Eastern Carolina Aviation Heritage Foundation

03/14/2025

Plan to attend this free fun event.

03/10/2025

We had an unforgettable time at our recent Gala, and we’re excited to share some of the best moments with you! From inspiring speeches to a well earned award, the night was filled with laughter, celebration, and memories that will last a lifetime. 🎉

See the video and relive the magic with us! 🌟

2025 TITLE SPONSORS A Big Thanks To Our Sponsors! Title Sponsors CarolinaEast Health System WCTI-12 Tom & Susan Braaten Gold Sponsors City of Havelock Inner Banks Media Naval Systems, Inc (NSI) The Flame Silver Sponsors Chevrolet of New Bern Duke Energy Edward Jones of Havelock – Mike Sprague The ...

03/03/2025

🎉 Huge congratulations to Maj General Tom Braaten! 🎉

We are thrilled to announce that Maj General Tom Braaten has been awarded the Champion of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Award by the North Carolina Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Center! 🏆👏

This prestigious recognition honors General Braaten's incredible dedication to fostering innovation and inspiring the next generation of leaders in STEM fields. His commitment to education, mentorship, and creating opportunities for students is truly outstanding.

Thank you for all you do, General Braaten, and for making such a lasting impact on the future of STEM! 🌟

03/03/2025

https://ecaviationheritage.com/out-of-an-abundance-of-caution/

How many times have you heard (so-called) leaders use this excuse for being risk averse? What did an abundance of caution ever get us other than lost opportunities? Of course, this is just my opinion (for what that’s worth…not much…) but leaders who are skewed toward using an abundance of caut...

02/28/2025

Barry Fetzer
ECAHF Historian

Good morning fellow ECAHFer’s. I have memory of a terrifying moment during my flight training at NAS Pensacola flying the T-28 Trojan back in the late 1970’s. I may be embellishing the terror I seem to remember, but not too much.

Flying solo in a big, radial engine aircraft. I was in command of all that power! What a thrill! It must have been toward the end of the T-28 training syllabus because once you soloed that aircraft and did a solo cross-country flight and a solo night flight, back then you were quickly sent either to helicopter training at NAS Whiting Field or to fixed-wing training at NAS Beeville in Texas.

Feeling my oats and a bit over confident, I flew through what we called back then a “sucker hole”…a hole in the layer of clouds. And I ended up “VFR (or visual flight rules) on top”…out of the “goo” (the clouds) and in the sunshine but above the clouds. And I did this without an earned instrument certification that permitted me to be there above the clouds. This required me to ultimately descend through the clouds again to return to home base.

Back then, I didn’t know that the “official” name of that “sucker hole” could have been a hole in the clouds punched by an airplane called a “fallstreak hole” or a “hole punch cloud”.

According to Wikipedia, “When an airplane flies through certain types of clouds containing supercooled water droplets, the disruption can cause the water to rapidly freeze into ice crystals, creating a large circular gap in the cloud layer.”

Seeing the recent publication of a NASA photo, copied below, of a what could have been a fallstreak hole over Mount Vesuvius reminded me of the terror I felt when I flew through that sucker hole that quickly closed up.

Here I was VFR on top, the sucker or fallstreak hole closed up, but no clearance or authority to be where I was and punch back through the clouds to descend and get back to home base. I was screwed.

But when you’re screwed, most of us try to find ways to get “unscrewed” If I wanted to ultimately earn my “Wings of Gold” I needed to figure out how to get back to and land at home base. I knew how far I was from home base and how much fuel I had aboard my “Trojan”. I flew toward home base for a while looking for another sucker hole to descend through with no luck. Finally, I decided I had to descend and punch through the clouds with or without an instrument ticket and without asking for permission from anybody, thereby possibly creating my own “fallstreak hole”.

All’s well that ends well. I punched through the clouds and landed at NAS Pensacola without a hitch (except for the terror of being where I shouldn’t have been for a short while).

And I did ultimately earn my “Wings of Gold” despite my over-confidence and stupidity on this particular flight.

Onward and upward!

The Landsat 8 satellite captured Mount Vesuvius' caldera perfectly aligned with a cloud gap during its pass in 2022. (Image: NASA)

02/14/2025

The Eastern Carolina Aviation Heritage Foundation is pleased to announce the 2025 Gala speaker:

Guy Nelson
President and CEO of Attollo LLC

Guy is a Veteran Marine Officer and Naval Aviator with over two decades of diverse experience in aviation. We will delve into the history of Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, and explore the future of aviation in Eastern North Carolina which presents many opportunities for our region.

