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Dad started his career doing propellant transfer on Titan IIs at Little Rock Air Force Base. His stories of that time involve doing repairs on something or other while up to his waist in fuel (for which he earned the coveted title of "steely-eyed missile man"), noxious fumes capable of melting your lungs, and causing pigs to run up hills, making them lose weight and causing the farmer to sue the Air Force. Actually, I'll tell that story because I like it. So he and his crew were going from silo to silo doing their missileman things when one of them, who had grown up on a pig farm, sees a bunch of pigs hanging out near the fence. "Watch this," he says, climbing on top of the concrete silo. He gathers in a lungful of air and calls out "SUUUUWEEEEEEE!! PIGS PIGS PIGS!" The pigs scramble back towards their troughs, which happen to be on the other side of a large hill, thinking it's time to be fed. Disappointed, they eventually wander back to the fence. This crew of young men find this to be the funniest thing ever. For months, every chance they get, someone climbs on top of the silo and calls out "SUUUUWEEEEEEE!!! PIGS PIGS PIGS!" This continues until one day, the farmer happens to see some rear end in a top hat Air Force guy tricking his pigs into charging up a hill. Suddenly their weight loss makes sense to him. He sues the Air Force for lost revenue. Shortly thereafter, a colonel comes down to read them the riot act. Standing on top of the silo, he glowers down at them. Then he takes a deep breath and turns around. "SUUUUUUWEEEEE!!! PIGS PIGS PIGS! ... You're not allowed to do that anymore." Dad crosstrained into command and control after two years in Titan II propellant transfer systems. He later spent three years with 2nd ACCS flying on Looking Glass, SAC's airborne command post. In those three years, he accumulated over 3,000 flight hours and lost a lot of his high frequency hearing. As for my own connection with air power history, I'll just leave this here. 
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Dec 16, 2010 10:19
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markoshark posted:Also because i suck and can't provide additional info - You mean other than Korea and Vietnam?
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Dec 16, 2010 12:06
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Propagandalf posted:The old boys got a good laugh, invented the F-15, and never looked back. I had no idea that time travel was so widespread back then, considering the F-15s first flight was in 1972 and the aircraft entered service eight months before Belenko defected with his MiG-25.
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Dec 17, 2010 02:31
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Propagandalf posted:Pedants gonna ... ped? Works for me, I guess.
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Dec 17, 2010 03:02
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I have a book called "101 Things You Should Never Ask a Marine To Do" and all this talk of nuclear tipped missiles and things reminds me of one of them. "Never ask a Marine to design weapons." The cartoon accompanying it shows a Marine general giving a briefing on a nuclear hand grenade. Throwing radius, 30 meters. Killing radius, two miles.
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Dec 17, 2010 22:38
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This is why Al Shepard is the quintessential man in my eyes. I mean, yeah, he sat his rear end on a Redstone and not an Atlas, but it's not as though they could have had a whole lot of faith in rockets period. The controllers have called for yet another halt in the countdown, he's lying in his own urine because they wouldn't open the hatch to give him a bathroom break, and they're telling him that the launch is being delayed some more while they work through some technical difficulties. Shepard snarls over the radio "Why don't you fix your little problems and light this candle?!" Then he became the first man to play golf on the moon.
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Dec 23, 2010 18:07
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McNally posted:Dad started his career doing propellant transfer on Titan IIs at Little Rock Air Force Base. His stories of that time involve doing repairs on something or other while up to his waist in fuel (for which he earned the coveted title of "steely-eyed missile man"), noxious fumes capable of melting your lungs, and causing pigs to run up hills, making them lose weight and causing the farmer to sue the Air Force. So I went over the story with my dad. Turns out the guy who taught them how to call to the pigs to begin with was the colonel who ended up having to chew them out for it.
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Dec 25, 2010 23:13
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mlmp08 posted:Yes, all fratricide is awful, but if you applied the restrictions to CAS that they do to Patriot, you'd pretty much cease to have CAS. Airplanes cost more than soldiers. 
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Dec 27, 2010 20:26
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Ace Oliveira posted:When you get done on the A-10 saga, you should do a write-up on the F-86 Sabre. They're the only early Cold War era planes that I know of that could carry tactical nuclear weapons. I don't know of any other planes that could do that, but I'd like to know more. F-84s, F-100s, F-105s, I think F-4s had the capability...
