Blue skies…

My neighbor is in pain today. He lost a close friend over the weekend. A pilot lost his life Saturday in a crash at an airshow in Cameron, MO.

Steve O’Berg was an accomplished pilot. He held an Air Transport Pilot certificate, was a retired Army helo and fixed wing pilot with over 7,000 hours in the air. “Included in those 7,000 hours were 4,000 hours of military flight time and 400 combat hours in Iraq.”

My neighbor was present when the crash occurred. There is no known cause, at this time, for the crash. The accident was reported by the Aero News Network.

Airshow Pilot, Steve O’Berg, Lost in Airshow Accident

Media Handling Of The Story Leaves Much To Be Desired (Surprise!)

Sun, Jun 28, 2015

ANN regrets to report that airshow pilot Steve O’Berg has reportedly perished in an accident while conducting an airshow routine at the Cameron Airshow, Saturday afternoon, in Cameron, MO.

The Red and White Pitts S2-B apparently failed to complete a descending maneuver sequence and impacted the ground, amid trees, under circumstances yet to be properly documented. Despite what was reported to be a fairly swift med-evac from the site, O’Berg perished from his injuries.

O’Berg had an impressive background. His bio notes that, “His military career in the Army spanned 23 years until his retirement in 2007. While in the Army he flew OH-58’s, UH-1’s, UH-60 BlackHawks, C-12 King Air 200, and the C-23 Shorts-330. He retired with over 4,000 hours of military flight time including over 400 combat hours flying in Iraq.

Steve’s extensive civilian flying background includes over 7,000 hours flying everything from J-3 Cubs for fun, Boeing helicopters in Alaska Heli-Logging, Commuter Airline pilot for peanuts and a lot of things in between. His FAA Licenses include Airline Transport Pilot, Multi-Engine, and Rotary Wing Instrument flight instructor certificates.”

The airshow was shut down following the accident, but a night performance was later allowed to proceed. The Cameron Airshow organization published the following statement on their Facebook page, “At approximately 1:50 this afternoon there was an accident during a routine aerial performance. On behalf of the Cameron Airshow, we’d like to emphasis our thoughts and prayers are with the family and the pilot that was involved in the accident.”

The Kansas City news community sent their 6th Jr. Varsity reporting string to cover the crash. As expected, they butchered the story. You would expect reporters who claim to have some professionalism to do a least a smidgen of research before writing their story. But this is the 21st Century and sensationalism is first, research and accuracy as far, far lower place in their reporting. Their professionalism was non-existant. The text below is a prime example.

Aero-News Commentary/Analysis: Unfortunately, local media coverage was not only errant… but embarrassing. As an example (and certainly not the only story with errors), a report published online by KSN.com and bylined by, ‘Nick Sloan, Shain Bergan, Gary Brauer/KSHB-TV.’The story asserted that O’Berg’s aircraft was doing ‘stunts.’

The article went to say little of consequence, but did describe O’Berg’s professional, FAA/ICAS/ACE approved/monitored airshow routine and performance, as ‘doing dives and flips in front of the crowds’ and adding a statement that the aircraft, ‘attempted to do a corkscrew maneuver near the runway.’ — ANN.

Aero News Network then proceeded to explain that planned, practiced aerobatic routines are not “stunts.”

Folks… as I noted in comments attached to the poorly detailed and conducted story referenced above, the Pitts was not doing ‘stunts’ — the aircraft and its pilot were doing carefully planned, rehearsed, and approved precision aerobatic maneuvers. The pilot was a professional who received extensive scrutiny from his peers, ICAS (via its ACE program) and the FAA. The airplane did not do ‘dives and flips’ — it did a series of planned precision aerobatic maneuvers according to an approved airshow sequence that was practiced again and again before being performed at an actual airshow. This was a good pilot, a professional/qualified airshow pilot, that had a tragic accident, and deserved the respect of a journalist — at least someone doing more than 30 seconds worth of research, in accurately relating the tale of a horrible tragedy. If a so-called journalist is not up to checking the facts and respectfully detailing what’s known at this time, then he or she should please pass the story off to someone who will ask the right questions, learn the proper details, and (ultimately) respect the passing of a man who tried to share his love for aviation with the public. — ANN.

