TOM JONES

ASTRONAUT SPEAKER

Going Live with Orion at NASA JSC

April 2, 2009 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

I appeared on Fox News Channel this morning, April 2, 2009, on America’s Newsroom, to discuss the new Orion crew exploration vehicle. Host Bill Hemmer conducted the inteview with me in Bldg. 9, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF) at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Watch the 5-minute segment here.

The Orion mockup in Bldg. 9 in Houston is used for crew seat arrangement tests, installation of proposed instrument panels and avionics, and fit checks of cargo container designs. Other mockups of the Orion crew module are involved in water handling and recovery tests (next week at the Cape), the Ares I-X flight test launch from Pad 39B in late summer, and in the upcoming pad abort tests at White Sands Missile Range, NM.

Orion is the shuttle’s replacement. It’s time to get on with building and flying it. We will miss the shuttle. But it can’t go to deep space. America needs Orion to continue to lead in space exploration.

www.AstronautTomJones.com

Orion crew module mockup at Naval Surface Warfare Center near Washington, DC, on April 1, 2009 (NASA)

Orion crew module mockup at Naval Surface Warfare Center near Washington, DC, on April 1, 2009 (NASA)

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The Voice of Quentin C. Aanenson

December 31, 2008 By TOM JONES 5 Comments

Quent Aanenson narrates "A Fighter Pilot's Story" (from his web site)

Quent Aanenson narrates "A Fighter Pilot's Story" (from his web site)

Quentin C. Aanenson, in Tribute

By Thomas D. Jones

Quentin C. Aanenson, WWII fighter pilot and understated witness to the physical and psychic wounds of that war, earned national recognition fifteen years ago, when his self-written video documentary A Fighter Pilot’s Story aired on public television. Aanenson, who died on December 28, 2008 at the age of 87, was that fighter pilot of the title, surely one of the most reflective American warriors of the Second World War.

Aanenson was born and raised in Luverne, Minnesota, but in recent decades was a life insurance executive and resident of Bethesda, Maryland. He set out in the early 1990s to make for his family a record of his combat experiences flying the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber in 1944-45, supporting Eisenhower’s GIs as they advanced from Normandy’s beaches all the way into the heart of Germany.

He fought a very dangerous war, dive-bombing and strafing the German army from low altitude. Aanenson was over the D-Day invasion beaches in June 1944, and he directed air strikes as a forward air controller through the American crossing of the Rhine in March 1945. His frank observations of how the brutality of war affected his own life during and after combat offered today’s Americans some of the most revealing insights into what “the Greatest Generation” experienced in World War II.

Aanenson’s video combined his own photographs with images and film garnered from the National Archives, woven together with his memories and excerpts from his letters home. He wrote to one particular girl: Jacqueline Greer, a secretary he had met at the airfield in Baton Rouge where he trained in the powerful Republic P-47. Jackie was his confidant, and his letters home to her, and her replies, formed the narrative backbone of the moving A Fighter Pilot’s Story. The love Aanenson expressed to her and the support Jackie lent him in those letters proved a welcome island of tenderness in the swirl of combat that surrounded him for nine months.

Word of Aanenson’s powerful story soon spread beyond his family and friends and led to a 1993 broadcast on Maryland public television. A Fighter Pilot’s Story went on to air nationally, adding to the historical tribute being paid to America’s WWII veterans to mark the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Aanenson’s introspection was rare among fighter pilots, men of few words, selected not for their self-awareness but for aggressiveness in the air. They typically let their record in combat do the talking. Quentin Aanenson was an exception. Co-author June English and I included one of his letters home to Jackie in our 1998 book for young people, chronicling the nation’s military history. His words, telling her what he was going through, how the deaths of close friends affected him, were direct even as they tried to spare her the horrors he saw every day from this Thunderbolt. Aanenson’s letter helped us bring home to today’s young Americans what it meant to be a citizen-soldier in World War II.

Flying with the 391st Fighter Squadron of the 366th Fighter Group, Aanenson saw much of death and destruction as the Allies pushed the German army across France and penetrated Hitler’s Reich. Attacking rail yards in Rouen, France in July 1944, his Thunderbolt took a direct hit from a deadly German 88mm antiaircraft shell. The fuse failed to explode; he flew the battered plane back to base. On August 3, German flak over Vire again caught his plane, damaging his controls and setting his cockpit afire. Battle damage had jammed his canopy; he couldn’t bail out. Trapped, Aanenson determined not to burn alive in the cockpit: he dove his plane, “looking like a comet,” straight toward the ground. But the steep, high-speed plunge extinguished the fire, and the 23-year-old pilot somehow got the Thunderbolt lined up with his nearby runway. He put the barely controllable P-47 down at 170 mph, but a blown tire caused the damaged landing gear to collapse, spinning the big fighter around. The impact tore loose his shoulder harness and cracked his skull against the gunsight. Two ground crewmen pulled him from the smoking wreckage, unconscious but alive.

