. Those are Safariland speedloaders, which happen to be the ones I prefer.
Some people might find that the scenario at the start of this video reminds them of something else.
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!:
Wow. Yesterday was a day.
In no particular order of importance (and I may be a day or three behind on some of these):
Julie Bennett. She was primarily known as a voice actress: she did a lot of animated stuff, including voicing “Cindy Bear” in the “Yogi Bear Show”. (And “Aunt May” in “Spider-Man: The Animated Series”.) She also did guest shots on a few of my favorite shows: “Adam-12”, “Dragnet 1967”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, and “Get Smart”.
James Drury. He was famous as the lead in “The Virginian”, but he had a solid body of work outside of that. (Lawrence pointed out that one of his early roles was “Crewman Strong” in “Forbidden Planet”.)
Bobby Mitchell. He played with the Cleveland Browns and the Washington Redskins, and was a Hall of Fame player:
Fast, elusive and versatile, he scored 91 touchdowns, amassed more than 14,000 net yards, was named to the Pro Bowl four times and was voted to the N.F.L.’s all-decade team for the 1960s.
…
“Bobby Mitchell was one of the greatest all-around ballplayers,” Lenny Moore of the Baltimore Colts, a contemporary and fellow Hall of Famer, was quoted as saying on the Redskins’ website. “Anybody who can transition himself and be one of the best in the business at both positions, that’s saying something.”
Forrest Compton. Another knock-around guy: he was most famous for playing “Mike Karr” on “The Edge of Night” soap, but he also was a semi-regular on “Gomer Pyle: USMC”, appeared multiple times in “Hogan’s’ Heros” and “The F.B.I”…
…and, yes, he did do a “Mannix”. (“One for the Lady”, season 4, episode 2. He was “Elgin Bonning”.)
Ed Biles, former coach of the Houston Oilers. He started out as a defensive coordinator:
…
Shirley Douglas, who seems to be consistently described as a “Canadian actor and activist”. Among other roles, she was in the original “Lolita”, the pilot of “The Hat Squad” TV series, the “Flash Gordon” TV series, and “Dead Ringers”.
She was also married to Donald Sutherland: Kiefer Sutherland is her son by Donald. (She also had a daughter, Rachel, with Donald, and another child with her second husband Timothy Emil Sicks.)
Al Kaline, All-Star outfielder for the Detroit Tigers.
He became the youngest batting champion in major league history in 1955 when he hit .340 at age 20. He had 3,007 career hits, the 12th player to reach the No. 3,000 milestone, and he hit 399 home runs, a Tiger record.
Renowned for his powerful arm, Kaline won 10 Gold Glove awards for his play in right field and sometimes in center. He set an American League record for outfielders by playing in 242 consecutive games without an error. He played in 2,834 games from 1953 to 1974, the most of any Tiger, and only Ty Cobb equaled his 22 years with the team.
…
…
Kaline had a .297 career batting average, with 1,583 runs batted in and 1,622 runs scored.
(Apologies to the tiger, the Bronx Zoo, and William Blake.)
It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit watch.
Honor Blackman, “Pussy Galore” in “Goldfinger”. She also preceded Diana Rigg as Patrick Macnee’s partner on “The Avengers”, but left the show for the “Goldfinger” role.
Before “Goldfinger,” she made dozens of appearances on British television and more than 20 feature films, among them “A Night to Remember” (1958), Roy Ward Baker’s drama about the sinking of the Titanic; “The Square Peg” (1959), a comedy with Norman Wisdom set during World War II; and “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), in which she played the goddess Hera.
Ms. Blackman continued her screen acting career well into her 80s, including taking a small part as a glamorous party guest in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) and a recurring role on the classic British soap opera “Coronation Street” in 2004.
She worked in the theater for decades as well. In the 1980s she did a British tour of “A Little Night Music” (she deemed Madame Armfeldt in that show her favorite role — “That part just fit me like a glove,” she told the British Huffington Post) and played Captain von Trapp’s child-averse love interest, the Baroness, in a West End revival of “The Sound of Music.”
