Hey, Norm. I checked in on Ramblins today and found your Memorial Day Parade memory.
You wrote about the big Memorial Day Parade that stared at the band shell in the village and ended in the Wauwatosa Cemetery about 1946 or 1947. That morning we saw a steady stream of people walking west on Meineke Avenue to join the parade with decorated bicycles, coaster wagons and baby buggies. We lived a long block away from Wauwatosa Avenue so dad and I walked over. It is the only big event I ever recall happening at the cemetery. So, we most likely even saw you and your troop! I remember the officials speaking and the flags being marched in and out.
My dad always called the day Decoration Day. We always went up to my family’s homestead in Sheboygan County to put flowers on my grandparents' graves and that of my great great cousin, Lammert, a civil war veteran. As of two years ago, the typical small bronze civil war marker is still stuck into his simply grassy gravesite. My dad remembered that marker from when he was a boy. It has probably been there for well over 100 years, maintained by the perpetual care arrangement set in place by local families long ago. Thanks for the wonderful memories that are so important to look to every so often. –Monty Kolste 5/27/08
The following article is the one that Monty Kolste, Wauwatosa 1954, responded to last year.
My brain got in a retro mood as it often does. Thinking about Memorial Days of the past, I remembered one of the parades in Wauwatosa -- I think it had to be 1945.
It was big stuff for Pack #347. I was a member of Den Seven and Rolf Dehmel's Mom was our Den Leader. We met at their house on 66th Street between Wells and Wisconsin Avenue. Billy Sheaffer, Tom Stockinger, Johno Davidson, Bob Johnson, Herman Menck, Rolf Dehmel, Millard Smith, Bill Stocum, a couple of others I can't remember, and I had been big buds all through Jefferson Grade School and Cub Scouts was part of life. Next came Webelos and then Scouting. Anyway, Den Seven showed up for the parade at the staging area at the Band shell next to St. Bernard's.
The Wauwatosa High School Band was always the feature and the parade was made up of civic groups, veterans, school children, scouts, politicians, etc. We marched up Wauwatosa Avenue past the Women's Club and Harwood Avenue, north past Tosa and on to North Avenue. Now that was one desolate area. The city offices were not there and the northwest corner was vacant except for the log cabin because Longfellow was still a part of the high school.
We turned left at the Wauwatosa Cemetery and marched to the speaker's platform where we heard a few speeches, sang songs, saluted, heard taps and then the firing of a 21 gun salute (could have been a six, I really don't remember that detail.) There were flags on many of the graves. I did know there were Civil War, Spanish American War and WW1 veterans buried there and I'm sure some of Tosa's valiant who were killed in the past four years.
One thing I'll never forget was the exhilaration of marching in time with the military music and honoring the flag and the memory of those who died for our freedom. I wanted to carry the flag so badly but there were others who were chosen. When I got home, I was so proud of what I experienced I got carried away I lied and told my brothers that I had carried the flag. It was out of my mouth before I knew it.
"Well, big flag carrier! Did they give you a harness with a cup so the bottom of the flagpole could rest in it?"
I thought they were trying to trick me and I didn't notice a harness on the other guys so I quickly said, "No!"
"Oh, yea! You're a real big flag bearer, aren't you?"
I was crushed and humiliated. I quietly went about my activity. Why did I lie about such a simple thing? I guess in my mind, at some point during the cadence, I picked up that flag and proudly held it in honor of my heroes -- the Commandos at Point du Hoc, the P38 pilots, and all the other men and women who had just won the war in Germany and were still fighting in the Pacific Theater. I remember it as if it were three months ago.
And one of the most memorable experiences of being a part of Den 7 was when Johno Davidson's, Uncle Walter picked us up in his brand new, black, two-door Cadillac to take us on a tour of Harley Davidson. He kept changing the radio station without touching the push buttons and had a great time teasing us with the puzzle.... how is the radio moving from station to station?
He had the first radio that had a foot switch on the floorboard next to the headlight dimmer switch. That foot switch changed the stations on the AM dial. (FM was not in autos yet.). What a great time at Harley Davidson, at the old plant on Kilbourn Avenue, seeing how the motorcycles were made.
