|
Half a dozen AC-119 were lost in Vietnam as well, including a South Vietnamese gunship that went down strafing NVA columns advancing into Saigon on the last day of the war. Speaking of which, are there any good English language histories of the S. Vietnamese Air Force? I'd be interested in reading about them.
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2013 20:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
Here are some pictures and videos of the Swedish air force doing things.   The man in the canoe reportedly did not stay around in the canoe for very long after this picture was taken. Sweden is pretty sparsely populated outside a few areas in the southern parts of the country; for comparison, Sweden is slightly bigger than the state of California but with a population of only 7-8 million people during the Cold War. Thus, for many years the general rule for all Swedish military aircraft was that over most of the country it was perfectly okay to fly around at an eyeballed 20 meters above ground (trees don't count as ground), or 10 meters above water. This did lead to an unpleasant number of accidents, however, and after one notable incident where a Viggen caught a phone line between two islands at 8 meters above the water and came back to base with several hundred meters of cable trailing from the drop tank (the pilot got away with it since 8 meters was close enough to an eyeballed 10), the rule was changed to 30 meters above ground and 20 meters above water, except for light aircraft:  If the Russians are coming you use all you have, including flight instructors and other "spare" pilots, who got the honorable duty of manning light strike squadrons equipped with the SK 60 trainer aircraft. If you think the A-10 wouldn't be survivable enough in WW3, try an unarmored subsonic trainer with no radar warning equipment, no countermeasures and no terrain-following radar. Better stay lower than low if you wanna live; these guys were known for flowing well below the treetops in river valleys, firebreaks etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPrnc8GNPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZkYnr58DOw Here's a pair of videos featuring Viggens operating from road bases. The name "road base" is a bit of a misnomer though since the runways usually weren't roads, just small ordinary air strips (800 x 17 meters); it's the taxi ways that tended to be "shared" with public roads. Many stretches of public roads were made wider and straighter than usual though, so they could be used as emergency runways at need, but these weren't really intended as full bases. The Viggen had a number of design features that made it possible to operate from such small strips with a relatively big and heavy jet fighter without using arrestor wires. It was equipped with a thrust reverser that could be set to engage automatically when the nose wheel hit the ground, and the main gear had an unusual bogie layout (two wheels in a row rather than mounted on the same axis) that helped straighten up the aircraft in crosswind landings. The landing gear was strengthened like on a carrier fighter in order to allow sink rates of up to 15 m/s (3000 feet/minute) at touchdown. In winter, military runways were not de-iced, just de-snowed. The thrust reverser could also be used to actually reverse the plane on the ground if necessary, but you had to be careful because using the wheel brakes while reversing could easily result in the plane planting itself on its rear end.  Viggen taxiing on a public road.  Lansen and a farmer with some milk jars. The exact spot where this was taken can be seen on Google Street view. Finally, here's a Sea Knight with a Christmas tree in tow. 