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Dec 29, 2010 00:11
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Ridgewell posted:Now I'm confused. In your OP, you write Interceptors armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles would probably have a greater latitude to fire their weapons (thus the abandoning of the two-man concept) due to the nature of their mission. Aircraft carrying nuclear weapons as part of a strike wouldn't be authorized to launch without the highest authority and would have only launched if the balloon went up. I mean, you don't point at ICBMs and say "no-man concept!" Same idea here - the tactical nukes don't go until The Button is pressed.
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Dec 29, 2010 05:19
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iyaayas01 posted:You mean, "what types they may or may not have carried/carry?" Oh, aircraft carriers totally carried nukes. There was a Stephen Coonts novel about it once. 
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Jan 7, 2011 06:39
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So I was going through my stuff and I found a picture of an F-15 at Hickam Air Force Base, circa 1987 or 1988. The gentleman wearing the old school fatigues is a captain in the Hawaii Air National Guard who was a friend of my father's. He was a navigator/WSO in F-4s, then they switched from Phantoms to F-15s. So suddenly he became a maintenance officer. The kid is a three or four year old me. I still remember bits and pieces of that day, particularly sitting up in the cockpit. I don't remember posing for the photo, though.
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Jan 9, 2011 06:11
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iyaayas01 posted:The Indispensables - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_H5f16rM8U Well, the 'stache thing wasn't specific to Olds. I know a guy named Ed Rasimus who flew F-105s in '65-'66, well before Robin Olds went to Ubon. After his first real mission up north, Rasimus' boss ordered him to grow a mustache. "It's a fighter pilot tradition," he said. "Makes you bullet proof." One guy who flew with Raz couldn't grow a decent mustache to save his life. Grew out thin, scraggly, and blonde. He was about to go on R&R to Bangkok and the other guys told him not to shave it off while he's there. "There's going to be stewardesses there," they told him, "and you're going to want to shave it. Don't do it, man. It's not worth it." He comes back a couple weeks later cursing at them, because the stews wouldn't even talk to him with that pathetic thing on his upper lip. Having fulfilled his promise to not shave it while gone, he promptly shaved it off when he got back. He was shot down his next mission. (but he was rescued, so it's okay) You can tell the guy in the video served with Robin Olds because he talked about flying out of Ubon when General Olds was wing commander.
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Jan 24, 2011 03:29
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Also, check out the third guy's 'stache in the interview segment...you can tell he served with Robin Olds.
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They're pretty awesome, yeah. It's probably why Olds let help his daughter organize his memoirs.
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Jan 24, 2011 04:19
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I like turtles posted:I touched a Titan 2 missile today My dad was a fuel handler on Titan IIs. The suits had positive pressure so fumes couldn't get in if it tore. He told me about a phenomenon called a BFRC, or Big loving Red Cloud, which occurred when fuel ignited. I tried Googling it for more information, but all I really got was that BFRC stood for Big loving Red Cloud and that if you saw a BFRC, run upwind of it as fast as you could. I think dad told me that a BFRC could melt your lungs, but I'm not sure how much of that was hyperbole, how much was what 18 and 19 year old fuel handlers told each other, and how much was fact. In any event, I don't imagine it was very healthy to breathe. Since you couldn't smoke around the fuel, a lot of the guys took up chewing tobacco. Dad then told a story about how he forgot to spit out his tobacco before putting on his suit, and then he had to swallow it. He had to try very hard not to throw up. "What would happen if you threw up in the suit?" I asked. "The life support guys might short you on oxygen next time. They didn't like having to clean it up." He also told me about a friend of his who died in a silo after a fuel leak. He couldn't see because his visor fogged or something, so he couldn't find the ladder out, and he was running low on oxygen. He died after breaking open his visor. Dad crosstrained out of that job after a couple years. A buddy of his who stayed in the career field made Chief Master Sergeant (E-9) after about ten years because so many people left the job.
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Feb 10, 2011 08:03
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I remember reading in Bud Anderson's book that he was part of an experiment with "parasite" fighters. Some engineer figured out that an aircraft with free-floating wing panels ended up being more fuel efficient (somehow) and subsequent testing revealed that hooking up two fighters onto the wingtips of a larger aircraft (and then having them shut down their engines) resulted in all three aircraft flying along and the mothership ending up using less fuel than it would have on its own. Ultimately, the whole project was scrapped for two reasons: 1) Air-to-air refueling was developed 2) The piloting skills required to make the hook-up and then maintain your position while connected were crazy high.