02/03/2025

2025 Summer Elementary School Engineering Camp Applications open on February 3, 2025 and close on April 10.2025. Rising 4th, 5th and 6th Graders are eligible. Check out our website for application and more information!

The Eastern Carolina Aviation Heritage Foundation (ECAHF) Awarded Grant By NC Space Grant Mini-Grant Program CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE WITH SUPPORT FROM The City of Havelock Fleet Readiness Center East NASA Space Grant Application will open February 3, 2025 Download Printable Application 2025 EASTERN...

01/29/2025

Check out the Winter 2025 ECAHF Newsletter on our website!

https://ecaviationheritage.com/ec-aviation-newsletter/

01/15/2025

Application process will begin on February 3, 2025.

01/07/2025

12/11/2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers. If you were not informed, or if informed but didn’t look closely, you might mistake the Piasecki (and then the Vertol) H-21 Shawnee pictured below as the CH-46 Sea Knight flown by our esteemed ECAHF chairman, Major General (USMC, retired) Tom Braaten.

In fact, they’re so similar in appearance that I asked AI (Bing’s Copilot) if the CH-46 was essentially “copied” from the H-21. Here was AI’s answer: The CH-46 Sea Knight was not a direct copy of the Vertol H-21C Shawnee, but it was inspired by it. The Sea Knight, originally designated as the Vertol Model 107, was designed by Vertol Aircraft Corporation (later acquired by Boeing) as a successor to earlier helicopters like the H-21 “Flying Banana”. While both helicopters are tandem-rotor designs, the Sea Knight incorporated newer technology, such as turboshaft engines, which provided better performance and reliability compared to the piston engines used in the H-21.”

But whether as reliable as the CH-46 or not, the H-21 had its share of fame. According to History.com, on this date in aviation history in 1961 “The ferry carrier, USNS Card, arrived in Saigon with the first U.S. helicopter unit. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.”

And according to the US Army booklet, “VIETNAM STUDIES AIRMOBILITY 1961-1971” by Lieutenant General John J. Tolson, USA, retrieved fromhttps://www.history.army.mil/html/books/090/90-4/CMH_Pub_90-4-B.pdf on 11 Dec 24, “On 11 December 1961 the United States aircraft carrier USNS Card docked in downtown Saigon with 32 U. S. Army H-21 helicopters and 400 men. The 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Lewis, Wash., and the 8th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Bragg, N. C., had arrived in Southeast Asia. This event had a two-fold significance: it was the first major symbol of United States combat power in Vietnam; and, it was the beginning of a new era of air mobility in the United States Army.

“Just twelve days later these helicopters were committed into the first airmobile combat action in Vietnam, Operation CHOPPER.
Approximately 1,000 Vietnamese paratroopers were airlifted into a suspected Viet Cong headquarters complex about ten miles west of the Vietnamese capitol. The paratroopers captured an elusive underground radio transmitter after meeting only slight resistance from a surprised enemy. Major George D. Hardesty, Jr. of the 8th Transportation Company and Major Robert J. Dillard of the 57th could report that their units had performed outstandingly under their first baptism of fire.

“The events of December 1961 prefaced a decade of unparalleled growth of air mobility. But they also were a culmination of many decisions during the preceding decade which allowed the President of the United States to exercise this option in support of the Government of Vietnam.”

Interestingly, the carrier USNS Card that brought the first US helicopters to Vietnam on this day in 1961, was a WWII-era es**rt carrier, pressed into service as a “ferry carrier” during the war. She was ignominiously, according to the military newspaper “The Flagship” in an article by Hendrick Dickson, USN Military Sealift Command, and retrieved from https://www.militarynews.com/norfolk-navy-flagship/news/quarterdeck/msc75-blast-from-the-past-usns-card-t-akv-40/article_5e0e9912-dc11-11ee-8ac5-1741c4b12bef.html, “the first major U.S. vessel sunk by enemy action since WWII on May 2, 1964.”

The Flagship article continues, “USS Card (ACV-11) was an American Bogue-class es**rt carrier commissioned in 1942. She was reclassified as a Cargo-Ship and Aircraft Ferry, re-designated as (T-AKV 40) and activated for the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS), later known as Military Sealift Command, in 1959.

“Crewed by a civilian crew, USNS Card had made several ships to Saigon, Vietnam, carrying helicopters, planes and vehicles. She had just unloaded a cargo of helicopters and fighter-bombers from Manila, Philippines, and was preparing to return to the United States when Viet Cong frogmen planted an explosive charge below the waterline near the engine room that blew a hole in the hull of the 9,800-ton ship killing five crewmen.

