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The view from Itazuke Tower.

Article Excerpt
Aviation enthusiast and photographer Harry Sievers was born in Queens, New York in 1932, and as a youth was fascinated by the airliners he watched overhead making their final approach to Runway 22 at nearby La Guardia Airport. After attending college, Harry joined the U. S. Air Force and was trained as an Air Traffic Controller, with duty assignments taking him first to Travis AFB near San Francisco, California, and then on to a two-year tour at Itazuke Air Base, Japan near the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka from 1953 through 1954. Returning stateside, Sievers spent eleven months stationed at McGuire AFB, NJ, and then left the Air Force in 1956 for an airline job with Trans World Airlines starting as a flight dispatch clerk back at his home base of La Guardia Airport. Moving across Long Island in 1958 to a crew-scheduling job at TWA's new maintenance and administration hangar at Idlewild Airport (now JFK), Harry maintained his love for aviation, and airliners in particular.

In 1979, Sievers moved with TWA to Kansas City, and eventually retired from the company in 1983. Revisiting his aviation roots, Harry returned to the control tower cab at Kansas City International Airport before officially retiring from the industry. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to record all the amazing and now-historic sights he'd witnessed throughout the early years of his career with his trusty and ever-present Kodak Signet camera. Through his kind generosity, we now share these nostalgic and magical images with you, the readers of WINGS & AIRPOWER Magazines. Coincidentally, our good friends over at AIRLINERS Magazine have chosen to run a similar-style photo spread of Sievers' wonderful images of early jet airliners taken at New York International Airport during the 1960s. Watch for that publication on the newsstand about the same time as this issue, or ask your local distributor. Join us now for a nostalgic ramp tour of vintage aircraft at Itazuke Air Base in the early-1950s!

Below: This Lockheed P2V-5 Neptune is equipped with 350-gallon wingtip tanks that extended aircraft's range to an astounding 4,750 miles. Note early nose and tail configuration...