Whenever you see an aerobatic pilot exhibiting his skill, understand that every move is carefully choreographed, carefully planned, and extensively practiced. It is a exhibition of a lifetime of accumulated skill.

Blue skies, Steve O’Berg. I didn’t know you but I’ve known many like you. Farewell.

I remember…

Update: I had intended this to appear yesterday but I entered the wrong date in the scheduler. It is a repost from a couple of years ago. I still remember Ken Tate.


 

Kenneth Tate, US Army, 1946 – 1967

Sgt_Kenneth_W_Tate

I had intended that last Friday would be my Memorial Day post. But I’ve been remembering a friend and today is a good time to record my thoughts.

I was born and grew up in Illinois, southern Illinois in Benton, IL, the Franklin County seat. I attended Benton Consolidated High School along with several hundred others. One of those in my class was Kenneth W. Tate, a very distant cousin from my mother’s side.

Ken was a tall, lanky, farm boy, who lived, if I recall correctly, to the northeast of town.  I lived on another farm in the opposite direction.  If it weren’t for the occasional family get-togethers and high school, I’d probably never have met him.  But we were distantly related and we did attend high school together.  We ran around with the same bunch.  We were geeks and band-members.  I played a trombone, Ken played the drums. 

For him, like many of us, being in the band was more of an opportunity to get out of PE class that is was for music. The school felt that being in the marching band in the fall was sufficient to meet the state’s PE requirement.  That drew many into our band clique.

Ken and I were also geeks. We took the same math and science classes. We were lab partners for Biology, Chemistry and Physics…the standard college-prep curriculum. When we graduated in 1964, I went off to Southern Illinois University. Ken started classes at a nearby Junior College but he didn’t attend long.

The draft was in force during that time.  It was a strong motivator to remain in school with a 2-S deferment. Rather than being drafted, Ken enlisted in the Army.  I lost track of him until a couple of years later when I received a letter from my Father. Inside with the letter was a clipping…Ken’s obituary.  I didn’t know the details until later.

From the Benton Evening News, September 18, 2009.

Benton, Ill. —

A trip to Northern Illinois by a U.S. Army veteran resulted in an emotional tribute to a Benton man who died in the Vietnam War.

Joe Hare of Columbia, Ky., on Tuesday honored the memory of fellow Black Lions 28th U.S. Infantry member Kenneth W. Tate, who was killed in action on Sept. 6, 1967 — two days after his 21st birthday.

Hare and his wife, Pat, were joined by some of Tate’s family members and friends at his gravesite in the Masonic & Odd Fellows Cemetery.

“It’s not easy, is it?” Hare asked, his voice trembling. “I didn’t think I would do this bad.”
Tate was the first person from Franklin County to die in Vietnam.

“I’ve forgotten how many people came to his funeral,” said Tate’s stepsister, Alana Day, “but there were 140 cars at the funeral home.”

There’s a bit more information here at the Virtual Wall.  I didn’t know Ken was a LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol). All that we heard was that he was on a patrol and was killed. Someone, I don’t remember who now, said he was killed by a mine.  I don’t know if that’s true or not. It doesn’t really matter, now.

I don’t know why I keep thinking of Ken. We weren’t all that close. Circumstances put us together forty years ago for a period of time. I can still remember his face.

Perhaps it is, as someone once said, that as long as we remember, they aren’t really gone but live within us.  I have no doubt Ken and I will meet again…and laugh remembering when we made nitroglycerin and bombed pigeons outside the window of our 2nd floor High School Chemistry lab using an eyedropper.

Pluses and Minuses

A plus for Carly Fiorina. She opposed the GOP’s trade deal. What is it? It would allow Obama to ‘fast-track’ trade treaties with nations along the Pacific Rim, i.e., the PRC. That is the People’s Republic of China for those of you who are acronym deficient.

