Oh nothing really just wanted to share

My wife works so I do the housekeeping, lawn work, etc. If I wasn't half dead I'd be in great shape.

 

I'm in decent shape , I think, and feel half dead some days.

 

Too far out of bounds for me. I've always been a stickler.

 

Definitely. I couldn't suspend belief for the other.

 

The Twilight Zone ?
Better than "The Pacific" !

 

I'll probably be sent to my room but after nearly a double six pack of PBR's today I've decided I should hereafter be addressed as Sir.
I feel as if I was born 35 years too late and in my own humble estimation believe if I wasn't killed in a training accident, shot down in flames, bushwhacked by a jealous husband or contracted some foreign STD, I would have given Bong a run for his money.
So in keeping with my self professed identification Sir will suffice but Colonel would be even better.
It's been a long day so smile and carry on .

 

Roll your own for me.
As for what I'd strap on, yeah gotta go with the Thunderbolt. And therewith a story.
Bong visited the 348th FG in New Guinea and as things usually do a wager was proffered whereas Major Bong in his P38 would dogfight Col. Neal Kearby in his P47.
After several passes at each other they returned to the tarmac, discussed their flights against each other and the Col. climbed into the Majors Lightning, Bong found his way to the cockpit of the Jug and both returned to the sky. After another go around both landed shook hands and headed for the officers club.
Kearby's guys swore he won, Bong's gang also declared Victory. According to an eye witness who watched all this said "We said the Colonel won but in all honesty it was probably a tie".

 

It's a long read and hopefully I got it all copied:
Great site and well worth a glance.

Neel E. Kearby - Home of Heroes

"It was late June 1943, and a lone American P-38 Lightning circled leisurely over Amberley Field near Townsville, Australia. In the cockpit was Lieutenant Colonel George Prentice, a solid combat veteran with two aerial victories, including one shoot-down four months earlier during the critical Battle of the Bismarck Sea.

Lieutenant Colonel Prentice had arrived from New Guinea the previous day where he had flown regular and highly dangerous air missions for nearly a year. At Amberley Field, he was now to assume command of the new 475th Fighter Group. Organized on May 15, it was to be the first Fifth Air Force All-P-38 fighter squadron. In the preceding year, the P-38 had proven itself superior in combat, not so much for its sleek design and great maneuverability, which were indeed valuable assets, as for the daring prowess of the young men who flew them.

The night before there had been a celebration of sorts to welcome the new commander, and Colonel Prentice had celebrated in style with his men. A little hung-over the morning after, as he circled Amberley Field in the clear, early morning skies, the veteran pilot knew he was not at the top of his game. Nonetheless, with a keen eye and a sense of duty borne out of his combat experience, Prentice felt confident that he would rise to any challenge. Besides, Amberley Field was 600 miles from New Guinea, where little remained of the once invincible Japanese air force.

An twin-tailed, American combat plane as it flew an erratic but confident patrol over Amberley Field. All of them knew that a battle was brewing; few of them believed that the experienced Lieutenant Colonel Prentice would have anything to fear. For the moment the American fighter pilot was alone, commanding the air space from an altitude of 12,000 feet where very little could harm him.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a second fighter appeared. Incredibly, the invader was diving from above... instantly and with deadly precision, in a lethal attack on Colonel Prentice's P-38. Powered by a single, 2,400-horsepower radial engine and with the added inertia of a seven-ton monster of a fighter plane, the attacker screamed in for the kill at more than 400 miles per hour. Four large machine guns were mounted on each wing, every one of them ready to fill the doomed P-38 with hundreds of 50-caliber rounds in less than a minute. Looking out his cockpit window, Lieutenant Colonel Prentice cursed his over-confidence, winged over, and tried to shake the barrel-shaped behemoth off his tail. It was too late - the attacking enemy couldn't be shaken. Lieutenant Colonel Prentice, flying his first mission as commander of the 475th Fighter Group, knew he was dead.

