Dianna Vaccarella

This Day in Aviation History: A Great Mother’s Day Story

Good Mother’s Day-eve fellow ECAHF’ers and happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there that spent the best part of their lives guiding their children to productive adulthood and built the next generation of successful Americans.  Thank you for your sacrifices . My mom, if she were honest, would probably have told you when […]

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Today In Aviation History: Alan Shepard’s View Showed Him a Fragile Planet

“It must be Italian” actor Darren McGavin (playing Ralphie’s dad, Mr. Parker) excitedly quipped when unpacking his “major award” in the 1983 movie, “A Christmas Story”.   “Frah-gee-lee!”, he added, phonetically pronouncing the word “Fragile” stamped on the crate.  It turned out, if you’ve seen the movie, that his major award (the “leg lamp”) was, indeed,

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An Aviation History Vignette “Twofer” for April 18th

Good Friday evening fellow ECAHFer’s.  According to History.com and downloaded yesterday from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-18/doolittle-leads-air-raid-on-tokyo, “On April 18, 1942, 16 American B-25 bombers, launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 650 miles east of Japan and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, attacked the Japanese mainland. “The now-famous Tokyo Raid did little real damage to Japan

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First Balloon to Cross the English Channel

Good evening fellow ECAHF’ers.  Aviation history is a wonderful world of exciting firsts peppered with a sad world of depressing bursts.  Even today there are risks in aviation, even with all our rules; procedures; navigational aids; high tech weather forecasting (so why are the forecasts still wrong much of the time?😊); inspectors and inspections; intense

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