Talk:Barney M. Giles

Japan-US Flight
Article says 14,300 kilometres (8,900 miles). My calculations show only 10,100 kilometres (6,272 miles) from Tokyo to Chicago. Was there a different starting point, or was the route not direct? Or what? Thanks AMCKen (talk) 18:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)AMCKen


 * Thanks for pointing that out! I don't know which source made me put 8900 in, but the actual straight-line distance was 5839 statute miles, or 9397 km, per this online calculator. The starting point was Chitose Air Base in far north Hokkaidō, and the landing was at what is now known as Chicago Midway. This PDF excerpt from the Potts book says they drew up two routes, the unused alternate one being a slightly more southern route which was supposedly 6762 miles from Chitose to since-closed Bolling AFB in Washington DC, across the Potomac from what is now Reagan National airport. The online calculator says Chitose to Reagan would have been 6302 statute miles, so Potts might have been referring to a curved or segmented path, or he could be remembering wrong after all these years. He wasn't using nautical miles because the number would have been 86% of statute miles, a smaller number. 8900 is plain wrong. A-a-anyway, I'm correcting the distance now. Thanks again! Binksternet (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Aha! New news at 1945 Japan–Washington flight... the take-off airport was a very little further west: Camp Higashi-Chitose, its airstrip no longer suitable for large aircraft, not Chitose Air Base. Binksternet (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Update URL for THSA
The URL for Reference #4 is not longer valid and unfortunately doesn't offer a redirect. However, I found the new URL: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgiqc

The same goes for Reference #5:

broken: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgiff.html

new, working: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgiff

JoeAshcraft (talk) 15:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks for the note. It probably took just as long to post this information on the talk page as it would have taken to replace two URLs in the article. Don't stop looking for new URLs, but I invite you to simply update the involved articles. Binksternet (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2015 (UTC)