Documenting Historical Events
January 16, 1991
A pilot's logbook can also be used to document historical events. Don and I were RON at Memphis on this date, a couple days into a week-long "around the horn" trip. We had just checked into the hotel, and I turned on the TV to catch the cable news. When I saw what was happening, I called Don in his room and told him to turn on his TV. Wolf Blitzer was reporting live from Baghdad as the bombs fell. (As an aside, I really don't understand how a great reporter could have subsequently gone so far wrong from genuine journalism).
So the initial events of the United States and its allies' reaction to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, usually termed the "Gulf War of 1990", were witnessed by us, while we were on the road in a hotel in Memphis. And notated in my logbook entries for that trip.
The real story here, of course, is the war and its consequences, but this particular story, with respect to one pilot's logbook, is how his logbook was used to document significant events that occurred in conjunction with some otherwise routine flight he completed on that date. A logbook entry helps the pilot remember his or her personal "when and where" with respect to some external event, and documents it indelibly for future recall.
12-03-2022
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References for Non-Pilots:
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