Norm the Navigator
This article is partly autobiographical, and partly about the incredible men & women I grew up around, combat pilots and test pilots, navigators and other aircrews, and the women who made their planes, raised their brats, and sent them off to war. The last part of this is about one navigator I knew briefly, Norm “Bicky” Whalen, and the incredible true story of Operation TIDAL WAVE. Appendices detail the final destruction of Ploesti’s oil refining capability in WWII, and little remembered info about the fate of our Vietnam POW / MIAs.