ubject: Fly Boy ?????
From: "Gord Beaman" )
Date: 10/24/03 1:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

(ArtKramr) wrote:

Subject: Fly Boy ?????
From: "Gord Beaman"

I've done hundreds of ditching drills where we needed to get an
18 man crew out on the hangar floor carrying their proper items.
We could usually do it but remember that you're doing the testing
in a nice warm lighted hangar, not the middle of the North
Atlantic in a winter gale after the trauma of a night ditching...
--

-Gord.
.

I am not talking about drills in a hanger. I am yalking about one a day in
Tampa Bay. And lives lost and lessons learned the hard way.
.
Arthur Kramer

Well of course you are Art...you say that you have 30 seconds
before the a/c sinks, that it's proven by tank testing. I'm
merely pointing out that that's not carved in stone, that it
depends on a lot of parameters. Which of course you know.

I do object to your handling of that post, you intimate that
while I talk of 'ditching drills' you talk of 'lives lost and
lessons learned'. What the hell does that mean?

Neither one of us has ditched therefore you are no more of an
expert than I am despite how you tried to make it sound.

So then you're just a 'wannabe' because 'you haven't been there
nor done that' as you're so fond of saying.

See how silly that sounds?
--

-Gord.


Not silly at all. I was spocifically talking about the large number of
ditchings in Tampa Bay, the lives lost and the lessons learned by those
experiences. All that was incorporated into our B-26 ditching procedures and
saved many lives in years and missions to come. There is no substitute for
actual practical experience although I am sure your hanger drills were quite
useful as well.

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer