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 steelbrassnwood | |
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I got to give my new bicycle a workout over the weekend as bobhowe and I rode out to Fort Tilden, in the Rockaways. I'd never been there before, and I'm rediscovering one of the joys of bicycling -- access to areas of the city you'd never walk to and couldn't drive to. Fort Tilden opened in 1917 and closed in 1974; despite the annoying Geocities promotional crap, this is a good page with history and more photos.
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Early 70s Police Car
As we rode down Flatbush Avenue we saw some old police cars in a parking lot. It was apparently part of some police memorial motorcycle ride. This car, the police car I remember as a child, caught my eye, so we rode in to check them out and take pictures. |
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Late 70s Police Car
Cops being cops, we had an "Oops, we walked into the wrong bar" moment. I had to take one more picture, this one of what I think was the first blue-and-white NYC police car. |
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Fort Tilden
We escaped the police, and rode over the bridge to the Rockaways, and made a right turn to Fort Tilden. It's mostly abandoned now, and quite photogenic.
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Fort Tilden
Much of the area looks like the setting for J.G. Ballard novel. Some portions of it seem to be used for reserve training, but mostly it's just a demonstration of nature's ability to recapture anything you try to take from it. |
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Fort Tilden
As with these vines, tearing an old building down in slow motion. |
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Battery Harris East
This emplacement used to hold a 16-inch gun that would fire a shell 30 miles. |
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Atop the emplacement
Looking out towards Sandy Hook. |
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Fuji Blimp
Heading to Sheepshead Bay. |
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Floyd Bennett Field
Speaking of J.G. Ballard! Abandoned, weedy runways, the occasional buzz of a radio-controlled plane, but mostly just silence and enormous spaces. |
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Fuji Blimp At Home
And then, you turn a corner, and there's the Fuji Blimp! Apparently, this is where it lands. The blimp balances on its one landing wheel as the handlers get it ready to take off. |
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Gondola
Closeup as the blimp takes off. Believe it or not, blimps are very loud. Big engines driving big propellers. |
Tags: brooklyn, photos
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From: bobhowe |
Date:
September 20th, 2005 11:41 am (UTC)
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Re: airport
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Oh, not so dismal, I think. Technically the hangars themselves are off-limits. Also off-limits at Floyd Bennett are the NYPD aviation field, the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Center, the New York City Department of Sanitation Training Center, and the U.S. Park Police training area behind its administration building. The Admin building and air traffic control tower is now ca museum. Otherwise there's lots of empty space to roam around.
Almost nothing in Fort Tilden, in Rockaway, is off limits except a locked maintenance yard and a small section of what used to be a U.S. Army Reserve Center. You do have to have a parking permit to park on Fort Tilden; those are given almost exclusively to fishermen. You can inquire at the Administration building, just south of the Marine Parkway Bridge, opposite the Firehouse (Engine 329, I think).
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From: bobhowe |
Date:
September 20th, 2005 05:33 pm (UTC)
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Re: gasssssp
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...had NAS NY not been closed the events of 9/11 would've been dramatically different.
I've heard people say that. In the pre-9/11 mindset, I'm not sure whether the Navy would have given pilots the go-ahead in time to shoot down a civilian jumbo jet, Dick Cheney's unconstitutional authorization notwithstanding. I read an account of a (I think) a Massachusetts ANG pilot who was given weapons-free, but who arrived on the scene too late. In retrospect he wasn't sure he could have pulled the trigger, either.
Here's the chain of events as I see it. In the 18 minutes between the time American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower:
An NAS NY (NAS Brooklyn?) flight of Tomcats or Hornets would have to be already airborne or on very short alert, and be armed with live weapons.
The NCA would have to authorize the downing of a civilian airliner.
The Navy would have to pass that order down the chain of command to the pilots.
The pilots would have to acquire and identify United Airlines Flight 175 on radar, and possibly visually, and be sure (enough) that it was heading for the WTC (or at least under the control of hijackers).
The pilots (or at least one of them) would have to pull the trigger.
The missiles would have to hit the target (this is likely: a 767 is big and relatively slow as air combat targets go).
The missiles would have to damage United 175 sufficiently, and sufficiently far from the WTC, to prevent the crash (this is probable, but not a given because of the aircraft's size, and because it could still fly with one engine destroyed).
There's a lot of room for error in that scenario, especially given the 18-minute window (practically speaking, more like a 5- or 10- minute window by the time everyone up and down the chain of command has their head in the game.
Even if everything worked out perfectly, of course, everyone on United 175 would still have died, along with an unknowable number of people on the ground, depending upon where the flight was intercepted.
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