John Szalay wrote:

"Mike Kanze" wrote

Thanks much, John.

Stuff like this keeps me coming back to r.a.m.n.

my pleasure,
I grew up living on the beach at Waikiki, REALLY. our
house were less than 500ft from the water.
There is a high rise hotel on that spot right now.
and I remember seeing those seaplanes when they took off
from the seaplane runways next to Honolulu airport.
Keahi lagoon....

While I didn't live on Waikiki, I did live in NHA 1 outside the
Nimitz Highway gate of Pearl Harbor in 55-56. As with you, we
went down every chance we had to watch the [weekly?, twice
weekly?; sigh, however many there were a week] MARS takeoffs.
Impressive as hell when you're a 12-y.o. Damned sure they'd be
just as impressive for a sixty-mumble year-old now. ;-

[The MARS was intentional. At that tender age, and as a former
Army Brat now a Marine Brat whose Marine lawyer step-father was
not a font of information on things naval aviational, I thought
the MARS was for Military Aviation Something Something, unaware
that Mars was the *name* of the aircraft. Sigh. That deficiency
was rectified some seven years later at AirFam-P school, NATTC,
NAS Memphis.]
--
OJ III
[Email to Yahoo address may be burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast.]