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Hah, so *that's* what that blockhouse was. Waaaay back in the mists of time, when I was in early grade school (not more then 4th grade, I believe), we got an official USAF tour of some Distant Early Warning-type facility, chock full of monitors and guys with headphones. Years later - call it early-to-mid-'80s - I had a Civil Air Patrol encampment in the same (non-gutted) building. (Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls MT.)(Both in CAP and during the "Big Sky Day" yearly exhibitions, we also got the chance to play in the Minuteman Control Capsule Simulator. I turned the key on Armageddon something like 6-10 times...) You *know* you have to do the B-36 - six turnin' and four burnin'. 24+ hour mission capability *without* aerial refueling.   Also requesting as high-resolution a copy of the "bonus" Tu-95 image as possible, thank you.
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Dec 15, 2010 19:49
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And don't forget - they have have been enormous masses of metal trundling along overhead ("magnesium overcast"), but some things are bigger and more powerful yet. Like tornados. 
Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 00:04
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QuarkMartial posted:Reminds me of the age-old joke about a fighter tailing a bomber (a B-2 or something), and the fighter being a show-off. He keeps going on and on about how awesome his jet is and about how much the bomber sucks. Having had enough, the bomber pilot says, "I bet I can do something you can't do." "What?" A few minutes pass, and nothing about the bomber's flight seems to change. "What'd you do," the fighter asks. "We cut off 2 of our engines Can't remember if it was a bomber or a transport, but the other punchline is "Oh, I just got up and went in the back to have a cup of coffee and take a poo poo." I grew up in Great Falls, Montana, in the middle of the Malmstrom AFB missile fields; at highway speeds, you'd need a minimum 45 minutes to try and clear the immediate target zones.  I don't recall ever hearing any evacuation planning or training... Stupid B-52 Tricks *  * this doesn't count aerial hoonage that results in an unexpected ground interface, such as that idiot that crashed his bird at Fairchild AFB. Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 06:22
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One issue with nuclear aircraft propulsion was, in addition to all the weight of your reactor and the power-transfer mechanism to whatever engines you're using, there was a minor concern about what was termed "roll-up". Y'see, the B-36 was loving huge, and restricted to specially-constructed runways. Nuclear power wasn't likely to result in a lot of weight savings, so it was still going to be possible to have... [i]issues[/s]... on landing. Pranging the bird on landing is always problematic - there's always been fears that a nuke could somehow go off in that event, and even finding a nuclear weapon sitting in a burning pool of avgas after a crash (in England, I'll have to try and dig up the info) didn't reassure anyone. So, they imagined a Bad Thing. A big nukey bird is coming in hot.. *too* hot. WHAM. Followed by more ugly noises as the landing gear collapse, the plane starts sliding on it's belly, it starts to go sideways, OH HOLY poo poo it's rolling and shedding parts and fireballing and... "Hey Dave, what's the weight of that reactor? How many tons? Slamming and rolling and total loss of cooling systems and controls and uranium is kinda mass-y, is there any chance it could get slapped into a critical mass?" "Well... lemme see here... <runs calculations> uhm. Go on to lunch without me, Frank, I'm not hungry anymore." I guess there was also an issue in how much shielding was available, and whether non-crew parts of the aircraft might not be fully protected, and if they really wanted to have horribly-radioactive "no-go" zones out the backs of the aircraft on US soil and such. It's been quite a while since I was reading about this, though, so that may have been (at least in theory) dealt with. I also recall something about one idea for Project Pluto was to run an open-core, air-cooled reactor, which would be robo-piloted over Soviet territory, dropping bombs and with highly-radioactive flakes of fuel rods dusting out all over the place.  (On quick reading through the Wikipedia article, that's the nuclear scramjet - except they don't talk about radioactive-salting the earth.)
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Dec 19, 2010 07:03
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mlmp08 posted:(This is also why that Air Force pilot who blew apart one of our radars because he was spiked is full of poo poo) This sounds interesting... details?
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Dec 24, 2010 04:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:
 They don't have to build it into the walls, either.
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Jan 21, 2011 19:10
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iyaayas01 posted:Too lazy to pull up a picture on this lovely Army LSA connection, but look up the XF-85 Goblin. It was designed to operate from the gargantuan B-36 bomber. Basically the early USAF (USAAF when the proposal first dropped) designed the B-36 to be able to bomb Germany from the continental US during WWII. This meant after the war they had a huge (but relatively slow) bomber that had a very long range. Unfortunately, its slow speed meant it couldn't be expected to penetrate unescorted but its very long range made escort fighters unfeasible. The solution was to rig up a mini jet fighter that would fit into one of the bomb bays and be mounted on a trapeze. The fighter would takeoff and land in the bomb bay of the bomber, only launching during flight to fight off enemy fighters. The project was dropped after there were difficulties hooking up to the bomber and longer range jet powered escorts were developed to fill the role. Also, the fighter's mediocre performance didn't help things. Wkipedia  Using a B-29 for trapeze-hookup testing.  End result for a failed trapeze test. (There's video of this, but I can't dig that out at work.)  More Still more
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Mar 4, 2011 19:54
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JoeCL posted:The Soviets also experimented with the parasite fighter concept back in the 1930s, called the [html=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project]Zveno Project[/html]. Rather than using a unique parasite fighter they just used modified I-5s or I-16s strapped onto TB-3s. Apparently they actually used them operationally a couple times too. Parasite aircraft have a long history. 
