Flight Level 390

"The sun rose in the WEST"?

Only if the aircraft were flying faster than the Earth's rotational speed, which at Hawaii, would be almost 1000 mph.

Or did you mean it metaphorically?

Yrs,
A.Pedant.
 

Beautiful post Dave. I lived in a condo with a view of Pearl Harbor for three years and sometimes I would just look out at the harbor and think about what those men and women experienced and it always brought me to tears.

We often invited Pearl Harbor veterans to our military functions and to a man they could remember that morning like it just happened five minutes ago. I had the pleasure of escorting one of the veterans to the remembrance ceremony in 1999 and it stands as one of my favorite memories from my time in the Navy. Thanks for the post.
 

ole phat stu, thanks for catching that error. I need to hire a proof reader, I guess.
 

Dave,

I really enjoy reading your posts.

I suffer from vertigo but once I'm airborne I just want to fly higher to enjoy seeing our beautiful planet, the sky, the wonderful clouds and my destination.

I bought a globe today. £4 or $10 in your money. (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Hawaii is a dot in a very large Pacific Ocean.

The World today is a safer place because of the sacrifices that started at Pearl Harbour.

Please keep writing. And continue publishing photographs from the cockpit - wonderful.
 

Dave, here is my post about 7 December 1941. Not many words but one hell of a lot of pics.
 

Dave,
I'm glad to see you posting again in your fascinating blog. As a footnote to this tribute, you and readers of Flight Level 390 may be interested to learn of the recent passing of one of Pearl Habor's heroes -- a distinguished fighter pilot named Kenneth M. Taylor. Taylor was one of the two Army Air Corps pilots who managed to get their P-40s into the air during the attack, noted Taylor's fascinating obituary, published on Dec. 7th in The New York Times. Taylor was 86. He and fellow pilot Lt. George S. Welch -- the first American pilots to shoot down Japanese planes -- each received the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism.”

Welch, who went onto become an ace in the Pacific, died in a plane crash in 1954 as a test pilot for North American Aviation. Anybody who has seen "Tora, Tora, Tora," of course, knows about these pilots' exploits on Dec. 7th. One detail mentioned in Taylor's obituary, which was news to me (or that I'd forgotten), is that Lt. Taylor went into battle wearing tuxedo pants. On the morning of the attack, he was asleep after a late-night officer's party. Awakened by explosions, he pulled on the tuxedo pants and sped with Welch out to an airfield in a Buck.

Taylor's cause of death, incidentally, was given as a strangulated hernia -- a sad reminder that a heroic life does not grant any of us any reprieve from the ravages of time.
 

An awful lot of us were there two years before you...and the world was probably saved in the Summer of 1940...but we can forgive you that much...
 

I'm fortunate to have had several WWII veterans in my immediately family. One of them was on Oahu on December 7th and spent the rest of the war island hopping. He never talked about that day, ever. I kind of wish he would've as I'd have loved to hear it but I respected his wishes and didn't press. He died some 17 years ago.

Another of my uncles served in the Pacific and survived a kamikaze attack on his carrier a few months prior to Okinawa. He's still with us and was more than happy to share his stories once he knew I was genuinely interested.

I'm always truly humbled and fortunate at the same time.