HOKIES WON! Wow, what a game: 38-35. It went right down to the wire with VT regaining the lead with just under a minute left. Both teams played very well.
OK, back to the trip. We spent the part of the day leading up to the game seeing the Army Aviation Museum. They have done a very nice job restoring and displaying many older aircraft. As you can imagine, most of these aircraft were helicopters, but there were World War I vintage aircraft and World War II vintage helicopters from the Army Air Corp days. It was fun to show Barbara the types of aircraft I flew, but it was unnerving having a curator following me with a tape measure sizing ME up for a display.
AH-1S at entrance.
AH-1S at entrance.
AH-1S in front of AH-1G suspended from ceiling. I flew the AH-1G as one of the first instructors in the aircraft, and then the AH-1S in the Colorado National Guard in the early 80's.
UH-1B gunship like the one I flew in Vietnam. I later flew similar UH-1C and UH-1M models in the California, Colorado and Connecticut National Guard.
The venerable UH-1D/H model Huey. I flew these in Vietnam as well as the California, Connecticut and District of Columbia National Guard. What a versatile workhorse she was.
CH-37. I got a few hours in these while first in the California Guard in the early 70's. It was not the largest helicopter I flew. That was ...
The CH-54 Flying Crane. We could lift a 25,000 pound load on the hook. We did a lot of work recovering buoys for the Coast Guard while I was in the Connecticut Guard in the late 70's.
Barbara got to try out the cockpit of an AH-1 Cobra. She fits better than I did.
We spent a few sobering minutes in the Army Aviation Vietnam Memorial. I say in because it is a quiet room to itself with all walls covered with columns of the names of Army aviators and crewmembers killed in Vietnam. There were close to five thousand names on those walls. The earliest were from 1963. I was there from March 1966 to March 1967.
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