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Mar 3, 2011 09:43
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Sunday Punch posted:Those photos are great. I never really got why the USAF used the boom method while everyone else goes for probe and drogue. I know both have their advantages and disadvantages but it seems a little wasteful to have two entirely different aerial refueling systems being used in parallel, instead of just picking one. My understanding is that the flying boom delivers more fuel, faster. Which is great when, say, the entire Air Force chain of command is basically nothing but heavy bomber guys who think that the B-52 is the most important thing ever. What's even better is that most of the early fighters capable of air-to-air refueling used the probe and drogue method. And the F-105 was able to do both.
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Mar 9, 2011 17:50
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Thud Ridge is good. So is When Thunder Rolled by Ed Rasimus. Also Palace Cobra by Ed Rasimus. The first book is about Rasimus' tour in F-105s and the second is his F-4 tour. Ed also helped Christina Olds put together Robin Olds' memoirs.
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Mar 11, 2011 06:19
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Flanker posted:I remember reading a crazy book about a dude flying an F105 'thud' named Terrible Tina and everything was god awful. Pak Six, maybe? I haven't read it but I've heard decent things about the book.
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Mar 11, 2011 17:05
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iyaayas01 posted:I don't think I can sum it up any better than this...while there is a loving Star Wars exhibit inside, the last Looking Glass to fly airborne alert (after 29+ years of continuous 24/7/365 operations) sits outside unrestored in pieces. Aw, Jesus. My dad flew three years on Looking Glass with 2nd ACCS back in the 70s. I should send him that link, it might piss him off. Edit: Well, that's kinda depressing. McNally's dad posted:I flew on 049 many, many times. It was a good bird and always brought me home. McNally fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Mar 30, 2011 |
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Mar 30, 2011 19:15
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SyHopeful posted:Okay so can somebody give me a breakdown of the differences between the A-12 and the SR-71? Letters and numbers?
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Mar 31, 2011 01:45
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NosmoKing posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA_SAUYV4so Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my 363 foot tall rocket that me and my buddies are taking to the moon. Did I mention if something goes wrong it'll explode with the force of a small nuclear weapon and we've only ever tried it out twice before?
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Apr 2, 2011 21:49
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NosmoKing posted:Getting incinerated during re-entry makes for a teeny casket. He survived reentry. It was the parachuteless impact with the ground that did it. Also he's curled in the fetal position, making him look smaller.
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Apr 12, 2011 23:52
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NosmoKing posted:I'd like to see the SIOP and see if there's a few "Aw, gently caress THAT guy" targets on the list. As long as you're tossing ten thousand warheads and more at targets in the USSR, don't you think there would be the periodic "may as well blow up that dickhead as long as we're going completely balls-out" targets as well. I just asked dad about this. He used to carry the SIOP with him to work when he was flight crew on Looking Glass, SAC's airborne command post. He says that it was pretty much just the kind of thing you'd expect, nothing that really seemed out of place.
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Jul 25, 2011 23:59
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Flikken posted:I don't know what all goes into converting a bomber from nuclear to conventional and then back "Put the nukes in today, Tony. But next week we're loading conventional bombs."
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Aug 24, 2011 01:00
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So I'm taking my undergraduate history seminar this semester and I'm gonna need to write a 25 page research paper on the Cold War. I'm thinking nuclear deterrence. I don't suppose any of you guys have any knowledge about that and can point me to some decent sources, do you?
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Aug 24, 2011 14:57
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I have a couple good primary sources already. Dad worked on Titan IIs and later flew on Looking Glass and I know a guy who pulled nuclear alert in F-4s.
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Aug 24, 2011 20:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:No offense, but for the sake of whoever is grading your class, don't do this. Yeah, I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. This is my research seminar, not a 100 level world history class.
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Aug 24, 2011 21:37
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karoshi posted:I would expect it to land automatically, like put one of those printable mobile phone codes that redirect you to a website but with 1 foot squares on the deck and the thing lands on it. I guess it's preferable to have some tired pilot try to get it down a moving carrier... meh. If my phone can identify one of those, why can't this fucker? I know all of those words, but none of that makes sense to me.