Also as I think of Memorial Day, I think of the "Indianapolis 500." Billy Sheaffer is the one who clued me in about it. His grandfather was a brick speedway aficionado and had taught Billy well. Billy then taught me about the Offenhauser engines and his favorite driver, Tony Bettenhausen, who was later killed at the State Fair track in West Allis, WI.
Billy also had a neat brochure of all the major league baseball stadiums that was put out my Miller High Life. They showed the shape of each stadium -- back then there weren't many. Billy's grandmother found the brochure in his desk, took it and threw it away. She thought that what was being pictured was toilet seats.
"And, Billy shouldn't have anything to do with something like that!"
We all laughed at what Grandma had thought and said.
You know, "memory" is truly a gift from God. And the "Time/Space" dimension we live in while we inhabit ‘planet earth’ is wonderful. It’s so great, so incredible to bring up a memory at times and relive it as if it happened last week. Just wait until we jettison these earth suits and leave this "Time/Space" dimension to be with the Lord for eternity. Talk about freedom!
Patriot David Merchant has a wonderful web site that gives the true story of "Taps. In July 1862, after the Seven Day's battle at Harrison's Landing (near Richmond), Virginia, the wounded Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, V Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, General Daniel Butterfield reworked, with his bugler Oliver Wilcox Norton, another bugle call, "Scott Tattoo," to create Taps.
He thought that the regular call for "Lights Out" was too formal. Taps was adopted throughout the Army of the Potomac and finally confirmed by orders. Soon other Union units began using Taps, and even a few Confederate units began using it as well.
There are no words to "Taps" but these two verses are commonly used.
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake, From the skies.
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor, God keep.
On the land or the deep, Safe in sleep.
Visit David Merchantss excellent Web page by going to this address:
http://www.usmemorialday.org/taps.html
Charlie and Carol Crawford are our wonderful next-door neighbors Charlie is so good to my special son and happens to be a retired Air Force Colonel and former Intelligence officer with the Pentagon. His father, Colonel Robert Crawford of Philadelphia was on General Omar Bradley's staff during WW2. They were stationed in Ireland planning logistics for D-Day -- the movement of supplies and transportation that would immediately follow the Normandy Invasion. We digitally taped an hour interview with Robert Crawford a few year's ago so some of his memories would be trapped for history. I fully intended to edit this incredible conversation and make it available on CD to military history groups but can't seem to get around to it. I made video tape copies for the family but can't seem to get to the next step. By the way, Col. Robert Crawford in in his deep nineties and still drives his car and serves as the maintenance man for his retirement center where he lives. An incredible, unbelieveable man of character and defender of Liberty.
Each year his son -- my neighbor -- Ret. Col. Charles Crawford reminds the younger staff at the company where he now works with this memo. I have added to his list of appropriate links.
"As a veteran, I ask that you take at least a few moments to reflect on the meaning of Memorial Day. Below are links to sites that explain the origins of Decoration Day, which was intended to decorate the graves of soldiers and sailors who died in the Civil War. Begin to recover what seems to have been lost -- an appreciation for the price of freedom.
Colonel Charles Crawford, Ret. Air Force Intelligence
AND HERE ARE THOSE MEMORIAL DAY WEB SITES THAT ARE ABSOLUTELY TERIFFIC.
In just a few more days we will be observing Memorial Day, a time of honoring those who have placed their life on the Altar of Freedom. "No greater gift is that, when a person lays down his life for another" - that happens to be scripture. The value of the sacrifice is determined by the reason the life was surrendered. In this case we are talking about the freedom we have all loved and experienced here in America -- a freedom that even works against the God given gift of Liberty. Those who despise our freedom use it in an attempt to slowly destroy what they hate.
I'm posting this little history again to get us ready for a great and meaningful Memorial Day, hopefully more that picnics, wonderful parades, barbeques, off from work, and the Indy 500.
Let's all take the time to focus in a special way on the Liberty we have had in this country because of our nation's founders, the Constitution and those who have given their very life for those principles.
I remember my mother (featured elsewhere on this page) telling us how important it Decoration Day was to the Parfitt family. They would always go to the West Manor Church cemetery at Irwin, the closest cemetery to the little coal-mining town of Claridge, Pennsylvania just Southeast of Pittsburgh. The family would decorate graves with flowers, commonly plant geraniums because they would bloom all summer, place flags on the graves of the military and give special recognition to those who were killed in action.
