Steve Davies
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Posts posted by Steve Davies
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A very interesting, if lengthy, read about the first American airman killed in Europe in WWII. I'd never heard his name before.
Townsend Griffiss, forgotten hero of World War II
US diplomats had better contacts with the Soviet-backed Spanish government forces than with Franco's nationalists, so Griffiss resorted to unusual measures to gather information about the new German planes, according to his nephew."He convinced them to loan him a Russian fighter plane so he could go up and see what the new Messerschmitt 109s had in them," says Capt Alexander.
"He tangled on several occasions with the prototypes of the Me 109, which must have given him good information to post back to this country."
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I truly wonder if cockpit/aircrew equipment design was even considered
IIRC, it was listed as a contributory factor.
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Holy crap do you normally vote with your dick?!
He said *your* dick.
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Here is one my daughter sent me when they were supporting our allies....
It's not often that anyone here calls the French their 'allies'.
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So, who did the flyover?
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MOTHERFUCKING UPSIDE DOWN SUPER HELICOPTERS <snip>
Better?
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Personally never found the process to get back in the US to be that onerous, though I hear coming in as a non-citizen sucks.
Asides from the long queues and the two ridiculous forms you have to fill in before landing (I particularly like the question, "Are you, or have you ever been, a member of a foreign intelligence agency?"), it's not usually a big deal for me.
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What do my colonial cousins make of this?
A complete failure to contextualise things and act in a reasonable manner by Homeland Security, or a stupid mistake by the Tweeter and a proportionate response by HS?
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Not bad for an NGO do-gooder type. Definitely a 1 on the binary scale.
So, how long have you been in the sandpit for?
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Holy shit, people really talk like that? I thought it was just hollywood crap in Ocean's 11...
They do indeed. Various words from rhyming slang also make regular appearances in 'normal' British English dialects, too.
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The Wing's Facebook page has some good reverse angle images of the flyover, as well as some close-ups of the markings:
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What's a Septic? Is it like a dikfur?
No, nothing derogatory!
From Cockney rhyming slang: Septic = 'septic tank' = Yank. You can also say 'lamb shank'.
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Surely you've heard it fly before. Nobody wants to hear that any louder than they have to.
I'll have to be the dissenter and say that these flybys always give me goosebumps, and I'm not even a Septic. If the RAF did this, I wouldn't care what it was.
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Given that there have been a number of incidents discussed on here recently that pertain to filmed events, Rainman's advice, "Never talk to the media", should be supplemented with, "Don't film it".
I don't know what it's like to be in combat, so I can't criticise the actions of those who are/do. But I can say that I can't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to put this online.
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Liked the shooting stuff, but more impressed that you have your own farm!
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Kayla
I live in Cambridge (and once lived in Newmarket), so if you have any general questions that require good local knowledge then I would be happy to help.
Steve
Live off base. No reason whatsoever to need a year to "adjust" to ENGLAND. Amazingly, the people speak ENGLISH. Just like you and me they eat with forks, count on their fingers, and like puppies.
We do all have yellow/rotten teeth, though. That's got to take some adjusting to.
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Rainman?
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Sorry, Steve, but the blokes with the Union Jack are most definitely not actors.
Not referring to the Strike Eagle guys, but to the ones below them (wearing leather flying hat).
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Pretty sure the above photos are of actors.
However, here's a 1991 photo of a bonafide wearer of a handlebar mustachio, the controversial Pablo Mason:
And as he is today:
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What is it about moustaches that makes them verboten (edit: in the USAF)?
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I don't think so. The ship was apparently scheduled to dock in South Korea - presumably, that's where the missiles were due to be offloaded.
I understand that this kind of low key shipment is not uncommon. Where North Korea is concerned, discretion is quite desirable.
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What's with the all the Soviet swine hate?
I knew there were more reasons I hated those fuckers.
I think it's fair to say that a lot of the MX guys' hate came from the fact that they were quite literally learning on the job, and while the Dash-1 and Dash-34 type manuals had been sourced and roughly translated, codified maintenance procedures were not supplied.
Sometimes this trial and error approach caused more problems that only became evident when a catastrophic failure occurred. For example, they very nearly lost an aircraft and pilot to a complete hydraulics failure. When the aircraft landed, it was discovered that something big had punctured the main hydraulic line. The cause was traced to a wiring loom. The wing pylons had been removed on arrival in the US, and this particular loom and its coke can-size connector had been stuffed up inside the wing as an alternative to ripping them out; the slack cable had snagged the wing sweep mechanism, and each time the sweep was cycled the loom was pulled closer to the hydraulic line in the leading edge root extension. Eventually, the mechanism finally pulled the connector straight through the line - while the pilot was way above the Mach and flying ACM against a pair of F-15s. His survival was a very close run thing. So, I don't doubt that some of the hate also came from the fact that there was massive pressure to fix these things without really knowing what the consequences of their improvised procedures might be.
Same sort of thing happened with the US-installed fire warning detection system (taken from a KC-135, IIRC) which was installed because the Russian system was not trusted, but which constantly caused false alarms that MX was required to respond to by breaking the jet in half (a la F-100) and pulling the engine. Beyond that, the six month groundings due to wing through carry box cracks, leaking fuel cells, and a raft of other problems meant that I don't think that there was very much for the MX guys to like.
Everyone seemed to really like the early-model Fishbeds, though.
Just got it from Amazon Kindle. Looking forward to reading it!
Thanks!
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Bergman
Yes, it is the symbol that the Soviets used to show that a particular a/c has a good MX record.
The second edition contains a bit more information about it, but as a summary the MX guys called the FLOGGER a "pig" because it was always going wrong. The symbol was applied to those aircraft that required the least MX intervention, while the others received pig-related nicknames. The same system was applied to the other types.
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I guess your reason for chiming in when I was just poking a ranter is because “Just in case” has been the mantra for high priced unused Air Superiority show dogs for a long time.
Other than the F-22, which ones do you refer to?
Dreamliner jet “draws” Boeing logo across North America
in Squadron Bar
Posted
Why would they bother? You're the one with an apparent inferiority complex, not them.