“Due to rapid response from the crew and authorities, flooding in the engine compartment was stopped and stabilized quickly, leaving Card settled 48 feet below the water level. Salvage operations began immediately and on May 19, only a couple of weeks after the attack, Card was raised nearly 50 feet and towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines and then Yokosuka, Japan, to undergo repairs.

“Card would return to service Dec. 11 and continue to provide helicopter transport support in Vietnam throughout the rest of the decade. On March 10, 1970, Card entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet, at Olympia. She was withdrawn from the fleet June, 9, 1971.”

Onward and upward!

Kind regards,
Barry R. Fetzer
ECAHF Historian

12/06/2024

Barry Fetzer
ECAHF Historian

Good Friday morning fellow ECAHF’ers. Today. Eighty-three years ago in 1941. The day before “a date which will live in infamy”.

We Americans like to think of ourselves as a people who don’t start wars, but we sure as hell can finish them. Some historians might disagree with that premise of Americans being a people who don’t start wars, because, like with many things, the answer to the question of whether Americans start wars is, “It depends.” It depends on what is meant by “starting a war”. We might opine that an economic embargo is “not an ‘act of war’”. Our enemies, though, might disagree.

According to History.com, “President Roosevelt—convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States—telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that ‘for the sake of humanity,’ the emperor intervene ‘to prevent further death and destruction in the world.’

“The Royal Australian Air Force had sighted Japanese es**rts, cruisers, and destroyers on patrol near the Malayan coast, south of Cape Cambodia. An Aussie pilot managed to radio that it looked as if the Japanese warships were headed for Thailand—just before he was shot down by the Japanese. Back in England, Prime Minister Churchill called a meeting of his chiefs of staff to discuss the crisis. While reports were coming in describing Thailand as the Japanese destination, they began to question whether it could have been a diversion. British intelligence had intercepted the Japanese code ‘Raffles,’ a warning to the Japanese fleet to be on alert—but for what?

“Britain was already preparing Operation Matador, the launching of their 11th Indian Division into Thailand to meet the presumed Japanese invasion force. But at the last minute, Air Marshal Brooke-Popham received word not to cross the Thai border for fear that it would provoke a Japanese attack if, in fact, the warship movement was merely a bluff.

“Meanwhile, 600 miles northwest of Hawaii, Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, announced to his men: ‘The rise or fall of the empire depends upon this battle. Everyone will do his duty with utmost efforts.’ Thailand was, in fact, a bluff. Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii was confirmed for Yamamoto as the Japanese target, after the Japanese consul in Hawaii had reported to Tokyo that a significant portion of the U.S. Pacific fleet would be anchored in the harbor—sitting ducks. The following morning, Sunday, December 7, was a good day to begin a raid.

“‘The son of man has just sent his final message to the son of God,’ FDR joked to Eleanor after sending off his telegram to Hirohito, who in the Shinto tradition of Japan was deemed a god. As he enjoyed his stamp collection and chatted with Harry Hopkins, his personal adviser, news reached him of Japan’s formal rejection of America’s 10-point proposals for peace and an end to economic sanctions and the oil embargo placed on the Axis power. ‘This means war,’ the president declared. Hopkins recommended an American first strike. ‘No, we can’t do that,’ Roosevelt countered. ‘We are a democracy and a peaceful people.’”

The next day, 83 years ago tomorrow on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor by air (and sea), “A date which will live in infamy.”

Onward and upward!

B-17 “Flying Fortress” photographed after the attack cut in half. Courtesy USAF and PBS.

12/03/2024

https://ecaviationheritage.com/the-night-witches/

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers. As an “early bird”, I’m up before light (it’s 5:45am as I type this-early get-ups were “beat” into me by the Marines). And like most of you, I’m sure, I’m always in bed after dark, especially these days of “fall back”, Eastern Standard Time. And w...

11/25/2024

Students’ ‘homemade’ rocket soars faster and farther into space than any other amateur spacecraft — smashing 20-year records

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers. Wow. If only. But alas, we kids were true amateurs and could only dream. We launched bottle rockets from pop bottles before we turned the scorched bottles in at the local drug store for the 1 or 2 cent return deposits. We launched “space orb” golf balls powered by cherry bombs from lead pipes jammed at an angle in the ground. When older, we cobbled together enough money to order an Estes model rocket advertised as a premium from the back of our comic books or from the Estes catalog itself and launched a “real rocket” from “space central” (as we kids named it) in our back yard.

