Amazing. I can't help thinking of the staff people present on that day, those that were 60 years old and were born at the same time as aviation... who had grown-up hearing tales of the Wrights, Curtiss, Blériot, and the likes... had seen their dads or uncles enlist in the Great War as pilots... had cheered at Lindbergh and Earhart's exploits as young adults... had witnessed the birth of the jet age... the atom... and were now the privileged spectators of the advent of the stratospheric age in aviation. No single six decades in the world's history, ever before or probably after, will have seen such dramatic changes in the way we perceive and modify our existence. Plus they had a clear view (however exaggerated) of who were the good guys and the bad guys, what they were doing it all for... and they died before seeing the Vietnam debacle, the Iraq mass deception and the Afghanistan quagmire, and all the crap that's been going on since no-one knows why we wage war anymore and who we do it for.
Sorry for the OT and this bout of emotional nostalgia... but I admire and envy all these guys... Much respect to all of them, be they engineers, soldiers, pilots or mere employees.