Twenty minutes later the victorious enemy fighter plane taxied to a stop on the ground at Amberley Field. The canopy opened and the smiling pilot emerged wearing the uniform of an American airman, with the silver leaf of a Lieutenant Colonel. Neel Kearby hopped down from the wing of his new P-47 Thunderbolt to exchange handshakes with a slightly-humbled P-38 group commander.

"Congratulations Kearby," Colonel Prentice announced good naturedly. "You shot me down in flames more than once." Then, looking around at the group of fellow pilots who had witnessed the mock-combat over Amberley he announced, "I still think the P-38 is the best fighter we've got, but boys, don't sell the 'Jug' short!"
Perhaps at that moment, the only person happier to hear those words than Neel Kearby was the two officers' boss, General George Kenney. But the Fifth Air Force commander had little time to gloat in his success before he heard Prentice announce, "I think I'll hit the sack early tonight and get some rest. Neel, what do you say we have another go at it tomorrow."

"I interfered at this point," Kenney wrote later, "and said I didn't want any more of this challenge foolishness by them or anyone else and for both of them to quit that stuff and tend to their jobs of getting a couple of new (fighter) groups into the war."
No doubt Prentice was disappointed that he would not get a chance to avenge his loss, but he and his boys would have many a re-match with Japanese Zeroes during which they would further validate the combat prowess of the Lightening. Kearby accepted the prohibition against additional mock-combat gracefully, knowing that at last, he had earned a measure of respect for his own favored P-47 Thunderbolts. Now it was time to teach that same measure of respect to the Japanese.

Both commanders parted amicably and with broad smiles. Of the two, only Lieutenant Colonel Kearby knew that the entire exhibition had, in fact, been the brainchild of General Kenney himself and that the Fifth Air Force commander had done his best to ensure the desired outcome.
Neel E. Kearby
Probably the only thing about Neel Kearby that didn't shout the name "Texan" was his stature. Unlike the stereotype: tall, rugged, fearless, and filled with attitude--Neel stood only 5'9" tall. The rest of him more than adequately fit the mold.
Born in the rural North Texas town of Wichita Falls along the Oklahoma border in 1911, Neel was the son of Dr. and Mrs. J. G. Kearby of Dallas. He grew up in Arlington, a thriving metropolis sandwiched between Dallas and Fort Worth, where he first attended high school and later North Texas Agricultural College, before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated there in 1937 with a degree in Business Administration.

As a boy, Kearby had always been fascinated with aviation. He earned his first flight by agreeing to wash a neighbor's private plane. But Kearby's interest was not only in flight but in aerial combat. His boyhood heroes were the pilots of the last great war, the aces of World War I. He compiled a personal collection of albums featuring the great aviators who had inaugurated aerial warfare and dreamed of someday being like them. Such dreams compelled him to enlist as a flying cadet after earning his degree, and he received his commission as an Army Air Corps aviator in February 1938.

Neel Kearby was an easily likable man, reserved on the ground but a tiger in the air. From his early days of learning to fly in aged AT-6 Army trainers in Texas in 1937, to his tour of duty flying P-39s in Panama during the first year of World War II, Neel Kearby was known to take his flying seriously--and competitively. In the cockpit, he was a skilled airman, cool under pressure, and driven to excel. He was also a keen tactician and a natural leader. By the time Kearby received orders to depart Panama and assume command of the new 348th Fighter Group at Westover Field, Massachusetts, in October 1942, he had risen to the rank of Major in fewer than four years.

P47 Thunderbolts
Under Major Kearby, the 348th Fighter Group began training for combat, equipped with the newest advancement in fighter aircraft, the P-47. Built by Seversky Aircraft Corporation (later renamed Republic Aviation), the Thunderbolt was designed specifically for the air war in Europe as an escort fighter for high-altitude bombers. For this reason, maneuverability was sacrificed for greater fire-power, heavier armor, greater durability, and a larger engine. The end result was a nearly 7-ton fighter framed within a bulky, barrel-shaped fuselage. The ungainly airplane was quickly renamed the "Jug" in derision by other pilots who saw it as ugly and unsuitable for combat. To make matters worse, the heavy fighter was very slow taking off and had a very poor rate of climb. Other pilots joked that if Army engineers built a runway all the way around the planet, "Republic (Aviation) would build an airplane that needed every foot of it (to get airborne.")

