Hey guys,

I'm winding down my 11 day work trip over here in Asia. Yesterday, we did a "Saipan turn". We left Tokyo at 1030 hrs, flew to Saipan, sat for an hour and a half, and landed back here at about 1900 hrs. We briefly saw Iwo Jima as we passed by southbound on the B586 airway, but I didn't get a chance to snap any pics. I was hoping that we'd be flight planned on the same airway headed north (and that the ever present clouds would give us a glimpse of that hallowed ground).

I got lucky. We were indeed planned on the same airway headed back to Narita, and were deviating around a small line of TRWs that perpetually lie just north of Iwo this time of year. We decided (and received ATC clearance over the dreaded HF radios) to weave a bit left of course. This put us even closer to Iwo, so I had the trusty little Canon camera out, fresh batteries installed, and sat hoping for a view.

Here are some of the pics I took:

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Looking west headed north. We're at FL380, and getting a smooth ride. I'm STILL amazed at how massive the Pacific ocean truly is....and the fact that young men flew single engine machines over this vastness. Of course, many of them never returned...

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Looking north now (to about the 1 o'clock position on the jet) at the line of storms we're deviating around. The "inter tropical convergence zone" that was made famous with the Air France A330 crash, puts these little monsters here darn near every day this time of year. Again, it boggles my mind that the P-51 drivers off of Iwo would fight these things almost daily headed both to and from the Japanese home islands. And they were NOT up at our lofty perch...they were down at the really ugly altitudes.

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At FL380 just before we received our clearance to climb to 400. "Vasko" is an intersection on airway B586, and the little blue circle with "RJAW" next to it is the airport on Iwo Jima. You can see the weather painting on the HSI. Interestingly, the F/O on this trip flew C-130s in the Marine Corps, and has landed on Iwo a few times.

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A (fuzzy) view of the weather on the radar.

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A look at the crown of one of the cells. We're now at FL400 and it's just slightly above us. I'm still looking left down through the clouds trying to get a glimpse of the island.

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There it is!

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Zoomed in a bit.

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Out the L2 window.

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Sliding away from us. I'm always left speechless by the thought of so many young men viewing this as the last land mass they would ever see....

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I love sunsets at altitude. Kind of a fitting last picture I think.

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Thanks guys for viewing my pics...

Have a great day all,

BBall

BBall, do you ever tell your passengers that you are so close to these locations? And, do the flight attendants ever sense any type of feelings from the passengers passing by these hallowed, historical sites...............

Thanks for the pictures BBall.


Wheels

Great photos and narrative.



We have a joke when we are flying...that anytime anyone asks us where we are we point out the window at the closest city and say it's Memphis..and whatever river we happen to be near is the Mississippi... LOL...

More great pictures, BBall!

LMAO....yep, same same. It was horrible a few years ago when the "austerity measures" forced things like in-flight movies off of the jet. We'd fly all the way to Anchorage from Minneapolis with nothing to occupy the folks (save their own books, magazines, etc). On a clear day it was torture for us, for we'd get the constant calls from the cabin attendants relaying the passenger request of "where are we?", "what river is that?", "what's the name of that town?". This isn't a problem until you get in the NW Territories of Canada, where dirt roads, lakes and hamlets aren't mapped on our IFR High Altitude Enroute Charts (go figure). We'd either whip out a trusty Rand McNally (only the hardcores carried one of those), or we'd just make something up.

"Oh....that's the BIG BEAR river, empties into the LITTLE BEAR lake, and that town is...uh...er....the town of MOOSE JAW Canada. Yeah, that's it...."

Worked like a charm.



Oh, and TBob....we never point out things like Iwo Jima (the planes are full of (mostly) Japanese passengers), but we occasionally have an interested cabin attendant who wants to be notified when we pass it (assuming we can see it). I did in fact fly with an "infamous" 747 Captain years ago (when I was a lowly Flight Engineer) that made a P.A. that went down in the annals of Northwest Airlines lore. They were passing south of Hiroshima, Japan and he picked up the passenger address mic and said something to the effect of..."and passing off to the right of the aircraft is the city of Hiroshima....where we paid you folks back for Pearl Harbor."