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on Sunday came out in opposition to giving President Obama the authority to fast track a massive trade deal with Pacific Rim countries, breaking with the GOP’s free-trade agenda.

Mrs. Fiorina, a former chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard, insisted that she supports free trade but said she doesn’t trust Mr. Obama to make a good deal for American workers and businesses.

“The devil is usually in the details, and that is particularly true with this president. The truth is we don’t know what’s in this deal,” she said on NBC”s “Meet the Press.”

“This administration unfortunately has a track record of burying things in fine print … that turn out to be very different from their selling points,” said Mrs. Fiorina, who announced her White House bid last week.

The Senate this week is scheduled to take the first votes on fast-track authority, or trade promotion authority, which would make it much easier for the president to pass the 12-country Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. — The Washington Times.

The GOP is about to sell out US businesses in exchange for what? Campaign funds? Oh, that’s illegal although it didn’t stop Bill Clinton from receiving laundered ChiCom money. Remember all those Buddhist monks giving thousands upon thousands of dollars to Bill’s campaign? I do.

As Fiorina claims, the devil is in the details and in this treaty, no one really knows what is in it. Again! Issues like this make you wonder how much McConnell’s and Boehner’s cuts will be from the kick-backs.

***

Have you heard about the gender trail that going on in the Army? By trial, I mean…a test. A test to see if women can successfully pass the Ranger course.

Ranger School is the toughest course in the US Army. It is physical and mental torture. It is the closest to actual combat the Army can create in a training scenario. The washout rate among men, enlisted and commissioned, is high.

One of the goals of the course is to teach leaders, Officers and NCO, just how hard they can push their troops and the physical and mental impacts that combat inflicts on the troops. The Ranger graduates know. They’ve been there and know how to care for their troops to get the most and best out of them.

In the ‘new’ gender-neutral military, the liberals want women in combat. The Army was willing to see if women can endure the same conditions as men. Not so much as line troops, but as leaders—platoon and company commanders leading troops in the field, in combat. It’s important. You can not have a fighting unit whose lowest denominator is the physical and mental condition of its commander.

Passing Ranger school is also a career builder…or destroyer. If a candidate gives up, he/she is classified as “lacking motivation.” and “leadership skills.” No claims the women applicants, volunteers, all, lack motivation. Some have displayed enormous stubbornness to succeed. Unfortunately, none, to date, has passed the first stage of Ranger training.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/dd830f725178e1798000a372cbccc2a4e851f31a/c=318-0-5298-3744&r=x513&c=680x510/local/-/media/2015/04/23/GGM/MilitaryTimes/635654094046570203-ARM-women-ranger-school-day-two-2.JPG

Male and female trainees in the US Army’s Ranger School.

The eight women who remained in the first gender-integrated class of Army Ranger training will not move onto the next round of training, Fort Benning announced on Friday.

That means all 19 women who began the training in April have washed out in the first phase.

The eight women, together with 101 men who washed out of the Darby phase, will retry the first part of the Army’s most elite training course beginning May 14, the release said.

“I had the opportunity to visit the Ranger students yesterday and was impressed that whether going forward to the mountains or recycling the Darby phase they were motivated to continue training and focused on successfully completing the Ranger Course,” said Maj. Gen. Scott Miller, commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence. “They’re a strong group of soldiers, who are working their way through the U.S. Army’s most physically and mentally demanding course.”

Thirty-five male soldiers failed to meet the standards of Ranger school and will not attempt the course again, the release said.

About 15 percent of soldiers repeat the first phase, called Darby phase, however, about 75 percent of those who make it through the first week of the program will eventually pass the Darby phase and move onto the mountains, according to the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade’s website.

About 37 percent of all students recycle at least one phase of Ranger training, the site said. — The Washington Times.