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. It was a day of remembrance for those who had died in our nation's service. There are many stories as to the actual beginnings of Memorial Day, with over two-dozen cities and towns laying claim to being its birthplace.
There is evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who were decorating the graves of the Confederate dead," it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day.
It's more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead.
Each of those efforts contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in General Logan's official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first. What is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11. Decoration Day was first observed on 30 May 1868 when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war.
When I moved to Georgia in 1963, Confederate Memorial Day was still being observed by native Georgians.
Memorial Day is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays. Several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead as I have already indicated.
The postcard illustrations on the right are from my personal collection. -np
"THE QUIZ KIDS - There was no other program like it.
'Quiz Kids' meet Chico Marx
They always performed before a filled auditorium
The Quiz Kids radio program, broadcast from June 1940 to July 1953 on NBC, Blue Network, ABC, and CBS.
Everytime we feature the Quiz Kids, we receive email asking questions. This is so rare because even with the healthy number of visitors on Norm's Ramblins very few drop us a note of appreciation BUT of the meager email we receive, 90% ask questions about The Quiz Kids. Apparently, this was a very influential program in the lives of "us kids" back then. We're now "old folks" and retain a fond memory of this special group because we wanted to be one of them so badly.
The Quiz Kids first debuted in the summer of 1940 and was conceived as a juvenile variation of the premiere quiz show of the day, Information Please. Its creator was Louis Cowan, a Chicago-based advertising and public relations man who had dabbled in radio since the mid 1930's.
The widespread popularity of Information Please, with its panel of "respected intellects," had proven that such programs could over come the highbrow stigma among the listening public. Cowan felt the next step would be to form a quiz program based on a panel of children, but not just any children! Cowan wanted prodigies “kids of immense intellect, poise, personality, and microphone presence. Just as important, Cowan also wanted these kids to never come across as arrogant or brash; children whom he auditioned that gave an impression of cockiness -or even children with "pushy or disruptive" parents- were summarily rejected.
The first children selected for The Quiz Kids audition recording were found from newspaper headlines. The first child chosen was a 6-year old boy, Gerard Darrow, who could identify more that 1,000 birds and was also an expert on butterflies, flowers, reptiles, amphibians, and shells! By the time the program was approved and the first episode was aired, the five member panel of Quiz Kids consisted of Gerard Darrow, Joan Bishop, Van Dyke Tiers, Mary Ann Anderson, and Charles Schwartz.
If Cowan and his staff had trouble selecting children to fill the program, they had an even worse time finding a suitable host/master of ceremonies. A pair of college professors auditioned for the part, but proved far too pompus and vain, giving the children not enough chance to talk. Another applicant was an intellect who traveled on the lecture circuit, but was rejected for "giving away" half the answers.
Out of a field of 20 candidates one emerged, not because of any outstanding abilities he possessed, rather because all the rest had been rejected. The sole survivor was Joe Kelly, a former vaudeville performer and host of the hayseed music program, The National Barn Dance on WLS Radio, Chicago. Kelly, having only received a third-grade level education before entering show business, was hardly the ideal candidate to host a quiz show where he would be called upon to referee children's responses to indepth questions concerning all matter of arts, science, history, and philosophy. A show in which every moment on the air held the potential of disastrous embarrassment for the former vaudevillian!
But Kelly was by no means stupid, and in fact was a quick learner. Though the kids were never coached, Kelly was given a list of the questions and answers well in advance of the programs, and held regular meetings with the shows researchers to go over potential problems with his diction. Eventually Cowan also hired a linguist to assist Kelly.
The quiz show operated on a basic format quite familiar to today's audiences; Kelly would ask the panel of five children a series of questions throughout the program. The first child to raise their hand and give the right answer would receive points. Based on these points, four of the five children would return again on the next Quiz Kids program, accompanied by a new contestant. All of the contestants were given savings bonds for each program they attended.
The show became quite popular and within a few months of its premiere, parents across the country began writing in, certain that their own little prodigies could more than compete with the other Quiz Kids. Soon there were national competitions for Quiz Kids contestants, Quiz Kids board games, and a national tour of the show -with Quiz Kids visiting the White House, or making appearances with Hollywood stars.