But we were lucky to get the rocket model into the air a few hundred feet and even luckier to locate it and get it back after it “blasted off”. If only we could have had what the students at the University of Southern California (USC) had. We kids would have had fame and adulation on our block. If only.
Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be for us. But is sure was for the students at USC who recently broke records with their “model” rocket launch as reported below by the science blog ([email protected]).
By Harry Baker
published 2 days ago
“Aftershock II, a new rocket built by students at the University of Southern California, recently broke a number of 20-year-old amateur spaceflight records for altitude, power and speed. It reached more than 470,000 feet above Earth’s surface and went ‘hypersonic.’

“A group of U.S. students has smashed a series of world records after launching a ‘homemade’ rocket farther and faster into space than any other amateur rocket. The student-made missile soared 90,000 feet beyond the previous record-holder — a rocket launched more than 20 years ago.
“The record-breaking rocket, named Aftershock II, was designed and built by students at USC’s Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL) — a group run entirely by undergraduate students. The students launched Aftershock II on Oct. 20 from a site in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The rocket stood about 14 feet tall and weighed 330 pounds.
“The rocket broke the sound barrier just two seconds after liftoff and reached its maximum speed roughly 19 seconds after launch, the RPL team wrote in a Nov. 14 paper summarizing the launch. The rocket’s engine then burned out, but the craft continued to climb as atmospheric resistance decreased, enabling it to leave Earth’s atmosphere 85 seconds after launch and then reach its highest elevation, or apogee, 92 seconds later. At this point, the nose cone separated from the rest of the rocket and deployed a parachute so it could safely reenter the atmosphere and touch down in the desert, where it was collected by the RPL team for analysis.

“The rocket's apogee was around 470,000 feet above Earth’s surface, which is ‘further into space than any non-governmental and non-commercial group has ever flown before,’ USC representatives wrote in a statement. The previous record of 380,000 feet was set in 2004 by the GoFast rocket made by the Civilian Space Exploration Team.

“During the flight, Aftershock II reached a maximum speed of around 3,600 mph, or Mach 5.5 — five and a half times the speed of sound. This was slightly faster than GoFast, which had also held the amateur speed record for 20 years.

“But elevation and speed were not the only records Aftershock II broke. ‘This achievement represents several engineering firsts,’ Ryan Kraemer, an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at USC and executive engineer of the RPL team who will soon join SpaceX's Starship team, said in the statement. ‘Aftershock II is distinguished by the most powerful solid-propellant motor ever fired by students and the most powerful composite case motor made by amateurs.’”

Onward and REALLY…TRULY…Upward!

Kind regards,

Barry R. Fetzer
ECAHF Historian

11/10/2024

Semper Fidelis!

11/01/2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers and happy November!

We gotta start somewhere. “The journey of a thousand miles begins” the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is quoted as saying, “with a single step.”

Today in 1952, my mom, two years married and 24 years old, was six months pregnant with me, her first child. A year later, mom claiming I’d “kicked her incessantly from six months until I popped out running”, I took my first steps at nine months old. Or so she claimed. I suppose it’s not uncommon for moms to embellish their kids’ achievements, especially their first born. But childhood amnesia erases my memories from that time in my life, so I’ll have to rely on what my mom told me as the “truth”.

But also today in 1952, perhaps a “step” we, in retrospect, would have been better off not taking, according to History.com, “the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.”

And the step of a potentially world-destroyer bomb erasing humanity from the air also began with a tiny, first step of a much smaller explosive, one of very limited effect, especially compared to the hydrogen bomb.

On the same day, today…November 1st…as the US test of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952 but 41 years earlier according to History.com, “On November 1, 1911, Italian army lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, while flying over what is now Libya, tossed three grenades out of his plane over a Turkish camp, effectively dropping the world’s first aerial bomb.

“Just eight years after the Wright brothers in America had accomplished the world’s first flight, the Kingdom of Italy sent several aircraft into what is now Libya, hoping to conquer territory in their war against the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Gavotti boarded one of the Italian army’s wood-and-canvas ‘Taube’ airplanes and brought four grenades with him.


“He flew toward the Turkish oasis encampment of Ain Zara (east of modern-day Tripoli), and threw three of the four grenades he had—marking the first time live ordinance had been dropped out of a plane with the enemy firing back. The Ottoman Empire responded with outrage and claimed that the bombs fell on a field hospital and killed innocent civilians. The governments of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States launched inquiries to analyze the raid, and released findings that the bombing likely caused few if any casualties, as the grenades had either not detonated or exploded over uninhabited areas of desert.