Not good. He ended up getting in a HUGE amount of trouble over that (go figure). I flew with him on his next trip back from being on "double secret probation", and as we passed south of that same city on our way to somewhere in Korea, he just started chuckling. I asked him what he was laughing about, and he relayed the story...

...he was indeed a character.

later all,

BBall

double secret probation..can you get a cream for that lol.

Nice pics Bball, i would be fascinated by it everytime too.

Always fascinated by battle sites.

Your first couple of pics with nothing but ocean, and the thought of flying single-engine fighters and bombers, with engines whose times between overhaul were sometimes less than 50 hours, boggles the mind. The bravery of those men, not to mention those who went ashore on Iwo, is staggering.

THX for posting these and the pics in the other thread.

I am just "transferring" a C-130 in FSX and FSEconomy from Australia to Europe and our plan was first to go via Hawaii and the US. I`ve read much about the war in the Pacific, but only now I realized the wastness of the Pacific, while doing the flight-planning (FSE gives you jobs for v$ and monitors fuel and maintenance hours, not all airports provide fuel or repairshops, so you have to be careful not to get stranded in a god-forgotten place). I had stops (under many more) at Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima (where I finally realized, it would be economically not a good idea and stretching the range of the bird to dangerous levels, so I turned around and am doing the trip via Asia and the Middle East now, reached Pakistan yesterday).

I was amazed how small Iwo Jima really is.

So your pics added much to my virtual trip (which I fly in real time btw.).

THX again!

Karsten

Thanks guys.






The following is a (long) quote from an incredible book titled "Wings Of Courage" (http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/Wings-of-Courage_9781849082198). It chronicles four different fighter units in the Second World War. The last group it highlights is the VII Fighter Command. They flew the VLR (very long range) P-51s from Iwo Jima escorting the Superforts and/or flying attack missions to Japan.

These particular passages are from 01 June 1945, when 148 "Sun Setter" pilots left Iwo headed north to escort 400 B-29s to attack Osaka. They encountered a storm front farther north than the one I tangled with...the results were disastrous. Take a read...

(from a Mustang pilot that was on one of the B-29 "weather ships...they required one P-51 pilot onboard each mother ship)

"I can still see in my mind's eye that endless line of cumulus clouds that marked the front, visible from about 100 miles away. We were aware of the tremendous build-up and began to climb. We were pushing the B-29, yet it appeared that no matter how fast we climbed, the tops of the clouds stayed with us, and the closer we got the more obvious it was we'd never get over the top. I remember looking at the rate of climb indicator, and it was at 1,000ft per minute. Still the clouds boiled up faster."

(from a 458th FS P-51 pilot)

"The front was entered between 10,000 and 11,000ft. Visibility was zero, rain heavy, turbulence intense and violent. Groups, squadrons, flights and elements lost contact and scattered. Traffic on all radio channels was so heavy that communications was nearly impossible. Some pilots lost control completely, spun, recovered, and spun again. Some recovered in time, some did not. Only 27 P-51s -none from the 458th- passed through the front and arrived over the target area."

(from another P-51 pilot)

"We headed into the soup. The confusion was unbelievable. Our formation dissolved from absolute necessity. I found myself alone, so I tacked onto a B-29 and flew formation with him until he indicated we were at 200ft. I had seen the water a couple of times and figured I would be safer on my own. I picked up a reciprocal heading and broke into the clear on the Iwo side of the front. Maj. Crim was in the vicinity, so I tacked onto his wing and returned to Iwo. God, what a mess."

(and the last quote from a Mustang pilot)

"I thought we would enter the clouds and in a few moments exit on the other side, but that wasn't the case. Imagine taking 65 or so P-51s in tight formation into a weather front with no sight distance, heavy rain and hard buffeting. Very afraid of hitting another airplane in formation, I was one of the lucky ones and got through it okay. I don't know what happened to my wingman, who was a fill-in from the 45th FS (1 Lt. Lawrence Lortie, missing in action)."

and from the text of the book,

"The numbers tell the whole lesson of June 1. Of the 24 Mustang pilots lost that day, not one went down as a result of enemy action -Mother Nature took them all."

Chilling words to be sure. It would be the worst mission in the history of VII Fighter Command.



God bless those young men.



Their courage was (and still is) unbelievable.

Take care all,

BBall