Yesterday's Wings

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1982. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. Dan Guravich ( Color Photographer). [6], 202 pages. Illustrations (some in color). Index. DJ has wear, tears, soiling, and chips. DJ is price clipped. Format is approximately 8.5 inches by 11.25 inches. Describes the history of the fighter planes of World War II and depicts the efforts of the members of the Confederate Air Force to rebuild and restore these airplanes. This is a pictorial celebration of the great aircraft of World War II and the C.A.F. pilots who fly them today. Joseph E. Brown,was a major in English at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Hawaii, Joe then served in the U.S. Navy from 1948- 1952 as a journalist and public information specialist in the Pacific during the Korean Conflict. A distinguished award winning free-lance writer and photographer, Joe wrote and edited for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and served as editor of Sea Magazine. He was editor and publisher of Oceans Magazine. Before that he was an editor with the San Diego Union newspaper. Joe also was a war correspondent in Saigon. The origin of the Commemorative Air Force can be found in an organization called the "Confederate Air Corps" created by Oscar Harper in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953. The CAC established several features that later became key characteristics of the CAF: folksy, tongue-in-cheek southern humor; a membership structure based on each member having the equal rank of colonel; and a rallying cry of "Semper, Mint Julep". In 1957, Lloyd Nolen and four friends purchased a P-51 Mustang. With the purchase of the Mustang, known as Red Nose, the group that became the CAF was unofficially founded. In 1958, the group made their second purchase of two Grumman F8F Bearcats. Along with the P-51, this gave the pilots the two most advanced piston-engine fighters to see service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and the United States Navy. In 1960, the CAF began seriously to search for other World War II aircraft.