Post Library

Since I’ve retired I have had a lot of time on my hands. I had never been much of a reader, in fact one of the things I really disliked about high school was having to write the dreaded book report!

Although I clearly remember a book I checked out of the Tuy Hot AFB library in 1968 when I was 21 years old.  The title was Ploiesti, a story of the 1943 Allied attack on the Romanian oil fields and Nazi refineries during World War II.  I read it when I was on TDY to Saigon to learn about our photo labs new ES-38B processing labs we had just received at Phabulous Phu Hiep By The Sea.  I simply could not set this book down until I finished it.  I don’t know if this particular book is still in print, but there are others that tell this story of the low level Allied raid that is well worth reading.

Since our kids were little and I read them their bedtime stories like Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (reading to them was something my wife Karin encouraged me to do) I enjoyed reading to them just for the pleasure it.  And in the past ten or fifteen years I have begun to read more and more.

When I was working at Seattle Children’s Hospital a colleague gave me an adventure novel by Clive Cussler and I was hooked!  In case you’re not aware who Cussler is, his Wikipedia bio states that he “was an American adventure novelist and underwater explorer.” He founded the National Undersea and Marine Agency (NUMA) “which has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and numerous other notable underwater wrecks.”  

I was given a Kindle several years ago, so my access to books has broadened considerably.  I have read I don’t know how many Cussler novels plus a lot of World War II historical stories that are really well written.  The great thing about the Kindle is that many of the books are in series of up to five or more volumes that include the same characters but broaden out the original plot and often refer back to the original ones.

I’ve just finished a series entitled Sunlit Silence by Frank A. Mason (the first book in the series is Sunward I’ve Climbed) about a young man in Georgia from a family whose matriarch is a member of the DAR (Daughters the America Revolution), who really wants her son Robert Harney “Trip” Gibson III to attend Georgia Tech.  But his love of flying is so strong (he actually owns a JN-4 Jenny) that he clandestinely goes to Spain in 1938 to fly in the Spanish civil war, and subsequently ends up flying for the French and the British against the Nazis and then for his own country in World War II.  

Mason’s books and many others that I’ve read are filled with history from which I have learned about events that were new to me.  For instance, I’ve seen news reels about the CG-3 Waco gliders that were towed behind C-47s, particularly during the D-Day invasion of Normandy over eight decades ago.  Mason spends a fair amount of time describing how these gliders from different Allied assaults were actually retrieved using the Model 80C Pickup System.  It’s a fascinating process; take a look at this amazing operation at this article (complete with photos) from the National WWII Glider Pilots Association.  

Another series I am just finishing up is After Dunkirk by Lee Jackson.  This wonderful series follows a family from the island of Sark in the Channel Islands whose mother of the Littlefield family is the head (Dame of Sark) of the local government. Her family’s circumstances are followed throughout the series as World War II progresses.  When I began this series I had never heard of Sark and had to look it up and I discovered that the Channel Islands the only European location where Nazi Germany actually occupied British territory.

Anyway, that’s all from the “Post Library” for today.  Please let me know what books you have read or are reading because I know that you like me have some time on your hands nowadays.

2026 Annual Association Reunion

Banquet 2025

The 2026 Reunion of the OV-1 Mohawk Association is coming up very soon!  It has been scheduled for August 27-29 in Washington, DC.  Our Brother Alan Summers, formerly of the 225th Surveillance Airplane Company, is Reunion Director for the Association and has put together a wonderful sounding outing this year!  Take a look at the schedule here…

Alan wrote “DC is an expensive location so plan ahead. We did the best we could to keep costs down but between State of Virginia taxes and fees, costs for transportation, mandatory legal regulations (event on an Army base / federal land), and cost-of-living in DC, the charges are the best we can do.”

Be sure and apply for your 2nd mortgages so you can be sure to have enough money to buy gas, or your plane ticket(s), reunion registration and hotel reservation for the party.  We’re staying at the Sheraton Pentagon City again where we had a wonderful time when we were last in DC.

Planned trips are to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport, and a tour of Monuments and Museums.  The closing banquet will be at the National Museum of the US Army.

Check out the info on the Association’s web page by clicking on 2026 Reunion button at the top.

Feathers

Hooded Oriole

Another hobby I’ve enjoyed since the pandemic has been to really notice the many different species of birds we have just around our neighborhood here in Thurston County, Washington.  I found an app for my phone (Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology) that helps identify a particular avifauna from a photo or specific call.

It’s been great because this app has a provision that enables you to keep a list of all the birds you’ve identified and the location where you saw it.  So far is have a list of 28 different species from here in our back yard in Lacey, a couple from our trip to Mexico earlier in the spring, and one from a trip we took to Kauai, Hawaii last year.

Red-Wing Blackbirds

In Mexico this year we saw brown pelicans, cactus wrens and beautiful orange hooded orioles.  It was wonderful to be able to identify these using the app.

It’s common for us to see bald eagles and red-tailed hawks as we're driving.  And we regularly have California scrub jays, woodpeckers (particularly flickers), crows, red-winged blackbirds, goldfinches (the official Washington State bird) and black-capped chickadees come to feed at our feeders in the back yard.  We have a chickadee nest in a hanging pot on our deck.

Cooper's Hawk

I was very surprised to see a Cooper's Hawk sitting on our face one morning also.  Dark-eyed juncos have nested in our vegetables the past couple of years.

We also have at least two types of hummingbirds (Anna’s and Rufous) daily visiting year round.