Neel Kearby the tactician looked beyond the engineering nightmare that was the P-47 and found a flying arsenal. Featuring eight, forward-firing, heavy 50-caliber machineguns, the Thunderbolt was a flying warhead that could dive with impunity into the most fearsome enemy formation and emerge unscathed. The P-47 was designed to withstand a six-ton impact, making it virtually indestructible. Kearby continued to acquaint himself with the capabilities of the Thunderbolt and to train his pilots to take advantage of the aircraft's natural abilities for the high-altitude air war over Germany. By May his men were ready for combat in Europe.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, General Kenney's P-38 pilots had been writing an impressive resume for their fast, highly maneuverable Lockheed Lightnings. Outnumbered more than two-to-one by the Japanese less than a year earlier, and supplemented primarily by aging and battle-damaged P-39s and P-40s, Kenney's fighter pilots now ruled the skies over eastern New Guinea.
The Fifth Air Force had played a key role in the highly successful campaign to secure the north side of the Papuan Peninsula and establish air bases east of Lae, then had crushed the Japanese effort to reinforce Lae during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Kenney's Fifth Fighter Command was victorious but badly bruised. In March 1943 General Kenney made his first visit to Washington, D.C., since taking command of the Fifth Air Force less than a year earlier. A key part of this trip, beyond briefing Hap Arnold and the General Staff on the progress in the Pacific, was to plead for replacement pilots and new aircraft. The Fifth Air Force had accomplished what a year earlier was considered impossible, but the toll left the command worn, torn, bleeding, and struggling to keep airplanes in the air. The combat toll had been so extensive it was not unusual for more than half of the aircraft-mounted for a mission to be forced to abort, not because of enemy fire, but because of mechanical failure.

 

Part Two
Kenney quickly learned that among the top Allied war planners, despite his tremendous success in the Southwest Pacific, defeating the Japanese was a "war on the back burner." Most Allied efforts were focused on defeating the Axis in Europe. This was not a message Kenney wanted to hear or a decision he would accept. He continued to plead for new pilots and aircraft, and the effort finally paid off. On March 22, less than ten days before Kenney's return to Port Moresby, Hap Arnold called him to his office. He advised the Fifth Air Force commander that he had "squeezed everything dry to give him some help." That help was to come in the form of:

• One new heavy bombardment group
• Two and a half medium bombardment groups
• Three new fighter groups--and, "Oh, one of those groups will have to be a P-47 group. No one else wants them."

Desperate for anything, despite all the negatives he had heard about the P-47, and ignoring his own misgivings about the ungainly Jugs, Kenney said he would gladly take anything Hap chose to send.

Major Kearby took a badly needed break from making his squadrons ready for combat in Europe on April 3, two days after George Kenney left Washington to return to his own command. That seven-day leave gave Kearby the opportunity to spend a little time with his children and his beautiful wife Virginia, whom he affectionately called "Ginger." When he returned to work on April 9, it was to find something unusual going on. The 348th Fighter Group was being readied for deployment.

Within 30 days the group moved to Camp Shanks, New York, to begin their final preparations before leaving for overseas combat. On May 14 both pilots and planes were boarded on the Army Transport Henry Gibbons. On May 21 the Henry Gibbons passed through the Panama Canal, and the men aboard who were headed for war, at last, knew what many had begun to suspect, that the 348th Fighter Group with its P-47 Thunderbolts was not headed for Europe. They were, in fact, the group no one else wanted that Hap Arnold had promised General Kenney.

 

Not to be confused with the voices in my head.

 

It's when you start talking to yourself that things get interesting. Or so says me. Arguing with yourself brings in a whole lot of other issues.

 

I don't mind arguing with myself, intelligent conversations are rare these days.

 

Ya got THAT right !