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Nov 10, 2011 10:10
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Myoclonic Jerk posted:Whenever I see a picture of a ball turret, especially if there's something to indicate scale, I just think "how did those crazy bastards stand being in there?" I recall hearing an interview with a ball turret gunner. Dude was like a staff sergeant and got into an argument in England with an infantry private (this was pre-invasion) about how the Air Force guys had it easy and poo poo. So he said, "fine, if you think we have it so easy, let's trade" and takes off his coat and hands it over. "I get the stripes and everything?" asks the incredulous infantry mook. "What do you do, anyway?" "Ball turret gunner." Infantry guy hands the coat back with words to the effect of "oh gently caress no." LavistaSays posted:I couldn't imagine the horror of being a draftee assigned to that particular assignment. Myoclonic Jerk posted:Luckily, the war ended before he could be deployed. At least he was far too tall (6') for one of those damned ball turrets, thankfully. Navy bombers didn't have ball turrets anyway, he'd have been fine.
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Nov 22, 2011 18:46
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Boomerjinks posted:Brought up yesterday in the Aeronautical Insanity thread... Yeah, that's the stuff.
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Nov 22, 2011 21:13
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Slo-Tek posted:The rear visibility ain't much, and ejecting might be a problem. You could always try downwards ejection, like they did with the early F-104s.
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Nov 24, 2011 07:41
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Compare this story to the story of the F-105 driver who downed a MiG with a guns kill after having taken a few rounds through his instrument panel and therefore didn't have a working gunsight.
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Jan 4, 2012 23:36
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Chantilly Say posted:Would anyone be interested in my posting excerpts from In Retrospect, McNamara's book on the failures in US foreign policy and military decisionmaking that led to our involvement in Vietnam? I'm reading it now and finding it an interesting read, and though there's not much "AIRPOWER" in it there is plenty of "Cold War." The airpower-related bits have to do with the decisionmaking on the use of strategic bombing. The failures in US foreign policy and military decision making that let to our involvement in Vietnam included "letting McNamara have any input in foreign policy and military decision making." I hope to God that man is spending eternity burning in hell.
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Jan 10, 2012 23:57
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Gtab posted:I dont think you understood. You are a childish excuse for a human being; an attention-starved waste of flesh whose value as a person is so vastly negative that it defies accurate measure. If a man is to be judged by the character of his actions, you are fundamentally worse than about 95% of the populace. Your pursuit of reinforcement for your insignificant, goony cars is possibly the saddest thing I've seen on these forums in years, and its consistency and unending presence in abjectly unrelated situations would be worthy of pity if you weren't such an unlikable, contemptible creature. Give it to me straight, Gtab: Better or worse than Bob McNamara?
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Jan 11, 2012 00:25
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I'm glad to see that other guys have read Ed's books. He and I swap lies on each others' Facebooks periodically and I like to think of us as friends (though in truth that's probably stretching things). He once referred being an F-105 pilot in Rolling Thunder as being told you have a terminal disease and you hope they find the cure before it kills you. I think the statistics boiled down to something stupid crazy like "each pilot could expect to be shot down five times and rescued three of those times." McNally fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 18, 2012 |
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Jan 18, 2012 06:50
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Suicide Watch posted:the winningest wing commander ever:  
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Feb 27, 2012 22:53
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My old platoon leader had a story about Russian airborne vehicles. It's a hell of a story, too. Apparently the crew doesn't jump along side the vehicle and join up with it later on the ground. Oh no. They ride in those fuckers all the way down. The officer gets a harness system and, I think, some padding in his compartment. The enlisted men get a lap belt and are told to brace themselves. Supposedly my PL heard this story from a Russian officer who was accompanied by his vehicle crew. Upon finishing the story, the officer said something to his men and, in response, they removed their berets to reveal identical scars on their scalps. Guess they didn't brace well enough.
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Mar 29, 2012 05:52
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Raw_Beef posted:I do not articulate well sometimes. I stared at most of the post with increasing incredulity, but this made me giggle. Tell me more about how America are the good guys. I'd love to hear your take on Iraq. 
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Apr 5, 2012 20:47
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Raw_Beef posted:surrounded by geniouses such as McNally who are surely active in solving all the world's problems and preventing horrible things from happening to innocent people. gently caress no, I joined the Army so I could make the world's problems worse. Mission accomplished.
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Apr 5, 2012 21:08
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