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Sep 27, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2013 20:27
|
|
|
You should have Linked the SK 60 in action. Turns out to be surprisingly effective in ALB 
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2013 21:36
|
|
|
Dr.Oblivious posted:How did this beautiful beast lose to the F-22 again? Look at it this way, if we had taken the F-23 over the F-22 we probably would've ended up with the F-32 over the F-35 just two give both our two remaining combat aircraft companies some business, and if you think the F-35 is derpy, you haven't looked at the -32 Also jets flying fast on the deck are so sexy
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2013 22:04
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:That's insane. I'd say "What about extra batteries?" But you probably stay aloft long enough for that to require an inconvenient amount of them. Batteries aren't even a potential issue. One aircraft out of all of them had electrical problems (which, by the way, continued to have electrical problems for almost a year after this whole thing). Further, there's a big loving radar on top...let's just say it uses "a lot" of power. And yet, there's still redundancy in the system. The E-3 has 8 generators, and can run everything just fine with only 6 operational. So 5 laptops consume 1/4 of the power generation? Hell no. That jet is the one I wish had been crashed at Nellis. What a piece of poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2013 22:19
|
|
|
Pimpmust posted:The Vigilante got a few things going for it: Interesting, I had thought that the 3-engine version was also Navy, and was chuckling at the idea of how many parts would fall off per landing with the extra weight of a whole other engine aboard. A USAF version is slightly less insane.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 02:19
|
|
(Yes, that is a 3-engined prototype)
|
Pimpmust posted:You should have Linked the SK 60 in action. Sadly, I looked up SK 60 (aka mini-Paveway, aka ghetto Nighthawk) ALB videos but didn't find any. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 02:27
|
|
|
Slo-Tek posted:Interesting, I had thought that the 3-engine version was also Navy, and was chuckling at the idea of how many parts would fall off per landing with the extra weight of a whole other engine aboard. A USAF version is slightly less insane.  You want to talk about hosed-up programs, look no further, my friends. Makes the F-35 look positively smooth and trouble-free.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 02:38
|
|
|
grover posted:I do find it rather amusing that these aircraft which were designed to carry nuclear weapons would occasionally lose all the poo poo in their anal bomb bay during catapult take-offs. I suppose that's a large part of why they never actually carried nuclear weapons. If we dumped a trillion on one of those programs I might believe your analogy, otherwise it's just more "Hurr, my piece of poo poo plane is fine!".
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 04:51
|
|
|
Been following this thread for a while and i just wanted to suggest a book for you guys. It's Eric Schlosser new book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety". Personally I've never heard of the Damascus Accident, but the short story is that a maintance tech dropped a socket wrench inside a rocket silo and it pierced the hull of a Titan missile, leading to a fuel leak and eventual destruction of the entire missile and silo. Truly a "oh poo poo" moment if there ever were one.. It's stories about mishaps with nuclear weapons are quite sobering, and I found the book very interesting. If yu like this thread I'm sure this book is for you.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 07:14
|
|
|
Znyp posted:Been following this thread for a while and i just wanted to suggest a book for you guys. I vaguely remember a movie about that or a similar incident.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 08:07
|
|
|
Znyp posted:Been following this thread for a while and i just wanted to suggest a book for you guys. If that silo destruction is the one I remember hearing about, the warhead punctured the silo roof and was found intact some distance away. That seems more like real, actual safety to me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 09:43
|
|
|
Cross-posting from the Mid-East thread over in DnD, but what do you guys think about this article on the Iranian F-14? Obviously some overexcited gushing about the F-14 and AIM-54 capabilities in general, but there's some interesting pictures and tidbits in there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 13:59
|
|
|
One of my relatives was working with the F-14s in Iran when the revolution happened. He may or may not have been involved with sabotaging them on the way out, but that's the rumor I've heard over the years. Very smart, very modest guy, loves planes. I remember listening to him tell me plane history stories when I was little and couldn't sleep. He gave me a bunch of old Tomcat stickers, shirts, etc, that have mostly been lost over the years. I would love to get the full details of his time in Iran and his escape from the country, but I haven't seen him in ages. From what few details I can remember, there was an incredible amount of bribery involved.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 14:16
|
|
|
Pimpmust posted:Cross-posting from the Mid-East thread over in DnD, but what do you guys think about this article on the Iranian F-14? That's a very optimistic assessment of Iran's F-14 situation. There's never been a doubt that they still fly, but it's mostly for special occasions like showing off for the Russians, or occasionally pointing the radar at an American just to remind us. They do not fly regularly and they don't venture out over the water much. I never saw them do so on my deployments.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 14:53
|
|
|
Could be a cost issue, even with their own manufacturing those things are always gonna be expensive to keep in the air and their economy is in the shitter right now.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 15:50
|
|
|