Certain kids became so popular that they made regular returns to the program, even if they had once been out-competed; only when they reached the disqualifying age of 16 would they leave the show for good. Among the most famous Quiz Kids were Gerard Darrow (the original Quiz Kid), Ruth Duskin (a 7-year old Shakespeare expert), math-masters Joel Kupperman and Richard Williams, Harve Fishman (a jack of all knowledge"), and Claude Brenner (a 12-year old who had such a polished demeanor on air that he was asked on at least four occasions to stand in for Joe Kelly as program host).
The amazing abilities of the children, and the difficulty of questions they were capable of answering, led many to suspect that the programs were fixed, but apparently (and more amazingly) none of the children were coached or aided with any of the questions.
On two occasions panels of professors from The University of Chicago and the University of Michigan came to the program for a little good-spirited (though ill-advised) competition with the Quiz Kids. The result was losses for the professors. The final score for The University of Michigan panel was 390 to the Quiz Kids' total of 420. The illustrious Chicago professors fared even worse with a score of 140 to the kids' 275. In one of the most difficult questions ever answered on the Quiz Kids program, Joel Kupperman was asked to imagine an 8-inch circle with an equilateral triangle inside it, with another circle inside the triangle, and an equilateral triangle inside that... and so forth. With only a moment's notice, he was then asked to give the area of the fifth triangle in this progression. This question had been submitted by a university expert and when his answer differed from Joel's, the expert was proven to be wrong.
A Quiz Kids television program was founded in 1949 and aired for several years with Joe Kelly and other members of the radio program, but the television version proved nowhere near as popular as the radio episodes. The Quiz Kids radio program aired its final episode on July 5th, 1953. In 1982 former Quiz Kid, Ruth Duskin, wrote a book entitled Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids? which provided a wise and a haunting look at how the program (for better and worse) effected the lives of the child participants. In the ensuing years many of the former Quiz Kids had grown to resent their experience on the program, feeling exploited and somewhat robbed of their youth.
At the time of the book's publishing, former math-whiz Richard Williams had become a consul general in Canton, China and the first US ambassador to Mongolia. Jack Lucal had become a Jesuit Priest, Harve Fishman a TV show producer. Ruth (Duskin) Feldman had remained in the Chicago area and become a wife, mother, and journalist. Joel Kupperman had become a professor at the University of Connecticut and was living a private life, refusing all interviews about his quiz show experiences. Gerard Darrow, the 6-year old naturalist prodigy and original Quiz Kid, had not fared as well as the others. Throughout his adult life he had held a string of menial jobs with long periods of unemployment. In the end he died a lonely broken man, at the age of 47.
The program posted in the link below is a Quiz Kid program from April 4, 1950 when the "Kids" went against four college professors. When you click the link you may then back up or return to the Ramblins page or do your accounting while you listen.
The Parfitt girls with their Mom in Claridge, PA. Maude is the youngest and on Mom's lap.
Maude Plunkett, a student at Moody Bible Institute Chicago 1924
Meredith Plunkett proposing to Maude in a Chicago Forest Preserve. Neat car, ennah?
Maude and Meredith Plunkett in the 1930's
and Maude this April 2009" />
Our "Angel Caregiver" and sister Judy Kreklow and Maude this April 2009
Maude on her 102 birthday
Maude last month with Shelby Wikberg her great great grand daughter.
My mother has been a "Mom" for 83 years!
Moody is the eldest and Judy, who stays with mother, now is the youngest and was born when Mom was 39. With six children -- can you imagine all those years of rinsing cloth diapers in the toilet then laundering them and then "hanging out?"“? But that's only a tiny symbol of all that Mom poured into the lives of her six children -- two of us were born at home.
I have written about Maude Elsie Plunkett, born in 1906, many times because she is one strong, courageous, committed, ministering 'Mama' who has been so faithful to her Lord, her faith, her family, her friends and anyone in need. I try to see her every day and Mary and I have an evening with her and Judy every Friday night. Except for arthritic pain and some beginning short-term memory problems that she teases about, she is a rolling stone.
Mom has never been in the hospital until she was 97, except for four of six births of her children. In 2003 she fell and broke her hip attempting to sit down to listen to Rush Limbaugh whom she felt expressed her political ideals.