Ninety minutes later, burns bandaged but still suffering from a concussion (which caused blinding headaches for years after), Aanenson managed to stand in front of his mangled fighter for a Picture Post photographer. The image captured a young man, wounded, weary–yet determined to do the job he was assigned until victory was won.

How did he climb into a cockpit to face death again and again? “It changed from patriotism to fighting for my buddies and the guys on the front lines,” he told me in June 2006 in an interview for a new book about the Thunderbolt men.

Assigned in the winter of 1945 to direct air strikes from an observer’s post on the front lines, Aanenson lived and fought with the GIs he had helped so often from the air. On Feb. 23, near Duren, Germany, an enemy shell exploded in his post in the great hall of a ruined castle, spraying him with bits of what had once been a soldier’s body. He calmly brushed off the gore and got back on the radio, vectoring more Thunderbolts onto the target.

After surviving 75 combat missions, Aanenson rotated home in March 1945, and a month later married his sweetheart, Jackie. Their marriage, forged in the harrowing separation experienced by so many wartime couples, thrived for 63 years.

Producer Ken Burns featured the Aanensons’ story in his epic 2007 documentary The War. Thrust into that devastating conflict, Quentin Aanenson faced its horrors again and again, and fought determinedly to bring his country victory. Ninety of his fellow pilots from his 366th Fighter Group didn’t make it home. He closed A Fighter Pilot’s Story with these words:

Only rarely, now, in my dreams or nightmares, do I revert to those days of death and despair that took place so long ago. I see the faces of my buddies who were killed. I see them as they were ‑‑ while those of us who survived grow old ‑‑ they will be forever young. I will always remember them ‑‑ and I will always wonder how it was that I escaped their fate.

Aanenson’s powerful postwar testimony reminds us of that sacrifice, freely offered up by so many to guarantee the liberty we enjoy today. With Quentin Aanenson’s fellow airmen, and grateful Americans everywhere, I mourn his passing, even as we remember his eloquence and courage.

Thomas D. Jones, pilot and veteran shuttle astronaut, is the author (with Robert F. Dorr) of Hell Hawks! (Zenith, 2008) the true story of a band of Thunderbolt brothers who fought in the air alongside Quentin C. Aanenson.

December 28, 2009

Filed Under: History, Uncategorized

Night Flight

September 9, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Tom with Sky Walking editor John Ross on an earlier Diamond flight

Tom with Sky Walking editor John Ross on an earlier Diamond flight

Last night was a beautiful September evening, with thin high clouds and mild breezes. Needing to practice night landings for future instrument flying, I took off in the Diamond DA-40 from Leesburg Airport just at sundown. I could just glimpse the fields and farms below me as I headed west from Leesburg, over Purcellville, and on to the dark mass of the Blue Ridge. With just a few lights glinting off the Shendandoah River, I got in two landings and an ILS approach at Winchester, then dropped in at Martinsburg to touch-and-go alongside the hulking C-5 Galaxies lining the parking ramp. My landings were actually more gentle than my last round in the daytime!

I finally returned to Leesburg on a GPS approach just after 9 p.m. local, settling onto the brilliantly outlined runway and taxiing in to a quiet airport. I was the last pilot to tie down my plane and head back to the parking lot. The flight was a perfect end to a nearly perfect late summer day.

Although I was usually traveling no faster than 110 knots, the flight reminded me of the many night flights over West Texas I enjoyed in the back seat of a NASA T-38. I can only contrast my exhilarating mission last evening with what the P-47 Thunderbolt pilots of the Hell Hawks experienced every time they strapped on a P-47.

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In the air with a Fortress

September 4, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

I was up flying out of Leesburg, VA, on Sat. Aug. 30, during the Leesburg Airport (KJYO) Open House. In the traffic pattern with me, while I was practicing Cessna 172 touch-and-go’s–was the Experimental Aircraft Association’s B-17 Flying Fortress, Aluminum Overcast. What a sight, and what a pleasure, to share the sky with such a classic airplane. On the ground I had a chance to see the -17up close, too. Salutes to all Eighth Air Force (and other Command) B-17 crewmen, for flying this great aircraft in combat.