Keeping those things airborne must be a tremendous pain in the dick. They have to reinvent the wheel every time something new breaks. Even for us they were maintenance hungry beasts before we retired them. They are great planes, but I'm curious if the investment in upkeep is worth it over just tossing some money at the Russians for new Migs or something.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 16:17
|
|
|
Alaan posted:Keeping those things airborne must be a tremendous pain in the dick. They have to reinvent the wheel every time something new breaks. Even for us they were maintenance hungry beasts before we retired them. They are great planes, but I'm curious if the investment in upkeep is worth it over just tossing some money at the Russians for new Migs or something. It's even been hard for the Iranians with their F-4 fleet. They've had several crashes of late.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 16:44
|
|
|
For what it's worth, at least as of a few years ago the Iranians lacked domestic capability to reverse engineer and produce replacement parts for their electrical generation turbines. There are obvious differences in materials and scale but the general principles are similar. Who knows where the priority lies between keeping the Tomcats airborne and in keeping the power and lights on. (This also puts the lie to the idea they were ever enriching uranium for civilian powergen purposes, if they couldn't or wouldn't keep fossil-fuel-fired steam turbines up they certainly wouldn't be able to do so with nukes.) There's also the factor of pilot proficiency. It is highly unlikely that any of those pilots who flew high-optempo combat missions 25+ years ago are still around waiting to strike. It doesn't sound like current pilots are getting much airtime.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 19:29
|
|
|
Uh, say what you will about Iran's nuclear program and its goals/intentions, but they can definitely generate power using nuclear technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushehr_Nuclear_Power_Plant
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 20:24
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:Another one in Desert Storm. Wikipedia shows none in Panama, but 6 in Vietnam (3x 37mm AAA, 1x 57mm AA, 1x SA-7, 1x SA-2), one in Desert Storm (Strela-2), and none since. standard.deviant fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 21:14
|
|
|
Snowdens Secret posted:(This also puts the lie to the idea they were ever enriching uranium for civilian powergen purposes, if they couldn't or wouldn't keep fossil-fuel-fired steam turbines up they certainly wouldn't be able to do so with nukes.) Steam turbines for PWRs like Bushehr NPP are considerably less challenging to design and manufacture than steam turbines for modern (i.e. post-WWII) fossil fuel-fired plants. Groda fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Sep 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2013 23:16
|
|
|
Vindolanda posted:If that silo destruction is the one I remember hearing about, the warhead punctured the silo roof and was found intact some distance away. That seems more like real, actual safety to me. Yes, in this case and many other the nuclear bombs didn't go off and the one-point safety system worked as intended. But there are other cases, like the B52 bomber that crashed during in-air refueling, where the bomb was slung out of the aircraft as it was disintegrating, promptly armed and tried to detonate when the crush-fuses went of as it hit the ground. It didn't, and the only thing that kept it from doing so was a single 28 volt circuit that was left in GROUND mode. A single stray short-circuit would have detonated a 4 megaton hydrogen bomb over the US mainland. Many safety systems failed that day, and I guess we can be lucky that it it turned out well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 00:21
|
|
|
mlmp08 posted:Uh, say what you will about Iran's nuclear program and its goals/intentions, but they can definitely generate power using nuclear technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushehr_Nuclear_Power_Plant Bushehr is an oddball for a lot of reasons. It is theoretically irrelevant to the Iranian enrichment program (any civilian side, at least) since the Russians provide fresh fuel, retain ownership and are responsible for exporting the spent remains. It's also a Russian advertisement to sell nuclear plants and other large projects to the Third World, and as such they've taken significant roles in operations and maintenance. For this reason they'd presumably have contracts to supply all replacement parts, which would again render the site irrelevant in the context of indigenous capability for blade/bearing etc manufacturing. According to the Wikipedia article linked, the Iranians have been responsible for plant operations for less than a week; one would hope they didn't have to start out with major turbine overhauls. Groda posted:Steam turbines for PWRs like Bushehr NPP are considerably less challenging to design and manufacture than steam turbines for modern (i.e. post-WWII) fossil fuel-fired plants. I'm genuinely curious how but I imagine the details are beyond the scope of this thread
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 01:10
|
|
|
Snowdens Secret posted:I'm genuinely curious how but I imagine the details are beyond the scope of this thread The big difference is the low inlet steam pressure, ca 70 bar(abs) instead of +140 bar. Also, almost no (relatively speaking) superheating of the steam (heating the steam to a temperature above the boiling point of the current pressure). This means smaller temperature transients between shutdown and operation. The lower temperatures and temperature changes makes design easier from material standpoint. Lubrication, sealing, bearing design also benefit.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 21:50
|
|
 You still see these all over NYC. Edit: took that picture today, in Brooklyn. Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Sep 30, 2013 |
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 23:39
|
|
|
Smiling Jack posted:
I love that it has to specify where the fall out shelter is. As if a fallout shelter would be on the roof, the top floor or in the park(ing lot).