Maude is now 103 and three months and remains an amazing woman. Such an appetite - perfect taste and smell so she enjoys every meal. Such a beauty - skin like a baby with a startling absence of wrinkles. Such a heart for the Lord – she is a former ordained Full Gospel minister and soloist who still sings a song with feeling and beauty.
I'll never forget last years Mother's Day celebration. We had food from our favorite restaurant, China Inn, dinner and at the close Mom opened her fortune cookie and burst into uncontrollable laughter when it was read. "You should expect a very long life!"
Harlan Kreklow, Maude's son-in-law and one Polski from Milwaukee we all tease, captured the meaning of Maude's life in a beautiful way on one of Maude's recent birthdays. I want to share it with you:
Maude, you've lived through the terms of 18 presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush. You've lived through six major wars beginning with World War I. The Titanic sunk when you were six years old and the last Czar was thrown out of Russia when you were 11. Names like Man of War, Calvin Coolidge, Enrico Caruso, Fritz Chrysler, Al Jolson, Babe Ruth, Albert Schweitzer and a host of thousands of others including the Beetles are not just names in history books for you. They have been your contemporaries.
You experienced primitive telephones, gas light, horse travel and crystal radio sets to cell phones, cyber space, hundreds of millions of vehicles of every description, television, the Internet and space travel. What has past before your eyes and entered into your mind is truly the "stuff" of great novels. You've lived through the most exciting, exhilarating, wonderful, difficult, tragic, and challenging time in the history of the planet. You have live through 43% of our nation's history. What an incredible run you've had! And, we all so proud of you."
And this is what I have to say about Mom: What a woman -- that Maude Elsie Parfitt Plunkett. Born in a small coal mining town just east of Pittsburgh where her dad, Tom Parfitt, was an electrical engineer responsible for "air and light" in the mine back when 1800 turned into 1900. Tom was a Welsh coal miner who had the traditional golden singing voice and was a minister in the Primitive Methodist Church in Wales. He and three other friends formed a quartet and did deputation ministry in various churches, singing, teaching and preaching.
They also became involved in the condition of the coal miners. It was the time of "How Green Was My Valley". They reached a point of success in their cry for increased safety and benefits for the Welsh miners, the four young men were accosted by a group of men and threatened with death if they continued. With few on their side, the men left Maude's father was the first Parfitt to immigrate from the British Isles to America and was later responsible for paying for all of his relatives who wanted to come to the Land of Opportunity and Promise. Two of his sisters tried it and didn't like it so he had to pay for their return passage. I'm not sure I would have done that.
The family later moved to McKee's Rocks where my grandfather served as an electrical engineer for the City of Pittsburgh Water Department. After high school, Maude began working for the dressmaking department of Horne's Department Store in Pittsburgh when she was 16 and in a matter of months became a buyer for all the materials the custom dressmakers used. They then had her traveling all over the back streets and warehouse areas of downtown Pittsburgh searching for materials used in dressmaking from buttons to bows. They were training her to become a buyer.
A woman, a young girl, a big city, a large corporation and an employee in training. My conservative mother didn't know it then and doesn't recognize it now, but she was a trailblazer. There were few women and especially young girls in the work force in the early 20's. She was in this job at Horne's when the Lord directed her to further her education at Moody Bible Institute -- again, not many women involved in higher education at that time in our culture.
Maude had thought of going to Nyack College in New York, however was influenced by Evangelist Bosworth to choose Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in the fall of 1923 with a call to become a missionary to India. What an incredible experience those two years of school were for her -- away from home, alone and doing deputation mission work in downtown Chicago. In 1923, at age 17, That first year she had ministries in downtown Chicago at such historic places as Pacific Garden Mission and Madison Avenue. That first year, she met my Dad and the "Plunketts of Chicago." I'm so glad she did! From the thousands of feet of 16mm film my Dad took it's so easy to recognize how beautiful, self assured, and vivacious she was even as a teenager. No wonder my Dad fell for her. She was athletic, intelligent, committed to living for the Lord, and so very beautiful. Meredith Plunkett was Class of 1924. and Old Dad persuaded Mom to leave school in her second year and marry him.
The Plunketts were one of the first caterers in Chicago in the early 1920's and Maude became involved in the business until Dad and Mom moved to Milwaukee in 1935. They ran an advertising food business and helped The Wisconsin Tabernacle, a mission of Paul Raders's Chicago Gospel Tabernacle. Dad would have been an associate of Paul Rader had they stayed in Chicago.
