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Last Sunday morning, the day before Memorial Day, I headed out early-early to get some photographs.  I first headed down to Quantico Marine Corps Base, then headed into DC.  Arlington did not open its gates until 0800, and since I got in the area around 0715, I headed over to the [...]

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I’m late to this dance, but it is one that is worthy and deserved.

VP-14’s Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John W. Finn was awarded the Medal of Honor for his action on the morning of 7 December 1941 in Hawaii.  His citation reads:
For extraordinary heroism distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of [...]

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Spent some time Sunday morning getting some shots of some of the military-themed things going on around the northern VA/DC area.  The day started out at Quantico at about 5:30 am.  There is a statue of “Iron Mike”, the quintessential US Marine, outside the  National Museum of the Marine Corps.  The moon was looking tempting [...]

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Not quite Ansel Adams (see Moonrise Hernandez), but it is still kind of cool.

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(Reposted from the Instapinch archives that were lost last late summer…originally posted 23 March, 2007)
That is a term we would use when a carrier (or any ship, I suppose) would pull pierside and they would shut down the boilers or turn off the reactors (you can tell I’m not nuke material) or whatever – [...]

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(From the Instapinch archives that were lost last late summer…originally posted 6 August, 2007)
The Gutenberg Bible. A previously unknown original of Shakespere’s work. United States Combat Aircrew Survival Equipment.
Wha…???
I used to (not as much any more, in any event) peruse the military/history racks at Books-a-Million or Borders or any [...]

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You’re scheduled for the alert 5 launch.  Yay!  Sort of.  It can be the most boring 2 hours in your life if there’s nothing going on.

Our 88-89 Med Cruise was like that.  Even though Rev and I did get launched on an alert 7 to intercept a Soviet Badger that came out for a look-see [...]

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Those of you over on Facebook have already seen this one.  Heading back home to northern VA from a Christmas visit in Dec 2004 with Mom and Dad in western North Carolina.  Its one of those moments where you say to yourself “THAT would make a great picture!”, and you end up actually capturing what [...]

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Well…..sort of.  Me and about a dozen other people
Last year Learning Express found the blog and came to some sort of conclusion that a) I could write a bit and b) I knew something about military aviation.  They hired me to help update and re-write their Military Flight Aptitude Test book/study guide, and [...]

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UPDATE:  Reader Matthew asked in the comments if this was a 32lb Dahlgren.  I said I’d take a look-see when I got back and indeed, it was…a 9 inch Dahlgren smoothbore shell gun.  Here is the placard:

The 9 inch Dahlgren was a pretty popular muzzle-loaded naval artillery gun.  The Wikipedia write up on the 9 [...]

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