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 16:20
|
|
|
Salon.com usually has a terrible signal-noise ratio, but this piece about the fall of 1983, in which we were drat near killed every single one of us, was a pretty good read. http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/inescapable_apocalyptic_dread_the_terrifying_nuclear_autumn_of_1983/ I was only five at the time, but I still knew that there was something called nuclear war, where we all would be swallowed by flames, and it could happen anytime. I sometimes wonder how much it messed me up
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 16:46
|
|
|
Smiling Jack posted:
I see tons of them around campus and I kick myself every day that I didn't steal the one from the machine room when I had the chance.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 16:48
|
|
|
Go hog wild without stealing anything. http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/genuine-cold-war-era-fallout-shelter-sign.aspx?a=235059
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 17:07
|
|
|
Sjurygg posted:Salon.com usually has a terrible signal-noise ratio, but this piece about the fall of 1983, in which we were drat near killed every single one of us, was a pretty good read. http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/inescapable_apocalyptic_dread_the_terrifying_nuclear_autumn_of_1983/ Vouching for this, it's a pretty good read.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:06
|
|
|
Handsome Ralph posted:Vouching for this, it's a pretty good read. I think it's a bit overblown. In 1983, I was 9. Was TDA scary as hell? Yes. But stuff like this: quote:The autumn of ’83 was also a semester of children’s thermonuclear ethics. If it happens in the afternoon, do we run toward home, or away from the city and the blast? If it happens at night, do we let our parents huddle over us in the basement, or do we stand on the rooftop, chests forward, praying the first shock wave dematerializes our family without pain? Seriously? That wasn't my experience. I think there's a distinct lack of either historical awareness or just plain historical empathy. This is what he experienced, it was as scared as he got, so therefore this was as scary as it got, period. But know what we didn't have to do? Do air-raid drills at school and practice hiding under our desks, trusting in about 3/4" of veneer-covered particle board to protect us from nuclear blasts. The radio or tv beeped? Oh. If this guy's city had been holding weekly or monthly air-raid drills, complete with giant 30-kilowatt sirens going of, he'd have completely lost his poo poo. Our school might have had a fallout shelter in the basement (it was an old school), but we never had drills to practice getting into it, we just played indoor soccer down there. It's a decent article, but it seems needlessly purple. Fears of potential nuclear annihilation were certainly part of the general cultural background count, but I don't think kids during the early 80s had either a unique or a particular onerous row to hoe in that regard.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:33
|
|
|
Smiling Jack posted:
Neat! Are they still kept up with? While we're on the subject, I went to sixth grade here:  It's been a while, but I still remember some of it's history. McKinley was built during Cedar Rapids' heydey (the early 20's) in a pretty opulent manner, with marble steps, chipped marble floors, full kitchen, an indoor swimming pool, even marble urinals (sadly now broken)! Besides the fourth floor never getting finished, very few expenses were spared. Now Cedar Rapids has had city-steam for quite a while, but McKinley was built before that. This meant it needed generous machinery spaces to hold the huge boilers and the attendant fuel supply necessary to heat the place. A custodian was required to stay the night to keep the coal burning, there's even a good sized apartment in the basement for him. To give you some idea, here's a picture of some of the tunnels under the school:  That poo poo goes down like three floors, with rooms at each level, before you even reach the entrance to the fallout shelter built underneath. I guess that was the best place to put a shelter, deep in a hill in the middle of a flood plain! Our first day of sixth grade was spent getting a guided tour of the whole building, including the shelter. I want to say that it could hold half of all the people in downtown Cedar Rapids when it was built. I'd think it'd be pretty useful in case of tornadoes, too! It's pretty much a museum at this point, I don't know if they even change out the emergency water anymore. Lot of neat stuff in that school. For example: Grant Wood taught there for a while. After school he would often work out in the gym or the swimming pool. Evidently he preferred to use the custodian's shower in the basement to clean up once he was done. As a token of appreciation, he painted a shower curtain for the guys  . Also Terri Farrell of Deep Space Nine went there, so that's neat.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:34
