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Old 02-09-2019, 04:43 PM
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Nowhere Man 1966 Nowhere Man 1966 is offline
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Location: Tiltonsville, OH
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Haven't been here in a while, life has gotten in the way but I'm, very impressed with your work on Twilight 1962/64 here. I am for some reason a junkie on the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as JFK's assassination, but I think for the former, it is a personal tie in with me.

My father served in the Signal Corps fro 1955 to 1957 when he went into the Army at 17. He first went to Korea, did some time in Japan and later, White Sand's New Mexico. I even showed him a quonset hut housing radio gear near Camp Casey on Google Earth where is was caption that is was built in 1955, my father said, "I built that." He flew back on one of the first C-130's. In 1962, my mother was worried that my father would have been called up, back then you did you 2 year hitch and then were on 5 years inactive reserve. 1962 was his last year but when he got his final discharge during the Crisis, Mom was relieved.

My mother also served with the USO at the Air Force Reserve and Penna Air National Guard base where at the time she was there, they were flying P-51's although the F-84's were coming in soon.

Where I lived, down the street from me lived the man who later ran the repair shop for the 112th Fighter group. He had oodles of storied to tell, serving from the days of the P-51's to 1993 when the A-7's where taken out of service. I liked one story where during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was an unidentified blimp on the radar over Canada and they had to scramble the F-102's to intercept out of Pittsburgh. It was found out it was a 4 piston engine plane where after some hand signal waving, it was determined the radio was out. The fighter pilots told the plane to follow them to the nearest CFB base to land for questioning. The plane lost it's electrical system affecting the radio. This could have kicked off WWIII. During that time, they kept the planes on the tarmac ready to go, the electronics were kept on from ground power and the pilots stood by in 8 hour shifts. When one pilot left and the other one took over, he would fire up the jet for 5 or 10 minutes, check things out and then shut the engine down, replace the fuel used and go into the rec area to watch TV and wait.

Again, good work, I love alternate history.
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