So I crawled aboard the B-17 at the Airshow...

[warrprayer]

8. In my defense...

a guy just as big as me, perhaps bigger, was one of the most (in)famous fighter/cargo pilots in American history...

<snip>

"NEW YORK — More than half a century after he died in the flaming crash of a CIA-owned cargo plane and became one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, a legendary soldier of fortune known as “Earthquake McGoon” is finally coming home.

The skeletal remains of James B. McGovern Jr., discovered in an unmarked grave in remote northern Laos in 2002, were positively identified on Sept. 11 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii."

"
Larger than life
Six feet and 260 pounds — huge for a fighter pilot — McGovern carved out a flying career during and after World War II that made him a legend in Asia. An American saloon owner in China dubbed him “Earthquake McGoon,” after a hulking hillbilly character in the comic strip “Li’l Abner.”

He died on May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. “Looks like this is it, son,” McGovern radioed another pilot as his crippled plane staggered 75 miles into Laos, where it cartwheeled into a hillside."

<snip>

McGovern was one of the original "Flying Tigers" who fought the Japanese in China.


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15335924/ns/us_news-life/t/earthquake-mcgoon-finally-flying-home/