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Mar 7, 2011 07:44
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Groda posted:You in NE? No, he's in the AF. 
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Mar 30, 2011 17:48
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As seen on IRC!  NASA has an image archive of neat pictures, including some somewhat larger resolution ones. gently caress tables. http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/index.html
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Apr 5, 2011 03:30
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Did anyone ever fire a ICBM test shot over the pole? (North or south.) Some WWIII stuff I read years ago suggested that such launches might not have the predicted accuracy due to magnetic-field effects or the aurora borealis or Santa's defense grid or something. (Might have been Dean Ing, might have been The Guardians. I don't think it was in Twilight: 2000, in any case.)
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Apr 7, 2011 05:07
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"If it flies, it dies." - The Infantry Creed
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May 6, 2011 19:45
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Flikken posted:Who wants to bet we had a b2 orbiting in case the mission went south? A B2 full of SEALs.
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May 7, 2011 22:48
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Gray Stormy posted:Thats what started this conversation. Weve come full circle. Full circle is next year, when the grass has grown back.
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Jun 4, 2011 04:11
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Was there a B-58 infodump in the thread already? I don't seem to recall one offhand.
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Jun 4, 2011 07:27
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Sunday Punch posted:I've always loved that story. I'M A I'M A SUCK MY DIIIIIIICK! I'M A What's the under the nose there, a bombardier cage?
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Jun 21, 2011 23:08
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slidebite posted:Once I knew what they were, I started noticing them all over the place in north/central Montana for (I presume) Malmstrom out of Great Falls. The ones I saw are literally right next to the highway, not much further than most gas stations would be. Yup, Malmstrom. When they had Big Sky Day (base open-house/airshow), they'd run tours through the command-capsure simulator. (They also did the with the Civil Air Patrol.) I got to turn the key on two seperate occasions.  They also used to drive these through town (Great Falls):  Although I never got to see this:  http://www.truckaccidents360.com/blog/317/military-semi-trailer-with-missile-parts-overturns/
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Jun 24, 2011 18:43
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SIGSEGV posted:Also it appears the US had 120 mm AAA in Korea. In Korea, everyone was still (in part) fighting the last war, when big (fairly) slow strategic bombers were lumbering their way around using prop engines, and you had time to heave a big heavy shell up to their altitude - if your bomber stream is enough to darken the sky, it's a lot easier to hit *something* up there.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:52
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Aciid c0d3r posted:I know it was posted a few pages back, but the Minuteman III stuff interests me, mostly because I was stationed at Minot AFB on the Bomb side of the base at 5th MUNS. I had plenty of space cop friends from the 91st, and I had managed to glean some information from them about the silos and LCFs and stuff. I have a map that I have been working on here with some of the active sites around Minot AFB, as well as some decommissioned ATLAS F sites near Altus AFB. Even though I worked at Minot AFB, working on this map really puts the whole "Scorched Earth" reality into perspective. I only have 33 of the 165 sites on the map at this time. At one point, my local library had a large-format paperbound book that had a lot of details about the missile fields, and maps of each silo/command capsule/site, for the entire SAC missile deployment (at least what was unclassified/known). Damned if I can remember the name of the thing, it's been at least 6-8 years since I saw it. The strike-maps in the back of War Day (Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, 1984) show that my home town (Great Falls, MT) was a death zone. (Middle of the Minutemen fields, *and* Malmstrom AFB right outside town.) I always figured that it was a minimum 45 minutes or so (minimal traffic, decent weather) to get to a safe distance in case of sudden Commie Attack, so...
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Jul 21, 2011 22:43
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VikingSkull posted:30-60 minutes outside of NYC there are hicks that would scare the guys from Deliverance. Yeah, but if they blow the Jersey bridges... For me, it wasn't so much "HI TARGET HERE TARGET HERE", but being in the *middle* of a zone of counterforce targets. Early-Warning horns go off, all it means is you get to listen to them while waiting, because you're not getting out of the missile fields in what time there is.
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Jul 26, 2011 21:18
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Sjurygg posted:An interesting twist on this is the British concept of the Letter of Last Resort, which is a secret letter hand signed by the Prime Minister, sealed in an envelope and delivered to each captain of a nuclear submarine departing for a patrol. The letter is locked in a vault, and contains the manner of conduct to be followed by the Captain should all official functions of the Government cease to exist. "PS - Save one for Belfast"
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Aug 18, 2011 16:28
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Sexual Lorax posted:PPPS- Alliances will come and go, but the French will always be French. PPPPS - Wogs begin at Calais.
