WE NEED TO FLY!

On 23 January 1968 the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence ship, was sailing off the east coast of North Korea when she was accosted by several armed North Korean vessels. Following a failed attempt to get away and with no usable firepower, the captain had little choice but to comply; the ship was captured and towed into port at Wonsan, on Korea's east coast. 

The USS Pueblo

The U.S. State Department tried to gain release of the ship and its complement but the North Koreans were having none of that; the crew was taken to POW camps in North Korea where they were imprisoned and maltreated for the next eleven months. 

Shortly after the incident President Lyndon Johnson activated 15,000 reservists, including the Ohio Air National Guard fighter squadron at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, a unit I had joined 18 months earlier. We were called to active duty on 25 January and at 8 a.m. roll call the next day 98 percent of our troops were present and ready to go. But where? Or when? Or even why? We had no idea.

THE AIRPLANES THAT FLEW, AND FLEW, AND FLEW.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s airplane manufacturers were springing up all over the country and building flying machines that pushed the boundaries of conventional designs. One of these unusual airplanes was built with hardware-store materials (except for a motorcycle engine) and acquired the nickname "Flying Bathtub." Awkward and fragile though it seemed, the Bathtub flew fast enough to win the Dayton Daily News Light Airplane Race in 1924…and one of its descendants won another air race that was quite different.

"Flying Bathtub"