I commented last Friday that I would give quite a lot to go back to the world I came up in. It’s true, although there are many things, like the good half of the internet, I’d miss dearly. One of the things I wouldn’t miss is our dependence on calculators. One reason for that is that on any random equation, I can solve it quicker (and accurately enough for almost all applications) on my slide rule than I can on a calculator. Now yeah, my old gollywog TI-92+ with it programming for electrical work is closer for that (and I don’t have to remember the equations, but the average calculator is slow, and I can read my slide rule in the sun.
What could you do with a slide rule and some knowledge? You could build this
Or you could build an aircraft that could haul your whole house around with room for your garage and cars as well.
Or this whole series
Or even this, which a change of doctrine meant only two got built. I’ve seen the survivor and it is as awesome a thing as I’ve seen.
A decade earlier, if you spoke American with a funny ahkzent, you might have worked on this.
While they were building this, perhaps the most beautiful plane ever built, we were working on a legend of our own.
Every once in a while (so far always a drill) something happens around the Buff bases. It’s called the “Baby Elephant Walk” and it is an alert launch of the ready bombers, often all of them that will fly. I was working about a mile from the end of Minot ADB’s working runway once when it happened. There’s no describing the sound and feel of 15+ BUFFS at 15 second intervals. The end of the world doesn’t;t start to describe it. So, where are they now? Here’s where.
Nothing new about that. American heavy bombers have been returning to England ever since the 1938 Berlin Crisis whenever necessary. So once again these guys are following in their father’s and now Grandfather’s footsteps. But what are they doing now?
Patrolling Nato’s easter boundary, of course, what weapons are they carrying? nobody knows for sure, but I doubt Putin wants to find out.
When I was in high school my dream was to fly these beasts, but I never once thought they would outlive me. The wonders of the slide rule, and the imagination of the men and women who ran them.
And when they got home, how did they entertain themselves? Like this
.
Building things to last – we should try it again sometime.