What the hell is that?
Posted on 09/06/2009 9:33:49 AM PDT by em2vn
For the third time in the last decade, the U.S. Air Force is looking at using commercial aircraft as bombers. This time around, it's mainly a matter of cost, with the next generation heavy bomber likely to cost over a billion dollars each, and only carry 30 tons of bombs or missiles. The idea of militarizing 747s first started gaining traction three decades ago, as cruise missiles showed up and many air force analysts did the math and realized that it would be a lot cheaper to launch these missiles from a militarized Boeing 747. The freighter version of the latest 747model, the 747-8F, can carry 140 tons of cargo. After militarizing the aircraft, you would still be able to carry about a hundred tons of missiles and bombs.
Well, as I said before, I know what I saw. When I was doing cellular (I owned and ran an engineering company for 17 years) I always kept binoculars handy because I was always inspecting antennas or watching what tower guys were doing on the tower. Several dozen times during the period I worked in that area of Kentucky I saw B-52's fly by with a guy sitting in the tail gunner position plain as day, clearly visible through a window on the aft most portion of the aircraft with binoculars. I could also tell that the cockpit windows were draped. In one pass I saw it appeared that the guy in the back might have been operating a fairly large camera.
This commentary reminds me of a thread here on Free Republic about 5 years ago regarding the F-22. We are/were under a supersonic corridor here in SE Tennessee that was being used for testing the F-22 out of Dobbins AFB in Marietta, GA, which is also home to Lockheed. I mentioned in that thread that we were experiencing sonic booms here almost daily and had been for about a year and a half. It was all over the news here, print and broadcast, so people would know what was going on and not think we were under attack or something (post 9/11).
Despite it being common knowledge here, as in hundreds of thousands of people in the area who were also witnessing the sonic booms daily, four posters here on FR chimed in claiming to be "in the know" and claiming to be retired Air Force, insisted that there were no super sonic corridors within the continental USA. Two of them didn't believe it even after I showed them links to stories about the testing that ran in the local news rag out of Chattanooga.
One day in particular we had a sonic boom much louder than the others. So loud, in fact, that it knocked stuff off the shelves in my hangars. You could see the contrails, but the F-22's flew so high you could not tell what type of aircraft it was, even with binoculars. This one large boom, though, really caught my attention. I ran to the back door of the hangar, looked up with binoculars and I could see the airplane. No mistaking it. It was a white B-1B, maybe belonging to NASA. I think they have one for high altitude, high speed research they fly. That comment, too, brought on several naysayers, but it didn't change what I saw one iota.
So, as with your comments, what they said then didn't change what I witnessed with my own eyes (and ears). So, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. I am as absolutely certain of what I saw in Kentucky as I am about the sonic booms I witnessed over a nearly two year period. It most certainly happened. No doubt in my mind about it whatsoever.
I’m willing to cut you some slack on the speed estimation, merely because it’s TOUGH to properly estimate the speed of a large aircraft, it’s the same reason that a C-5 on climbout from a takeoff looks as if it SHOULD be falling out of the sky.
I am familiar with that phenomenon. I grew up near Atlanta and I've seen the C-5 many, many times flying in and out of Dobbins. It does appear to be going so slow that it would fall out of the sky, but that is looking up at it with no ground reference for speed. The B-52's I saw certainly could have been going faster, but 450 knots seems high to me. I was looking down on these aircraft and, as such, I had a visual reference of the ground to give an indication of their speed. I will defer to you on this one, though, since you claim PIC time in that bird.
As for your more recent observations, I have no idea: I got out in 1989, and in any case, am only really familiar with the routes and speeds of B-52s, T-43s, and T-37s, as they are what I flew. . .
I starting flying in this valley in 1978. The various military aircraft I've seen here over the past 30 some odd years seem to be using it for low altitude training purposes, despite there being no designated area for such use. The closest MOA is Snowbird, roughly 80 miles east. Mostly, what I see are C-130's, but I've also seen F-4's (years ago), F-16's, T-34's, Saberliners, Blackhawks, and lately the V-22 Osprey. There are no airways shown parallel to the valley on any chart I've ever seen. I suppose that's why they don't admit to flying these type missions here.
I think al Queda already figured this out.
What the hell is that?
Claim all you want: the last B-52 with a gunner in the tail, and, thus, a tailgunner compartment, was retired in 1983. The only remaining BUFFs after that were G’s and H’s, where the gunner sat in the aft portion of the forward cockpit.
Depending on sun conditions, SOME of the blackout curtains were occasionally partially pulled, but operating at low level in an **entirely** closed cockpit was contrary to SAC Regulations, at least until I left the USAF in late 1989
Aye-Aye, Chief. Must have been a mass hallucination.....
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