chuckography

The Wild Blue Yonder.....

Here's the house I lived in back in the mid-Sixties.

The one with the white roof and the nice enclosed yard.

As seen from the Goodyear blimp.

I leaned out the window and snapped this as we drifted along at about 8 mph.

I wish my son had been playing in the yard.

I would have waved.

But I wasn't sure the wind would carry us over the Balboa Park area in San Diego that morning.

Newspaper staff photographers got to go where many people could not. They still do.

The public (readers) shared the thrill when they read the paper.

I jolted to a sudden stop when I landed aboard the USS Oriskany off San Diego one early morning.

The twin-engine C.O.D plane hit the catch cable with it's tail hook and immediately went to 0 mph.

The Union-Tribune reporter and I had just joined the crew steaming toward home port after their 6-month deployment.

It was my first - and last - carrier landing.

My 3-year old son had missed a chance to wave at the blimp.

But later, at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, he helped me create a feature photo spread as he took an amazing trip.

The name later was changed to Air & Space Museum.

That's another thing newspaper photographers did in the 1960s.

We used our children and friends in feature photo assignments.

They grew up just fine.

(Click on photos to see more detail.)

The Navy shot of the USS Oriskany is from the internet so probably won't enlarge.

It had a serious fire aboard about a year after I landed on its deck.

Many sailors died fighting the flames.

Labels: CVA 34, Goodyear blimp, San Diego Air and Space Museum, USS Oriskany, wild blue yonder

posted by chuckography @ 11:23 AM