FORD,
     In a message dated 05-08-98 you wrote ...
> JS>.. Highest I have ever been non pressure
> JS> was 41,000 in a stripped out B-17E.
>
> Took a while to get there didn't it?
    Sure did... But we we boring holes for time.. I believe we logged 100 
hours for two months in sucession and had to have extra physicals....
> We ground our way up to 36,000 and it took all day to get up and down.
> Seemed almost as hard to lose the altitude as it did to gain it.
> Wink Tx. looks mighty small from that altitude.
     We were flying out of MacDill and were over central Florida.
 It was easy to see BOTH coasts from that altitude...
> How many of you were saved by the mighty fine navigational aids known as
> carbon black plants in west Texas.
     I remember the carbon plant west of Odessa, when we were
 training Nationalist Chinese bombardiers out of Midland AAF.
     I was waiting to go to pilot school but got screwed out
 of that by a A.H. commander...
     Wes Lynes gave me the fast DESCENT in a B-52F out of
 Carswell. At 41,000, he hung out all the garbage and we
 were ar traffic altitude 2 minutes and 50 seconds later.
 We really had that plane hanging from our safety belts for
 that letdown.
     Days long past. I had no view except from my Radar
 visual periscope. The only window for the lower deck was
 too far back to see from my seat and it was tiny.
   -=*  Jim Sanders  *=-
... Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it. Franklin
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