Ms. Blackman was 94 when she passed.
You know, Lawrence, when things get back to normal, “Cockneys vs. Zombies” might be worth putting on the list.
Speaking of Lawrence, he also tipped me to the death of actress Lee Fierro at the age of 91. She has three credits as an actress: two of those were “Mrs. Kintner” in “Jaws” and “Jaws: The Revenge”.
(“Mrs. Kintner” is the woman whose child is gobbled up by the shark in “Jaws” and then slaps Chief Brody.)
Time for something a little lighter.
Mike the Musicologist pointed out to me the other day the most 70s thing ever, at least according to MeTV:
(That reminds me: Hi, Saturday Dining Conspiracy regular who shall remain anonymous but likes “Xanadu”! Hope you guys are doing okay!)
Now, I will concede that this is probably the high-water mark of the 1970s: as Hunter S. Thompson said about the 1960s, “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” But here’s another vintage slice of peak 70s for you.
If you’re unemployed, it might even help you find a job…selling cars to women.
On a historical note, this may explain why Chrysler needed that bail out…
Today’s bonus video, which actually might be suitable for those of you who are homeschooling your children: how does an oil refinery work?
Some reactions have to be run at very low temperatures. This is one of them. If you mix this stuff together at room temperature your internal organs would be found in several time zones.
—“OMG! We Made One Gram of Remdesivir!” by Josh Bloom.
tl,dr; Remdesivir is one of the more promising drugs for coronavirus. It is also a king hell b—h to synthesize.
You could do a lot worse than browse through some of Mr. Bloom’s other articles if you’re bored, especially the ones about meth chemistry and fentanyl. We’ve all heard of fentanyl and some of us have probably heard of carfentanil. But have you ever heard of ohmefentanyl?
(I know some of these are a couple of years old. I only discovered Mr. Bloom and the ACSH site over the weekend, when Hacker News linked to his Remdesivir article.)
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.
Tom Dempsey, legendary placekicker for the New Orleans Saints.
On November 8, 1970, Mr. Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal on the last play of the game to beat the Detroit Lions 19-17. It was one of two wins for the Saints that year. It was also a NFL record which stood for 43 years: several other players tied it in that time, but it wasn’t until 2013 that Matt Prater of the Broncos kicked a 64 yard field goal in Denver.
The broadcast of the play, along with the play call from CBS commentator Don Criqui, still makes Saints fans misty-eyed.
“I don’t believe this …,” Criqui said as the ball sailed nearly two-thirds of the field, then added as the ball cleared the bar by a yard, “It’s GOOD! I don’t believe it!”
The miraculous moment so moved powerful Louisiana Congressman F. Edward Hebert that he had an account of “The Kick” by Dempsey inserted into the Congressional Record.
According to the statement from his family, Mr. Dempsey died of corona virus complications. He was 73 years old and in a nursing home after being diagnosed with dementia in 2012.
Edited to add 4/6: as Lawrence points out, while YouTube will let you embed the videos, you can’t play them here because the NFL is a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I’ve left the embeds in place because you can click through and watch them on YouTube directly. Sorry about that: I should not have underestimated the stupidity of professional sports leagues.
Also: NYT obit for Mr. Dempsey, which (of course) went up after I posted yesterday.
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.
Back to real police work. While it wasn’t on my radar when I started this last week, it turns out that I am building up to a post tomorrow. (I’m not going to stop after tomorrow, though.)
Interestingly, there are two major events that took place in different years, but within a week of each other in April, that I want to make note of. There’s also a third event that took place in early May 40 years ago that I plan to note as well.
Bonus video #1: great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent me this one, and I already had it on the list. I’ve been a little hesitant to post it, because the quality isn’t all that great, but it has two things I can’t resist:
(Smith and Wesson Combat Masterpiece.)
Bonus video #2: “Shotgun or Sidearm?”, another police training film explaining when it is appropriate to use each weapon. This might be educational for some of my readers who are not people of the gun.
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.
…
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.)