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Aug 18, 2011 23:30
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slidebite posted:While the F19 would have been incredibly cool, I was not disappointed with the real F117 and B2. I remember my jaw dropping as a teenager when the first photos were released. Don't forget the F-19 in Microprose's Stealth Fighter videogame. "'scuse me while I sneakily fly over the target airbase taking pictures, then Durendal it and make the photos immediately obsolete, and finish by flying back to Norway at 30 feet with a MIG-25 orbiting me the whole way.  "
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Nov 4, 2011 17:41
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slidebite posted:Microprose was the poo poo. I remember playing F15 and Silent Service for loving HOURS on end. Did you know you could exterminate all the friendly forces except for one base, land and rearm, wipe out *that* base, then land your helicopter at an enemy base? And only get some KP peeling potatos? It was also fun stooging around at like 15 feet on one engine (fuel economy), wiping all the enemy off the map and having to either fire FFARS unguided rockets or *really quickly* land when a HIND appeared - they could shoot through mountains, and usually hosed up your bird massively when they did. Although if you screwed up your password (copy protection) returning to base, you got one-shotted *really* good: every system that could be destroyed was, everything else was crippled. I wanted to bolt that weapon onto my bird and go hunting... This was all on the Commodore 64, by the way. I bought Gunship for the Amiga, but it had... issues, with untargetable/indestructable enemies. This would only be annoying, but as that particular infantry squad was a primary target... <sigh> and they were shooting back with MANPADS SAMS, too. Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 21:05
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Phanatic posted:What? No love for The Guardians series? I *love* The Guardians - until it gets caught up in escalation (the more books, the more the "threat" has to increase, so four guys end up fighting off entire battalions and surviving) and as best I can tell it went from the original authour to a different one (or a really ham-handed editor) in the last few. The last even vaguely readable one was "Death From Above", where they go all Moonraker on the Giant Space Laser Station. The one following it blatantly turns to poo poo as they're making re-entry... major characterisation changes, and of course they have to end up in the middle of a Soviet-remnant assault on landing.  The actual (original) writer was Victor Milan, and he was throwing in SF/comics injokes in spots - there were a ton of references in that last readable one, so I think he was ending his contract and went out swinging. Not sure about the spinoff series, which I forget the name of, except that I recall it being so shite that I used the book as tradefodder. For truely horrible warporn, I find James Rouch's THE ZONE to be just the thing to make you want to wash your hands/mind afterwards. Techonofetishism, perversion, gratuitous violence and more swearing (at times in a most curious manner) than you can shake a hovercraft APC at... Jerry Ahern's The Survivalist started off standard Cold-War-Gone-Hot survivalist-porn, but over time it went all  to the point that I quit reading.War... war kills trees.
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Nov 7, 2011 20:54
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iyaayas01 posted:Here's some more... 
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Nov 9, 2011 19:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:Jesus christ I would loving pay for a "let's read" of the entire run of that magazine. Go dredge up a copy of THE BLACK GESTAPO to watch. 
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Nov 9, 2011 19:58
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mikerock posted:We're still flying Sea Kings and they went into service around the same time the Arrows would have. Aren't y'all still using Inglis High Powers, too?
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Nov 18, 2011 19:34
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slidebite posted:A little bit of irony that a nation can barely keep a 40 year old aircraft in the sky, 35 year old AA missile operational, but yet can almost make a nuclear weapon and basic launch system. I dunno, the US developed a nuclear weapon from scratch, during a large war, using early-to-mid-1940's technology...
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Nov 28, 2011 01:15
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MetaFilter link-pile regarding the P-3 Orion and its upcoming retirement: http://www.metafilter.com/110509/The-Night-of-The-Hunter
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Dec 15, 2011 07:16
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Low and 
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Dec 16, 2011 18:51
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:Why didnt these just explode at altitude from the pressure? It's unlikely that the Spitfire Beerwagon climbed high enough to run into pressurisation issues. The whole "cold enough to chill at altitude" bit doesn't matter as much - I expect that just cruising along in IFR (I Follow Roads) conditions would cool down a keg just from the airflow.
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Dec 20, 2011 18:41
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Psion posted:You know, this has been bothering me for a while, and really started bothering me when I was flying one in Ace Combat a lot (shut up It's a thought-activated rear defense pod, of course. State-of-the-art and then some. 
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Jan 24, 2012 01:39
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Alaan posted:
Does the other side say "Boris"? In other aircraft news, The Big Fuckin' Press is pressing again. 50,000 ton forging press with pictures: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/iron-giant/8886/ And a PDF "from 1981 has even more detail (and pictures!), though it's unclear if any of the press's specifications may have changed in the most recent rebuild."
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Feb 13, 2012 22:39
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Oxford Comma posted:It'd be hilarious if these pictures were all of the same Bear over the years.
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Feb 15, 2012 19:07
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Armyman25 posted:I visited an old Swedish training base/museum last time I was there. It was pretty interesting. Is that an official Swedish military jukebox? The SA-27 ABBAtron?
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Feb 27, 2012 20:11
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