The Warbird's Forum

June 11: Trump is catching on

The president has decided to give Iran some more of his "love taps" after deciding that the mullahs were "playing us for suckers." Well, speak for yourself, Mr Trump! They certainly weren't fooling me, nor, I suspect, the vast majority of Americans. You were the only sucker in that game.

Now if you'd only apply your newfound wisdom to that other American enemy who's been playing you along: Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. And you don't have to risk any American lives in the process. Ukrainian soldiers are applying the love taps on your behalf!

Read my earlier musings

Book of the Month

If Russia under Putin seems odd, so was Russia under Stalin, and even more so under the sway of Grigori Rasputin, who as much as anyone was responsible for ending the Romanov dynasty that ruled the country for 300 years. The story is brilliantly told by Antony Beevor in Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs. See my review in the Warbird's Book Club.

An airman looks back over a century

The Second World War ended in 1945, and few among those who fought it are still among us. I think of the Flying Tigers as those who served in the First American Volunteer Group, of whom nobody survives, but there are still some airmen around from the uniformed squadrons that replaced the AVG in the summer of 1942. Among them is Mel McMullen, 101 years old this month, and still married to the girl he met when he returned to Los Angeles at the end of the war. Eighty years wed -- is there even a gemstone for that? See their story in the Annals of the Flying Tigers.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford. Support Ukraine by contributing to Razom (a tax-deductible US-based charity). Or its military through the National Bank of Ukraine.

And welcome to the Warbird's Forum!

Here are a thousand or so files about the the planes, pilots, and warfighters of the past hundred years, grouped under these headings: