Posted on 03/04/2007 10:36:43 AM PST by EnjoyingLife
Under the control of talented, highly skilled, superbly trained United States Air Force pilots, a B-1B Lancer bomber -- "The Bone" -- demonstrates power, authority, and vapor beauty during an open house flyby in Southwest Asia, 16 January 2004. Image ID: 040116-F-0971G-130 Via: http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-20041217.htm Big Photo Link: http://chamorrobible.org/images/photos/gpw-20041217-UnitedStatesAirForce-040116-F-0971G-130.jpg
Photographer
Staff Sgt. Shelley R. Gill, Still Photography Journeyman, 125th Fighter Wing, Florida Air National Guard, U.S.A.
The BONE is an awesome aircraft. It may not be as stealthy as a B-2 but it can haul a lot more steel and with the new sniper pod is as good or better a targeting platform.
How can something so big go so fast?
Big tubes!!!
Another thing richly hated by Jimmy Carter...
During the dark days of the Klinton years, I took solace at the Miramar airshow in presence of the B-1 and all the other military there, the B-1 reminded me that the Reagan years were still with us in many ways.
BUMP!
Great pic. I got to see a Bone show off at an airshow in Ohio about 12 years ago, and man, nothing that big should be able to do what that beast can do. They took off on full afterburner, got about 250 feet off the ground, slammed it over into an 80-degree left bank, and disappeared behind the trees like an F-16 on Barry Bonds' best roids.
It's the second-loudest plane I've ever heard.
}:-)4
That made me recall the loudest noise I ever heard. Probably in 1961 or 62, I was working for Martin installing Titan I ICBM's in their silo's in eastern Washington at Moses Lake.
Our headquarters and operations base were at the Air Force base, Larson AFB, now closed. B-52 were stationed there - hot and ready.
I was walking from the parking lot one day when I heard B-52's starting up. Smoke and thunder. For the next ten minutes I watched as 9 B-52's taxied into position, formed up on the runway and then ran down the runway in echelons of 3 about 1000 yards apart and lumbered into the sky. The fury of hell seemed to have been unleashed. The ground and the air shook!
Of course at that time, we wondered if....this was it! Word came down shortly afterward that this had been an exercise. The relief was palpable.
By this guy in his first year in office:
BIG,BIG,BIG MOTORS
The first wouldnt be the B-58 Hustler would it?
I went to a "Blue Angels" airshow at Miramar in August, 1983. It was inspiring. God, how I miss Ronald Reagan.
I was in an excercize at a USAF base in Germany in the 70's where we did a "max effort" for an entire week. We flew our wing of 60+ F-4E Phantoms 5 or 6 times a day. I was on the end-of-runway crew, and we would process through all 60+ airplanes in 10-15 minutes. Then they would taxi onto the runway 8 at at time and launch in 4 waves of 2, then 8 more would taxi up. There was constant afterburner noise from at least 4 airplanes at a time for the whole 10-15 minutes.
Then we'd climb back in the crew van and watch them return, and a couple hours later do it all over again.
Nope. The loudest plane I've ever heard, by a mile, is the Concorde. I used to work across the highway from Dulles Airport (Dulles Corner, at 28 and 267, for those that know the area) 20 years ago when they were flying into and out of there four days a week. We were a mile and a half or so east of the north end of the runways at IAD, and let me tell you, if the Concorde was taking off southbound, when they went to full afterburner, you had to scream to talk in the parking garage. In my fifth-floor work area, the windows would vibrate on takeoff. 747s were a bare whisper by comparison, but you could hear the Concorde as a background rumble even in the very interior of the building in the elevator lobby.
The Bone was loud, but not even close. Coming in just behind the Bone in third place was an F-4F Phantom II from the German air force that I saw at the same airshow where I saw the B-1B perform. Big, mean, ugly, nasty, and loud...God, I love that Phantom.
}:-)4
In 1976 Viktor Belenko defected to Japan with his MiG-25 Foxbat, and described a new "super-Foxbat" that had look-down/shoot-down radar systems in order to attack cruise missiles. This would also make any low-level penetration aircraft "visible" and easy to attack. Countering this problem would require another upgrade to the electronics suite, already one of the most complex and expensive ever fitted. The debate over the need for the bomber opened anew, and this time the reduced low-speed dash was a particular target. Given the performance and the armament suite that was similar to the B-52, the program was increasingly questioned as a very expensive solution that appeared to have limited benefits over the existing fleet.
When President Carter took office in 1977 he ordered a review of the entire program. He was informed of the relatively new work on stealth aircraft that had started in 1975, and decided that this was a far better avenue of approach than the B-1. On 30 June 1977 he announced that the B-1A would be cancelled, in favor of ICBMs, SLBMs, and a fleet of modernized B-52s armed with ALCMs.[3] No mention of the stealth work was made public, the program being top secret, but today it is known that he started the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project in early 1978, which eventually led to the B-2 Spirit.[8]
...
On taking office, Reagan was faced with the same decision as Carter before; whether to continue with the B-1 for the short term, or to wait...Numerous changes were made to the design to better fit it to real-world missions, resulting in the new B-1B.
Love your tagline
MITO: minimum interval take-off. At the height of the Cold War, I watched a couple of these as the concluding event of wing operational readiness inspections.
Watching and hearing those roaring Buffs climb an invisible staircase into the blue . . . . well, awesome doesn't begin to describe it.
BTTT
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