|
|
|
I was born in 75 and went to school right outside Hartford, CT (a decently-sized city) and I don't remember one thing about cold war stuff beyond the air raid sirens that would sound every so often for drills. My parents just told us they were for hurricanes and other storms, and nothing was really emphasized in school. I always thought that was the stuff from the 50's and 60's...
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:41
|
|
|
Sjurygg posted:Salon.com usually has a terrible signal-noise ratio, but this piece about the fall of 1983, in which we were drat near killed every single one of us, was a pretty good read. http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/inescapable_apocalyptic_dread_the_terrifying_nuclear_autumn_of_1983/ An overly-emotional article with lots of political buzzwords to get you fired up, written to a specific audience of similarly-emotional people with only a loose grasp of history.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:49
|
|
|
Count Sacula posted:I was born in 75 and went to school right outside Hartford, CT (a decently-sized city) and I don't remember one thing about cold war stuff beyond the air raid sirens that would sound every so often for drills. My parents just told us they were for hurricanes and other storms, and nothing was really emphasized in school. I always thought that was the stuff from the 50's and 60's... I was born in '80 and they were known as air-raid drills until a school in my district was hit by a microburst in '89, after that they became tornado drills. A bit odd for NY. Though I'm 7 miles from Stewart ANG, that's probably why they still called them air-raid drills in the 80's. e- I'm glad that Salon article mentions it, I thought I was weird for my heart skipping a beat every time the EAS tests go off Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 30, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:55
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:I think it's a bit overblown. In 1983, I was 9. Was TDA scary as hell? Yes. But stuff like this: I was born after Able Archer and I'm barely old enough to remember the First Gulf War so I can't say if he's right or wrong about the way the country felt upon the movies release/but it read more like that's how it impacted him/how he viewed it as a 9-year old kid and not so much how everyone else did at the time. poo poo, I saw TDA in 98 or 99 and even though I fully realized that things had drastically changed since the movies release, it still hosed with my head a little bit. Up until watching that movie, Broken Arrow was probably the extent of my film based nuclear warfare knowledge. I can only imagine how it might have hosed with my over active imagination had I seen it two weeks after Able Archer concluded.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 20:27
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:An overly-emotional article with lots of political buzzwords to get you fired up, written to a specific audience of similarly-emotional people with only a loose grasp of history. Kinda the vibe I got. My father's stories in this context of childhood in the '50s and '60s were orders of magnitude more terrifying than my experience in the '80s. The big change, which the article alludes to, is with media portrayal.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 20:39
|
|
|
A poo poo article, full of factual inaccuracies, which puts the ball solely into Reagan's court and glosses over all kinds of (partly internal) Soviet developments. Hell I'd go as far as saying its orientalist (for lack of a better term) to a decent degree since it precludes mutual agency in some of its arguments.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 20:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
I remember hearing a warning siren going off in Wyoming, when I was in the fourth grade. I was 100% sure it meant nukes were incoming from Russia. My grandparents had to console me and tell me it was a weekly test before is stop crying.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 21:05
|
|