Air Lift Laffs and other laffs

 

 

 

I found this cartoon booklet among the boxes of family memorabilia (okay, junk) I've been rooting through. It apparently belonged to my "other" grandfather.  He flew cargo planes in the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, as I wrote in an earlier post.

Anyway, I thought I'd preserve this little bit of ephemera from that long-gone and long-forgotten episode in history.  Here are some of the cartoons in the booklet:

And here's another little item I found.  I thought it was an interesting bit of historical ephemera.  My uncle, the one I have written about several times, who I've gone dancing with 'cause he really knows how to cut a rug when it's music he likes, and who served most of his navy career on destroyers, retiring as a master chief (E9), served, as I never knew till I found this letter, on the Montrose during the Viet Nam war.  And how about that for a sentence, huh?

Anyway, behold! (and note his very nice cursive script; um, I think it's his, but maybe it's his mom's):

 

By the way, an absolutely excellent book about APAs is Away All Boats by Kenneth Dobson, who commanded one during World War II.

Here's another bit of historical flotsam I found, from a bubblehead relative, another one of my uncles.  I knew I had some submariner relatives, one of whom served aboard the Growler during World War II and was lost when she was sunk by the Japanese, but this one I did not know about.  I didn't even know the navy used submarines as troop transports.
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And here is a postcard from Lebanese International Airways from, it has to be the early to mid-1960s, because the Israelis destroyed LIA, a commando raid blowing up all their 990s in 1967 in retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an El Al airliner in Italy:  you blow up one of ours, we blow up 10 of yours.  Although I'm not sure that Lebanon had anything to do with the attack on the El Al plane, but what do I know?  That was back in the days when Beruit was called the Paris of the Middle East, and nobody could have imagined what a shit show the whole region has devolved into since (and excuse my French!). Anyway, the reason the postcard is among the family ephemera is that one of my relatives, about whom I have written, flew 990s for LIA and was on the airfield when the Israeli commandos attacked and dashed out to try to stop them from blowing up his plane, but was tackled by his Lebanese co-pilot, thus having his life saved.

And for something completely different here's a button or whatever you would call it that my mother got when she was in high school -- she used to collect buttons and wear them on her jeans jacket, apparently it was a fad back then.  This one looks like it's never been used.  I asked her about it and she didn't remember it, she had collected so many, but thought she had probably gotten it as part of some Ford promotion and it was probably a duplicate.   Anyway, I thought it was interesting that Ford would target high school students to sell cars to.  What a wonderful world it must have been when a high school student could earn enough money after school and during summer vacation to buy a brand new Mustang. A vanished golden era.

This is the gas tank bag my dad had strapped to his BSA Thunderbolt that he rode all around Europe just before he reported to Pensacola to earn his golden wings and then sail off to fly Iron Hand missions over Haiphong during Linebacker II.  He flew to England and bought his bike from Elite Motors, Tooting Broadway, London (can you not just love someplace called "Tooting Broadway?  Honk! Honk!), and had a blast touring the Europe that was, maybe peak non-communist Europe, well recovered from World War II but not yet ruined by the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and all that has happened since.

Here's a photo of his BSA, or Beezer, as he calls it, parked by some chambre à louer or whatever, back when pop was just a smartass punk in a black leather jacket.  Heh.  He would object to that characterization, informing me that he had joined the Royal Automobile Club and was a member in good standing and had a metal roundel affixed to his motorcycle to prove it.  So he could not possibly have been a punk, although he did admit to owning a custom-made Bates black leather jacket.

 

And here we have the pièce de résistance of this post:  my lieutenant, j.g. bars!  My mom saved them when I got promoted to full lieutenant and sent these home.  Why were they so important to her and to me?  Well, because I think we both worried that I would screw up as a naval officer and get my hapless heinie dropped-kicked back into civilian life.  But, instead, I got promoted!  Will wonders never cease?