Posted on 10/13/2018 5:40:05 PM PDT by Snickering Hound
Sitting in the ruined airplane hangars of Tyndall Air Force Base, which was shredded on Wednesday when Hurricane Michael swept across the Florida Panhandle, may be some of the Air Forces most advanced and most expensive stealth fighter jets.
Tyndall is home to 55 F-22 stealth fighters, which cost a dizzying $339 million each. Before the storm, the Air Force sent at least 33 of the fighters to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Air Force officials have not disclosed the whereabouts of the remaining 22 planes, other than to say that a number of aircraft were left at the base because of maintenance or safety reasons.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Malinda Singleton, would not confirm that any of the aircraft left behind were F-22s.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This hurrine gave little time for planning. It both increased in power and traveled unusually fast.
I read it. Some reporters assert they saw F-22 tailfins in hangers with damaged roofs. If they saw fins, that means they were upright. They might have been tied down to the hanger floor and any damage minimal (or minimized). But Im willing to bet some were under sturdier cover than what the reporters saw.
Florida, Alabama, & Georgia are NOT Montana.
More than a dozen F-22s were left behind as Hurricane Michael bore down on the base Oct. 10. Now, in Michael’s wake, many of those are damaged, and some beyond repair, at a cost of more than $1 billion, Air Force officials said.
Hard to get hanger queens out the door.
BILLION dollars of aircraft and THIS!!! WTF! I would have expected this under the Obama regime. Heads need to roll!
Yes, actually. Trannies, women and homosexuals.
There are pictures of F-22s upside down.
Air Force magazine says that a dozen f-22s were left behind, and that the loss of stained was at least a billion dollars in aircraft. Not to mention that I think the assembly line is basically toast already. Have these booger eating morons running the Air Force never heard of a ch-47 and a sling load? Those 12 could have been rolled out, rigged, snatched and flown hundreds of miles away in an afternoon. Of course, our 47s are probably all sitting in the Boneyard too. Obama screwed us so bad, from the officers running the Air Force, to the equipment they have. Bottom line, they were caught flat-footed buy a hurricane in early October in Florida.
The projected track and official advisories though gave about three days’ warning, and there is enough understanding of Gulf hurricanes that the danger ought to have been recognized.
33 out of 55 flyable. Thats an abysmal ER 60% rate to begin with.
41 out of 55 meets the minimum acceptable ER 75% rate.
Looked at the images, none of those planes are F-22. One f-15 and some what looks like Orions.
Takes very little time, a matter of hours, to pull the wings and engines. This is by Design. The problem is at the Air Force does not have the ability to snap to and operate in a crisis mentality to get things done. Guaranteed a marine unit could have pulled it off in a similar situation.
This is the NY Slimes so this is probably cr@p.But if it’s true someone has dropped the ball. We’ll see what courts-martial,if any,happen down the line.
Patton would be in trouble again for slapping around No Loads
(Yes He would)
Couldn’t possibly inflate the number of loses for that many billions could they?
Six 737 fuselages caught in a Montana train derailment were crushed and baled this week, and their remains should be removed by Saturday, the manager of the scrapping operation said Friday.Pacific Steel and Recycling’s Missoula, Mont., branch recycling manager, Mason Mikkola, said in an interview that the company brought out a portable baler it uses to crush cars, and turned the six 737 bodies into large metal cubes.
“We’ve never done fuselages before,” Mikkola said. “This is something a little different.”
As for many of the childish notions that many have thrown around over the last 24 hours with great authoritylike flying aircraft away on transports or wheeling them out on trucksthey don't help inform the public of the realities of these types of evacuation operations. No, these planes aren't just Lego sets that you can take apart and pour into a C-5. Removing wings on an F-22? That is a massive undertaking, let alone getting a C-5 in and loading it up to fly away to someplace. Once again, limited capacity in a limited timespan, and that is a long-lead type of project.
Throwing jets on flatbed trucks? People don't realize how large of a flying machine a Raptor is. They are roughly 44 feet wide, 62 feet long, and weigh over 43,000lbs. They are not something you just throw on pop's flatbed and skidaddle out of dodge. Nor are they made to be transported that way in the first place. And to where? You are talking about a highly sensitive asset packed with classified material. Its skin treatment alone presents a national secret risk. These aircraft are supposed to sit in last minute hurricane traffic heading somewhere as they hog up multiple lanes? The whole notion is ridiculous. And if they can't seek refuge in time, you have a flying machine strapped to a flatbed. Good luck with that.
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