Humming Birds At Dinner

Formation Flying

Late in my tour at Phabulous Phu Hiep by the Sea I became a Flight-Follow Observer, a side job that I enjoyed very much.  But early on I also got to ride along on a CH-54 Flying Crane mission.  That was a thrill of a different kind than riding the right seat of an OV-1 Mohawk.

Click here to see the full story...

Note: At the end of the slide presentation (28 slides) just hit ESCAPE to return to the blog.

Bomber Gas Station

When I was a kid we lived in Seattle and would take trips to Salem, Oregon to visit my grandmother and uncles.  In those days there were no interstate highways, so my dad would drive us down US Highway 99 through Tacoma, Olympia, Centralia and a bunch of other small towns on the way to the Oregon border.

When we crossed into Oregon we continued down US 99 and eventually split off onto “99E.”  Well, 99E went through the community of Milwaukie.  I distinctly remember passing a gas station called “The Bomber” that had a B-17 bomber mounted above the gas pumps!  I don’t remember ever stopping for gas (that was when it was something like 25.9¢ a gallon!) but I still can see that big airplane in my mind’s eye!  On a website I was The Bomber had the highest volume sales of gasoline of any station at the time!

Recently, I drove to Salem to see a friend from high school and I purposely drove the slow 99E route and wondered whatever happened to the Bomber Gas Station.  To diverge slightly, a few days ago I saw a newspaper article about the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s “Beaver Kit Cam” at the tribe’s beaver husbandry facility on the Cowlitz reservation in southwest Washington.  At the website there was a list of YouTube videos; at the top of the list was “Recovering B-17 “Lacey’s Lady”: Gas Station Bomber to Fly Again.” This is a 20 minute video about this very same plane I saw when I was a kid!

The plane is now at the B-17 Alliance Museum, Restoration Hangar, and PX, 3278 25th St. SE, Salem, OR. 97302

https://b17alliance.com/museum/

Here’s the link to the YouTube bomber video…take a look, I think you’ll enjoy it!  (Please note there may be an add at the beginning of the video that you can skip.)

Remembering Our Friends This Memorial Day

Please take a moment to remember our friends who gave their lives in the service to their country while serving with us in the 225th Aviation Company in Vietnam.  Click on the link below.

https://vimeo.com/user10634067/mayweneverforget?fl=ip&fe=ec

It's Been A Long Time!

Well, it’s been a long time since I posted a new article on the “Observer", the last one being on March 25, 2021, so figured I should explain a little about why I neglected writing over the past many months.

Simply put, in 2021 my heart was broken when I watched the insane events at our Capital on January 6th.  Later, over the course of several weeks I saw on television and read in newspapers more than a few veterans my age and younger condone the actions of the insurrectionists.  This just made no sense to me.  

Back tracking just a bit, I’ll tell you that I had generally voted Republican since I turned 21 in Vietnam.  The exceptions being that I voted consistently for our two senators from Washington State, Warren Magnuson and Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who were both Democrats, when they were in office.  Sometime in 2018 I watched Meet the Press on NBC when the late Tim Russert interviewed then Senator Barack Obama.  I was impressed by Obama’s answers to Russert’s questions.  

Not much later in the presidential campaign when Trump got involved and, even though John McCain was a veteran and, to my mind, a good candidate and a war hero from the same war I fought in, Trump’s language and what-turned-out-to-be lies got more and more disparaging about Mr. Obama, I could not continue being a Republican any longer.  The lies unfortunately have continued with our now-criminally convicted current president.

To my mind since that time the Republican Party has steadily become more and more radical and unhinged.  I have voted Democratic in each election since.  Coupled with the pandemic that cancelled two of our Mohawk Reunions in New Orleans, this reinforced my decision to discontinue participating in veteran-related activities.

So now time has passed and it’s 2026.  And I’ve decided the write again.  However, since I had not used the Mailchimp mailing list for such a long time, seems that the list has been tossed out and no longer exists with Mailchimp’s parent Intuit.  But just a few days ago I discovered a complete email list still on my trusty Mac!  Small miracles never cease to amaze me!

That in the proverbial nutshell is why I have been silent on my blog until this time.

So, what have I been doing instead of posting stuff on my blog?  Well, in 2019 my bride of nearly fifty-three years and I moved from Kirkland, Washington, where we lived in the same house for 43 years, to about 70 miles south to Lacey into a brand new house.  We have enjoyed putting in a backyard (the front was already done!), doing lots and lots of reading, some traveling to DC and Baja California Sur, making new friends in our 55+ community.  I work out frequently at LA Fitness, and build model airplanes like I did when I was a kid.  In fact, I have plane reservations to go to our Mohawk Association's 2026 Reunion in Washington, DC in August!

The first model I attempted was an OV-1B (“SLAR Bird”) like we had in Vietnam (photo below).  I flew a SLAR mission over Cambodia with CWO Bob Jensen (even though the US “never” was in Cambodia).  I bought this model at the Pleiku hobby shop one day when I visited our ground station there.  At the time the electronics on the Mohawk were cutting edge technology.  Since then I have assembled a number of models like a PBY, Spitfire, Corsair, Hellcat, and the little known British aeroplane the deHavilland Mosquito which was built entirely of wood during World War II.

Anyway, I’m back now and will continue to add some things of interest more or less regularly.  [Here’s a link to the original “225th Observer” to which for some reason I could not add items after January 2017. www.225observer.blogspot.com]