xaarman

The Blue Angels are far more entertaining with the low altitude work (have you seen them skimming the SF bay?) and direct angle maneuvers. The AF is obsessed with high speed passes to pull in the vertical, and fingertip formation rolls 3,000 feet up (which may be harder for the precision involved, but Jon Q. Taxpayer does not know that.) Add it with the C-130 maneuvers and it's pretty rad. Anyways I digress. TIB is actually playing here tonight at the Deid, wonder how many people are going to show up.

This is false, and the story has several variations. Here is Tex Johnson talking about the meeting with the boss and mentions nothing about being fired... in fact he goes on to say "it was fine": edit: That seemed a little harsher than I meant it. I fly the 135 and think it's an amazing aircraft. The fact it was designed in the 50s and still flys today blows my mind... and the fact that ours has no foreseeable replacement in the future nor can be switched to UAVs means it's going to be around for another 20+ years at least. Insane.

FYSA since I have heard the AF/Navy plane debate before: Total Aircraft: 3700+ https://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Magazine%20Documents/2009/May%202009/0509facts_fig.pdf Total AD USAF: ~4k Total Force USAF: 5,573

This is my only gripe about USAA. They force you to lock in with them - I wanted to shop around. They were incredibly stubborn and self righteous about the whole thing... I ended up going with a realtor recommended local guy, and I'm glad I did. I called him any time I had a question (and I had a lot.)

According to https://www.hawkerbeechcraft.com/military/t-6a/not_pc_9.pdf (interesting read btw,) the T-6 has a 18,720 hour fatigue life. If that T-6 has 3500 hours in 11 years, they could last quite a while.