Posted on 11/01/2007 6:22:26 AM PDT by RDTF
Whoopee. A nuke was dropped in Lake Michigan years ago.
ping
It’s only been a day or two!
Jesus, talk about a press that can’t get the answers fast enough.
I suggest the media just invent whatever story they want and run with it. Hell, it’s what they do half the time anyway. Why wait for any fact finding, appointment of officials for investigation, review an questioning of individuals, analysis of aircraft and impact site...... The Navy can’t crap you an answer that fast! What kind of BS is this?
Update to Tuesdays ping.
Click on pic for past Navair pings.
Post or FReepmail me if you wish to be enlisted in or discharged from the Navair Pinglist.
This is a medium to low volume pinglist.
yep
Many times the Navy never gives an answer!
One of you guys chime in here. Hung up ordinance or an oopsie in the cockpit?
As a kid, my family was friends with the National Guard 2- Star General in IN. For my birthday, I got to go out to the Camp Atturberry fighter range and stand in the scoring tower as F-16 and A-10s were practicing with these “puffers” (that’s what the scoring guys called the dummy bombs). They were also scoring the gun range.
It was really cool (and loud). But the bombs were disappointing as they only let out a vertical poof of white smoke when they hit. We expected explosions and were standing on the outside deck watching the planes. They cam pretty close to the tower too.
They let us go out on the range and collect spent brass from the A-10s. I still have some of them.
Spent brass from a Warthog? I thought all the cases were retained in the aircrafts feed magazine. Could they have been .50BMG cases instead?
Hung ordinance is not out of the question, and even though they said it was a straight-in, I question the wisdom of going over the city.
Lawn Dart *ping*
No sir. They were the biguns. They were strafing from our left and passing in front of us at less than 1,000 feet away. You could see the pilots inside the cockpits as they came in. Here is the scenario:
You would see the A-10 drop below the line of site (tree line) way out in the distance. It was hilly terrain. No sound yet (besides other planes circling high in the area). Then you would see the A-10 pop up over the hill, pull up on the approach, put the nose down, the front of the plane would spew smoke down the sides of the plane from the front and you would see shells (kind of a metallic cloud) dumping from the nose of the plane. Then LOUD DEEP SCREAM of the gun would follow, immediately followed by the sound of the jet. THe target would all but dissapear in a cloud of dust (Huge bullseye). The pilot would pull up and roll upside down as it went past us. Then you would hear the echo off the valey of the gun. It sounded like the loudest bull fart you ever heard (the echo that is). Plane would roll back over as it passed the huge bullseye down range and pull up and out of the pattern. The guys in the tower would rattle off some numbers and such and the pilot would acknowledge. When the first A-10 came in, we about jumped out of our skin when the sound of the gun got to us.
But the shell casings were not .50s. They were the big ones. There were some small casings on the range too. They said those were from the F-16s. (20MM Vs. 40MM I think).
Correction. The A-10s were 30MM casings.
Dummy bombs are the least of our worries.
Maybe the GAU-8/A is a modern version of the gun he saw in action. I spent two weeks at Atterbury and witnessed the cloud of junk falling from the A-10 as they fired the gun. I didn’t get a chance to go collect spent brass, but I saw a ton of stuff falling from the nose when they fired.
One other possibility if I am incorrect is that the 30mm cases could have come from an AH-64 main gun.
Ooops, wrong button... (somebody's fitness report just went all to hell!)
You are forgiven. I don’t know if the design changed since the 80’s or what. I’ll do some research and post back here.
Any way you cut it, the casings I saw and picked up from the field as a kid (I think in 1983 or so) fell from the plane and they were brass. Maybe the system has been updated since then. I’m not crazy. :o)
I’ll go find out.
http://www.military.cz/usa/air/in_service/weapons/cannons/gau8/gau8_en.htm
http://www.indopedia.org/GAU-8_Avenger.html
It’s been through some upgrades but I can’t find specifics right now. I’ll check when I have more time.
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