The Army appears, at least, to be enforcing a single standard for both male and female trainees. There are male and female observers present to insure the rules are enforced equally. There is no favoritism of male over female, nor of female over male. As least as far as we know. There was one instance where the male trainees were ‘smoked’, i.e, went through a series of strenuous exercises before commencing one of the Darby-phase full-pack hikes. The women were not. The men started the hike exhausted. The women were fresh.

But that was a minor detail and not uncommon throughout the school. Each trainee is evaluated how they perform under pressure and stress. I would hope the Army does not relent to political correctness and change the standards for women to be less than those for the men. To do so would only lead to unnecessary causalities in wartime. Combat is no place for political correctness.

It couldn’t happen here, could it?

I read. By that, I mean I read a lot. If you see me away from home, you may notice I have my tablet with me. I have a couple of thousand books on it. I finished a book last night, Joe Steel by Harry Turtledove. http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406509652l/22544038.jpgI’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.

The alternate history in this book is simple…what if Joe Stalin’s parents had emigrated to the US well before Joe Stalin was born? Leon Trotsky, a darling of some current leftists, would have succeeded V. I. Lenin to lead communist Russia. Joe Stalin, who is called Joe Steel in the book, becomes a California congressmen running against FDR in 1932…and FDR and Eleanor mysteriously die in a fire in the New York Governor’s mansion.

I remember my father saying, he was an FDR democrat, that the country came to within a hair’s breadth of a revolution in 1932. Progressive propaganda blamed Wall Street for the nation’s woes. Some of that blame is valid; much was not.

The book uses that concept to show how the US could be changed into a dictatorship by an unprincipled strongman. I don’t know Turtledove’s politics but some of the tactics used by Joe Steel are eerily similar to some being used by Barak Obama.

How could the US be suborned into a dictatorship? The answer is in the book if you look: complacency, ignorance, and bigotry against the fundamental principles of this nation with a well-planned attack by democrats against free enterprise and capitalism. Take a look at our current politics and you’ll see the parallels in the book.

When FDR’s tactics were blocked by the Supreme Court, FDR attempted to pack the court with his cronies. In Joe Steel, Stalin has them charged with trumped up violations and shoots them for treason. The aims of FDR and Joe Steel were the same, only the tactics were different.

The book disturbed me. Not by its theme nor of its plot; it disturbed me because it could easily happen here. We don’t have someone knocking on our door in the middle of the night. They use battering rams instead.

***

If you’re a student of military history, you may have noticed something that is no longer allowed in the US military. Not all that long ago, a soldier’s weapons were stored, not in the armory, but with him in his barracks. In the 1990’s, during Clinton’s administration, that changed and those weapons were removed, taken from the troops. If the question was asked, “Why?” no real answer was given. There is one very reasonable motivation—the military leadership feared their troops.

The disarming of the military had consequences. One direct consequence was the massacre at Ft. Hood. There have been other, less well-known incidents as well.

Ted Cruz has an answer. Allow troops to carry personal weapons on base. It won’t alleviate the fears of mutiny by the leadership. It will, however, allow troops to have the means to be able to defend themselves and their families.

Ted Cruz takes on the military, says ‘Second Amendment rights are removed’ from troops on base

Base commanders fear accidents, escalation of personal disputes

– The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz is asking lawmakers to consider allowing troops to carry personal firearms on base for protection, reviving a fight that has previously been a nonstarter with Congress after military leaders said they didn’t support the change.

While many lawmakers said Tuesday they were open to having a discussion on changing the rules in a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing, most said that they would defer issues of base security to military leaders — who have historically been against allowing concealed carry on their posts.

Mr. Cruz formally sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon asking for a hearing on the subject, saying that current restrictions impede Second Amendment rights and weaken the safety and security of troops.

“The men and women in our military have been at war for over a decade; they understand the responsibilities that go along with carrying a firearm,” Mr. Cruz wrote in the letter. “Yet their Second Amendment rights are removed at the front gate.”

I suggest you read the entire column at the Washington Times website. It’s worth a read.