In the late 1920s, Maude was the feature actress in hundreds of commercials her husband filmed for the advertising dinners the family served in Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Cleveland. After serving the meal that was basically free, the attendees at churches and clubs were presented with a lecture about Kraft Foods, Pepsi Cola, Sealtest products, Tenderoni Salad, Mickleberry sausage, Karo Syrup and scores of other products. Her husband spiffed up the lectures with 16mm movies of how the products were made and how they were to be prepared which is where Maude came in. She still uses many of these products.
When Mom was 80 and still a beauty, we informed Kraft Foods that they could use a film of Maude making salad in her Los Angeles kitchen in 1928 and a current segment to show that Kraft Mayo is a great product of choice that stands the years, but they were not interested. The family still has thousands of feet of film from the 1920 through the 1940's when the advertising dinners turned into catering. Dad was using film for advertising before there was such a thing. We have thousands of feet from those days
During her church years, Maude conducted neighborhood Sunday Schools, Co-pastored the Church of the Open Bible near Allis Chalmers in Milwaukee, and was an accomplished musician -- piano, marimba, and had (has) an operatic soprano voice that is as sweet as one could imagine. The small church of less than 100 was made up of a lower economic group became an extended family who all of us loved, fed and helped.
As a pastor's wife, a minister herself, a mother of six children, an educator, an administrator, and a love for people, Maude Elsie Plunkett has never stopped blazing trails. In total control of her personal affairs and totally intellectual sharpness (her wit, sense of humor, reasoning and problem solving remain superb! She spends most of her time in a wheelchair because of her knees but still uses the walker, dresses herself and dries the dishes and folds laundry.
The hero in this story is my sister, Judy Kreklow. Judy has been with mother in Atlanta for the past eight years, leaving her job at St Luke's Hospital in Milwaukee to take on the assignment. Her husband, Harlan, cares for his 96 year old mother in Milwaukee and they see each other every six weeks. Amazing.
Maude Elsie Parfitt Plunkett is a Conestoga Woman who always met life straight on, seeing to it her six chidren knew the Lord perosnally and had the tools to face life. WHAT AN HONOR TO BE ONE OF HER SIX CHILDREN. -Norm P.
BE SURE TO READ THE DESCRIPTION BELOW BEFORE VIEWING THE VIDEO! Thanks to Tom Arena for passing this on.
I posted this last January prior to the new administration being place power and before it cancelled the Lockeed Martin F-22 Raptor contract for more fighters. Now that the F-22 will be removed from further production, what will stand up against this incredible Russian creation? Do you think any SU-30MKs will be sold to Iran or any of our other enemies?
With my limited knowledge of why current things are being dismantled and new projects are being installed seems to this old man like it's more than a "follow the money" but more like a change in how America will be governed in philosophy and the removal of America's long-standing position of leadership of the free world so that Globalism can be slowly implemented more easily as the frog-water continues to simmer. Or perhaps, my fears are totaly unfounded.
Russia now has #1 fighter plane in the world, the SU-30MK vectored thrust with canards. As you watch this airplane perform, look at the canards moving along side of, and just below the canopy rail. The "canards" are the small wings forward of the main wings. The smoke and contrails provide a sense of the actual flight path, sometimes in reverse direction. This video is the in-flight demonstration of the 30MK fighter aircraft. You will not believe what you are bout to see.
The fighter can stall from high speed, stopping forward motion in seconds with a full stall, and then it has the ability to descend tail first without causing a compressor stall. It can also recover from a flat spin in less than a minute.
These maneuver capabilities don't exist in any other aircraft in the world today. Take a look at the video with the sound up full. This aircraft is of concern to U.S. and NATO planners. We don't know which nations will soon be flying the SU-30MK. Certainly, Russian, but hopefully not China!
Following text from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
Friends worked with advanced aircraft flight control systems and concepts for many years as an extension of stability control and means of control. Canards and vectored thrust were among many concepts examined to extend our fighter aircraft performance. Neither our current or next generation aircraft now poised for funding and production can, in any way, match
the performance of this Russian aircraft in any combat situation.
Somehow the bankrupt Russian aircraft industry has out produced our complex politically tainted aerospace industry with this technology marvel.
and Maude this April 2009" />
