Posted on 03/28/2006 8:39:34 AM PST by spetznaz
LOL! Somehow, I just can't envision that tub doing close combat with an F-22.
This could be a match. Heh heh heh
http://home.comcast.net/~unixgeezer/bducomp.WMV
Last summer perusing my local public library I found a Thunderbirds DVD. The sound was awful but it looked great on my 55" big screen. What a hoot!
Back in the 1960s when I flew on C-130s, the C-130s had two toilets high in the tail. One had to "ascend the throne" to get to them. They each had a waist-high canvas shield. One sitting on the throne could look down upon the masses -- all staring up at her (or him).
Actually, A6 drill was to blow the canopy if you had time, then eject. If you were in a hurry (or the canopy didn't blow) then you went through it as Plan B.
The movie Flight of the Intruder shows a through-canopy ejection (the movie's kind of hokey, but not as bad as Hollyweird wanted to make it... they wanted the pilots to be countercultural dopers). The script had a normal sequence but when he learned about the thru-canopy ejection, the director got all excited, and that's what wound up on the screen.
I am deeply suspicious of this story for several reasons. #1 Strategypage is an F-6 source. It's basically a bunch of armchair experts and wargamers pontificating. #2 if I were designing a strike aircraft with that gooseneck, I'm pretty sure I would put stuff that moves the mission along (like fuel, which this jet needs in vast quantity, and ECM gear, which keeps that fuel from becoming a white-hot fireball with the unhappy pilots in the white bit) much higher in priority than comfort items.
US military requires positive pressure O2 above 40k feet and a pressure suit above 50k. Without the pressure suit you'd bend. Details (needs your high school physics, math and chemistry):
http://www.brooks.af.mil/af/files/fsguide/HTML/Chapter_02.html
US military aircraft have had pressurised cabins for a long time. If your pressurization is not working, you can fly on O2 alone but AFI's limit you to 25k feet.
Pressure suits are very bulky and uncormfortable, and surprisingly hard to DO anything in. Aircraft that are customarily flown in pressure suits (think U-2) require a different design of knobs and switches from, say, a helicopter where there's just a thin Nomex glove on your hand.
A rapid decompression at very high altitude is problematical. A while back, a civilian ferry pilot delivering an F-100 for conversion to drone thought it would be fun to see how high a Hun can go. It went to over 50k -- and blew the cabin seal. The pilot dived it for thicker air, and he felt some distress which quickly eased. On landing he went to his hotel room. In the morning, he was dead of, IIRC, an embolism. (he was middle aged and not in fighter-pilot shape any more).
Anyway, I think the report of the comfort pallet is a bit of nonsense. "You have the plane, comrade, I'm going back to mess with the Easy-Bake oven!" Never happen.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Flying cars, eh?
There have actually been two certified (yes, full CAR 3 certification) in the USA, Molt Taylor's and Robert Fulton's. Indeed, Fulton's son still has the Type Certificate and will build you one for around the price of a Cirrus.
There are a bunch of experimental ones that never flew (Moller's ongoing project that has been promised to fly "next year" every year since 1968 is one of them). But here's a flying motorcycle that's flying, and motorcycling, now:
http://www.thebutterflyllc.com/sscycle/gallery.htm
As you see, it biases towards the aircraft side (every "flying car" has to lean one way or the other) but it's OK for keeping in a garage and riding to the airport.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
"Fly naked" placemarker
Thanks for the ping. It is a nice-looking aircraft, at least from the side.
Highest I've even been was 45k, yes positive pressure breathing in an A6. As far as ejection, I can tell you our procedures rarely included jettisoning the canopy due to the possibility that it could jam partway... (even though NATOPS recommended jettison and slow speed (~200 knots)).
Chances were that you wouldn't have time for a controlled ejection under most circumstances, problems during cat shot, low level ingress/egress, weapons delivery, missile evasion, carrier landing gone wrong, etc. Therefore, Plan B (as you put it) was our primary focus 99.999 percent of the time.
Spacious enough for a two man crew or one russian woman.
Lt. Keith Gallagher's Story
Irish Luck - Surviving Partial Ejection from A-6 Aircraft
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