“While the assault may have had a muted collateral impact, it signaled the beginning of a new era of aerial assaults. A Berlin newspaper observed that, while airplanes and airships could not be practically used for offense and destruction, they had reconnaissance value: ‘The Italian Command is always, thanks to aircraft, informed of every displacement of Turkish troops, and knows the exact positions of them.’ A few years later, German Zeppelin airships deployed during World War I dropped bombs over European cities from Antwerp to Paris to London—heralding a time when civilians, and not just combatants, were targeted by aircraft.”

Onward and upward!

Kind regards,
Barry Fetzer

09/27/2024

History on September 26th in 1580, 1924, and 1996: an aviation history threefer

Good evening fellow ECAHF’ers,

Everyone loves a bargain. I got a BOGO at Harris Teeter here in Southern Pines yesterday on our favorite Greek yogurt and felt like I had scored a real deal! And today we have a three for the price of one history vignette!

Navigation is an integral skill and ability for aviators. “I’ve not lost. I’m just temporarily disoriented” is a common refrain (that I’ve used myself) amongst aviators who, like me, have been completely lost and hopelessly disoriented due to failing at the basic skill of navigation. But Sir Francis Drake had extraordinary success in navigation, even around the world.

According to History.com, “On September 26, 1580, English seaman Francis Drake returned to Plymouth, England, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to sail the earth and accomplishing this almost two hundred years before a precise means of determining longitude was finally invented in 1762.

On December 13, 1577, Drake set out from England with five ships on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World. After crossing the Atlantic, Drake abandoned two of his ships in South America and then sailed into the Straits of Magellan with the remaining three. A series of devastating storms besieged his expedition in the treacherous straits, wrecking one ship and forcing another to return to England. Only the Golden Hind reached the Pacific Ocean, but Drake continued undaunted up the western coast of South America, raiding Spanish settlements and capturing a rich Spanish treasure ship.

Drake then continued up the western coast of North America, searching for a possible northeast passage back to the Atlantic. Reaching as far north as present-day Washington before turning back, Drake paused near San Francisco Bay in June 1579 to repair his ship and prepare for a journey across the Pacific. Calling the land “Nova Albion,” Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I.

In July, the expedition set off across the Pacific, visiting several islands before rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and returning to the Atlantic Ocean. On September 26, 1580, the Golden Hind returned to Plymouth, England, bearing its rich captured treasure and valuable information about the world’s great oceans. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Drake during a visit to his ship. The most renowned of the Elizabethan seamen, he later played a crucial role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The explorer died 1596 at the age of 56.

And it took another 344 years before the same feat was accomplished in the air. According to the National Air and Space Museum, “On April 6, 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service pilots and mechanics in four airplanes left Seattle, Washington, to carry out the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. They completed the journey 175 days later on September 28, 1924 after making 74 stops and covering about 27,550 miles.

“The airplanes were named for American cities and carried a flight number: Seattle (1), Chicago (2), Boston (3), and New Orleans (4). They flew over the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans and encountered climatic extremes from arctic to tropical. Only the Chicago, flown by Lts. Lowell Smith and Leslie Arnold, and the New Orleans, flown by Lts. Erik Nelson and John Harding Jr., completed the entire journey.”

And by the way and not really a part of our threefer but worth mentioning from the perspective of considering how long it took to circumnavigate the globe on the surface of our Earth to doing it in the air and then how little time it took to circumnavigate the globe from space. It was only 37 years after the first flight around our “Pale Blue Dot” (as Carl Sagan described a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from an unprecedented distance of approximately 6 billion miles away) on April 12, 1961, that Russian Lt. Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth in Vostok 1.

And today in 1996, the third item in our threefer, according to History.com, “U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid returned to Earth in the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis following six months in orbit aboard the Russian space station Mir.

“On March 23, 1996, Lucid transferred to Mir from the same space shuttle for a planned five-month stay. A biochemist, Lucid shared Mir with Russian cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev and conducted scientific experiments during her stay. She was the first American woman to live in a space station.

“Beginning in August, her scheduled return to Earth was delayed by more than six weeks because of last-minute repairs to the booster rockets of Atlantis and then by a hurricane. Finally, on September 26, 1996, she returned to Earth aboard Atlantis, touching down at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Her 188-day sojourn aboard Mir set a new space endurance record for an American and a world endurance record for a woman.

According to Wikipedia, “Lucid retired from NASA to care for her husband Mike, who had dementia. He died on December 25, 2014. She later wrote about this experience in her book No Sugar Added: One Family's Saga of Dementia and Caretaking (2019).”

Onward and upward!

Kind regards,
Barry