This was the first time this “old” bomber pilot (B-52, 1978-83) had shared the local sky with such a beautiful B-17.

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Hell Hawks! interview posted

September 4, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Last Sunday’s (Aug. 31) Hell Hawks! radio interview on the John Batchelor show, broadcast from Los Angeles, is now posted on my web site and at Batchelor’s podcast page. Col. Dave Harmon tells the story of his miraculous survival from a direct hit on his main fuel tank by a dead German gunner. I added the overall context for this 14-minute story about the Hell Hawks! Thanks to John Batchelor for featuring this important story and gripping new book.

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“Hell Hawks!” reunion featured P-47 Thunderbolt four-ship

September 2, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

The Hell Hawks (365th Fighter Group) reunited in Ann Arbor from Aug. 7-10. About 15 pilots and ground crewmen attended, and took in the Thunder Over Michigan air show on Aug. 9. This video features the rare sight of four Thunderbolts in formation, producing sounds and images that many of the vets had not seen since 1945. While the Thunderbolts were roaring overhead, I was signing copies of Hell Hawks! and passing them on to some of the Hell Hawks fighter pilots (Bob Hagan, Ed Lopez, and Mike Cannon) who were kind enough to add their signatures.

You can find some great photos from the P-47s’ appearance at Thunder Over Michigan at Bill Scheuerman’s site.

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Hell Hawks! on air and on sale

September 1, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Saturday, Aug. 30, saw Bob Dorr and I signing copies of Hell Hawks! at the National Air & Space Museum’s Udvar Hazy Center. Museum visitors purchased nearly the entire stock on hand — 63 copies went out the door, along with a dozen copies of Sky Walking.

Sunday evening, Aug. 31, saw me on the air with radio talk show host John Batchelor, interviewing me about Hell Hawks! I was joined by Hell Hawk veteran and pilot David N. Harmon, Col. USAF (ret). Col. Harmon flew a combat mission in his P-47, Elsie, on Sept. 19, 1944. His flight bombed a German panzer concentration with deadly effect. Shortly after, near Bitburg, Harmon took on a Wehrmacht flak battery that had downed several American planes. He dove on the guns at 400 mph in a steep, 40-degree dive, hammering the guns with .50-caliber fire from his eight machine guns. A dead German gunner, slumped over the firing bar, kept spitting shells into the air–one hit Harmon square in his Jug’s belly.

The 20mm round exploded in Harmon’s main fuel tank. He felt a tremendous jolt to the plane, and his armored seat pan leapt several inches higher with the impact. Staying low to avoid flak tracers streaking down from a parallel ridge, Harmon kicked in water injection for extra speed. His Pratt & Whitney R2800 engine roared in response, and after five miles on the tree tops, Harmon was able to climb and streak for home. He landed back at base with his plane perforated by flak hits; the P-47 was condemned to the junk heap. But not before his crew chief retrieved the nose fragment of the 20mm shell that burst in the main tank. Full of aviation gas, the tank didn’t contain enough air to support an explosion, and the fluid helped smother the shock of the explosion.

Harmon won the Distinguished Flying Cross (his second) for that action. He still has the 20mm shell tip. He will be 89 years old this fall. He signs his letters: “The Luckiest Man Alive.”

The radio interview is posted at my website: the first item on the “What’s New” page.

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American Heritage: Fred Haise and Apollo 13

August 29, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

The Fall ’08 issue of American Heritage magazine features eight great survival stories. One is my article on the Apollo 13 near-disaster, focusing on the skills that enabled Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise and his crew to survive a crippling oxygen tank explosion and execute a harrowing four-day return from deep space. I interviewed Haise via phone at his home in suburban Houston. He not only survived Apollo 13, but two years later, after sustaining severe burns in an air crash, returned to flying status and in 1977 piloted the shuttle Enterprise to its first test landing. Today, NASA and the nation need leaders and explorers like Haise, Lovell, and Swigert. See my website for an excerpt of the article. The issue is on newstands now.

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Launch entry

August 29, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Welcome to my Flight Notes. I’m former NASA astronaut Tom Jones (www.AstronautTomJones.com). Check here for my latest thoughts on our greatest adventure, the human exploration of the cosmos. Thanks for visiting, and leave a comment or say Hello.

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