Convergence Zone
Remember the first time your parents put you on a plane by yourself? It was just about the coolest thing ever, wasn’t it? And yet, a few hundred thousand frequent flyer miles later, the thrill is gone and you accept the experience of air travel for what it is: red-eyes, center seats, rotgut Chardonnay, and Ben Affleck movies. It only takes one instance of being stuck on a snowed-in runway in Omaha to have all the wonder of the skies sucked out of you.
By Sheri Quirt | July 18, 2006
Short Trips
You could see the abject terror in the young seaman's eyes as he clung to the side of an anti-aircraft battery on an aircraft carrier under kamikaze attack somewhere off Okinawa in 1945. He looked so helpless against the mayhem and destruction coming from the sky.
The scene was a fleeting moment in a black-and-white film shot during the horrifying attack -- one of hundreds of Japanese suicide sorties mounted against the U.S. fleet late in the Pacific war. But the footage of that particular moment in that young man's life told volumes about the horror of war.
By Jeff Larsen | January 13, 2005
