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Bill Walton
Bill Walton is a life-long aviation enthusiast and expert in aircraft recognition. As a teenager Bill helped his engineer father build an award-winning T-18 homebuilt airplane in their Wisconsin basement. Bill is a freelance writer, an avid sailor, engineer, announcer, husband, father, uncle, mentor, coach, and Navy veteran. Bill lives north of Houston TX with his wife and son under the approach path to KDWH runway 17R, which means they get to look up at a lot of airplanes. A very good thing.
Latest stories
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The Crusader: The Last Gunfighter Was One Impressive Engineering Triumph
When Vought produced this retrospective film about their F8U-1 and F8U-2 Crusader fighter the days of the Last Gunfighter serving in frontline fleet squadrons were numbered. Their other fighter design of the period, the XF8U-3 Crusader III, was intended not only to compete with the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II but to keep the company […] More
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USS Harry S Truman and CVW-1 Are Loaded For Bear and Ready For Trouble
On April 11th 2018 the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) departed Norfolk for the ship’s latest deployment. The carrier and her crew of 6,500 sailors, along with the attendant Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG), is headed to the Mediterranean Sea and points Middle East. Escorted by several guided missile destroyers, the carrier’s primary […] More
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Tigershark: When What Might Have Been Became What Never Was
When this promotional film was produced during the early 1980s to extoll the virtues of the Northrop F-5G (F-20) Tigershark, the jet was in competition with the likes of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. Though it was an evolutionary development of Northrop’s by-then successful F-5E Tiger fighter bomber, the Tigershark was much more than […] More
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BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: US Air Force F-16 Viper Jet Down In Nevada Desert
UPDATE: According to this Air Force statement released by Nellis Public Affairs, the F-16 that crashed in Nevada on Wednesday 4/4/2018 belonged to the Thunderbirds: NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. – A U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds pilot was killed when his F-16 Fighting Falcon crashed over the Nevada Test and Training Range today at approximately 10:30 […] More
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Watch When Jet Engines Were Very Young and Expectations Were Sky High
Made in 1952, the film “Jet Propulsion” was produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica along with the Illinois Institute of Technology. At this point in aviation history, jet engines were still behind the power curve. The jet engine would of course go on to become a reliable and efficient power plant, but when the film was made, […] More
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Achtung! The Luftwaffe Nearly Became an A-7 Corsair II Operator
Well SLUF fans we scoured the interweb but just couldn’t find this visually striking footage with an English narration. The German version of the film is narrated in German for a reason though. During the mid-1970s the German Luftwaffe was looking for a replacement for their license-built Lockheed F-104G Starfighter fighter bombers. Vought’s A-7 Corsair […] More
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This NAVAR Safety Film Still Serves As A Great Retrospective Of Cold War Airpower
The film “Aircraft Accident Prevention- Ground Accidents” was produced during the early 1960s and shot primarily at Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville in Florida. The Navy created the film in an attempt to control the kind of preventable accidents caused primarily by human error. Accidents were on the rise and with the sophisticated jet aircraft […] More
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The Air Commandos Were the Genesis of USAF Special Operations Command
The United States Air Force (USAF) produced the film “Special Air Warfare Forces 1965” to depict the formation and deployment of the 1st Air Commando Group to Southeast Asia at the time. Formed to train UAF pilots on older propeller driven aircraft like the Curtiss C-46 Commando and Douglas C-47 Skytrain airlifters, Douglas B-26K Invader […] More
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Watch: The Air Force Wages Slow-Motion War From The Air Over Vietnam
The United States Air Force (USAF) produced films reporting the results of air strikes flown over North and South Vietnam. This film, produced by the 1532nd Photo Group and reporting on air airstrikes that took place during early 1968, features both familiar and unfamiliar strike camera footage. North American F-100 Super Sabre, Republic F-105 Thunderchief, […] More
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Watch Amazing Slo-Mo Footage Carrier Qualifications Aboard the USS Eisenhower
Before a Student Naval Aviator (SNA) earns those coveted Wings of Gold, he or she will fly Beechcraft T-6B Texan II (JPATS) trainers with Training Air Wing FOUR (TRAWING 4) at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi or with TRAWING 5 at NAS Whiting Field near Pensacola. If the SNA is destined to fly either strike […] More
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The Rockwell B-1A Lancer Was Way Ahead of Its Time, But Brought Down By Politics
When Rockwell and the United States Air Force (USAF) produced the film “B-1 On the Move- Supersonic” the Bone was still in test. Although the B-1A was a truly impressive and very capable bomber, political considerations did the aircraft in. President Jimmy Carter killed the program. President Ronal Reagan brought a modified version of the […] More
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Watch the Freshest BUFF in the Fleet Wow the Crowds at Last Year’s EAA AirVenture
From our good friends at Airshow Stuff comes this clip of the Boeing B-52H Stratofortress Air Force serial number 61-0007 (CN 464434) performing flybys for the huge crowd of avgeeks at EAA AirVenture 2017. This particular BUFF, Ghost Rider, was the first B-52H to be regenerated from long-term storage with the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and […] More
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