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.
Posted on 02/11/2008 3:45:40 PM PST by Flavius
Edited on 02/11/2008 4:36:47 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Yeah, that still pisses me off as well. There is no excuse for the way the Hornet boys shoved the Tomcat out the door when the airframe still had so much potential. The only thing “super” about the Super-Hornet is its frigging price tag.
I was talking to an EW type some time ago and he was telling me that with its variable wing geometry, its large airframe size it’s huge carrying capacity, the Tomcat airframe was much better suited for alternative roles than the Hornet ever could have been.
BTTT
Nothing new here folks ,I was on the Constellation 40 years ago and this was standard operating procedure ,in fact the Navy had a title for it ,it was called Operation Brown Bear, it would be announced over the PA system ,everyone would rush to the flight deck with their cameras as the russian Bombers approached being trailed very closely by the F-4 Phantoms of VF-143 Pukin Dogs ready to put a sidewinder up their pipe!!
And what should they have done to stop it?
How so?
It's short of like a guy on the street pointing a gun at you, "out of the blue" with no verbal or other hostile signals. He's probably not going to shoot you, but then again, how can you know? And can you afford to take the chance that he's not?
No, it's more like a man carrying a gun walking past you. It the aircraft had targeted the carrier with its radar or locked on a missile or opened a bomb bay then that would be pointing the gun. The aircraft did none of that.
I spent about 9 years on active duty back in the late 70's and 80's. If we shot down every Russian bomber that buzzed a carrier then we would have been in a hot war rather than a cold one.
The F/A-18s should have splashed the one that buzzed the Nimitz to send a hard message to the Russians.
weren’t those over Russian soil when they were shot down, though?
See 216.
I will never understand why we don’t jam all frequencies and splash these birds. As far as the Russians would know, it simply didn’t return home.
After a few of their birds don’t return, they’d get the point.
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.
I had Peanuts The Clown.
The CNO is practicing for Barak style warfare. DNI is Dalai Lama
That had to reaaly suck. I have known a few folks who were in the officer ranks during Cap’N Peanut’s years and none of them have anything positive to say. Don’t get them started on the quality of most of the recruits at that time.
Well, I believe it starts with policy. Clearly, if we do not have a policy that instructs our personnel to prevent it, it will not be prevented on a regular or standard basis.
I believe it should be the policy of our government, when it comes to capitol ships, and particularly aircraft carriers, to not allow any potentially aggressor nation aircraft to fly any attack profile within 50-100 miles of a carrier in the open sea, and some differing range in more confined waters. Such nations could include Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. This is something that our command authority or state department at the command authority’s instruction would communicate very clearly to those nations. To me, an attack profile means any military aircraft that can carry air launched cruise missiles, where we do not know if they are carrying them or not, assuming a profile that would allow them to launch said missiles at our vessel.
Clearly there would be some critical electroinc emissions that would help us determine it...but we also have to take into account that when they get close enough, those things could happen almost instantaneously and therefore have in place the policy and the procedures and training to ward it off before that point.
TU-95s, SU-24s, SU-35s, SU-33s, TU-22s, TU-22Ms, TU-160s, Badgers, etc. would all fit that type of classification.
Having our AEW aircraft aloft, having inner CAP and barrier CAP patrols up, having picket AAW vessels out on the threat axis, etc. are all things we could implement to help in this. In order to prevent such a near fly-over our pilots and vessels could institute a phased escalation of response from electronic to visual identification and inspection, to signaling, to manuevering, to direct radio contact, to “lighting-up” the approaching aircraft.
I know this would be costly, but it would serve to train our people in the very measures they would need to implement and be prepared for in the event of hostilities, and it would send the appropriate message (IMHO) to potentially aggressor nations that we are prepared and have not in the least “sttod down”.
Anyhow, you asked, and those are my opinions (nothing more) regarding the same. I also know that there are a whole bunch of people who would disagree.
Our will power.
Here is the Official USAF story:
“RB-47H SHOT DOWN
On July 1, 1960, a Soviet MiG fighter north of Murmansk in the Barents Sea shot down a 6-man RB-47 crew. Two young USAF officers survived and were imprisoned in Moscow’s dreaded Lubyanka prison. Capts. McKone and Olmstead were accused by the Russians of espionage, punishable by death, for allegedly violating the Soviet Sea frontier, although their plane had been many miles away from it at all times. They managed, however, to resist all Soviet efforts to obtain “confessions” through cajolery, trickery and threats of death, and were finally and unexpectedly released after seven months of imprisonment.
The Soviet Union had a history of shadowing, escorting and occasionally shooting down American planes flying over international waters near its borders; in the 10 years between 1950 and 1960, about 75 U.S. Navy and Air Force aircrewmen in 10 separate incidents lost their lives flying routine reconnaissance missions.
The RB-47H reconnaissance plane (S/N 53-4281) was assigned to the 343th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing based at Forbes Air Force Base, Kan., and temporarily flying out of Brize-Norton Royal Air Force Base in England. The plane was crewed by Maj. Willard Palm, aircraft commander; Capt. Freeman Bruce Olmstead, pilot; Capt. John McKone, navigator; and three reconnaissance officers (Ravens): Maj. Eugene Posa, Capt. Dean Phillips and Capt. Oscar Goforth (this was Capt. Goforth’s first and only operational mission). Note: Each crewmember was advanced one rank after this incident as indicated above.
The planned route of the flight took the plane northward from England over international waters where the plane turned east and entered the Barents Sea northeast of Norway and continued a track in international waters approximately 50 miles from the Soviet Kola Peninsula. While the RB-47H was conducting its reconnaissance mission, a Soviet MiG-19 fighter assigned to the 206th Air Division based at Murmansk paralleled the USAF plane at a distance. The MiG fighter then turned toward the RB-47 on an intercept course, but passed about three miles behind it. The radar course plotted by Capt. McKone called for a turn to the northeast at about 50 miles off Holy Nose Cape at the bottom of the Kola Peninsula; however, the Soviet MiG had returned and was now flying in close formation (40 feet) off the right wing of the RB-47. As the RB-47 (flying at 30,000 feet and 425 knots) started its turn to the left, the MiG (piloted by Vasily Polyakov) broke right towards the Soviet shoreline (away from the RB-47), turned back towards the USAF plane and started shooting. Capt. Olmstead immediately returned fire, but the RB-47 was no match for the nimble MiG and after a brief fight, the RB-47 was shot down about 6 p.m. (local time) over international waters in the Barents Sea.
The MiG shot up the left wing, engines and fuselage in its initial firing pass, causing the RB-47 to enter a spin which Maj. Palm and Capt. Olmstead were able to pull out of; however, the MiG made a second firing pass at the plane and finished the job. Maj. Palm and Capt. Olmstead attempted to save the plane once again, but the damage was too serious and the bail out order was given.
At least three of the six crewmen — Capt. Olmstead, Capt. McKone and Maj. Palm — managed to eject from the stricken plane. The three reconnaissance officers (Ravens) seated in the converted bomb bay of the plane were (probably) unable to get out of the spinning plane. Maj. Palm apparently died of exposure in the frigid water, but Capts. Olmstead and McKone were able to climb into their survival rafts and lasted long enough to be picked up by a Soviet fishing vessel after more than six hours in their tiny rafts. The USAF, unaware that the plane had been shot down — the Soviets did not release this information for more than a week — conducted a search for the missing plane and crew from July 2-7, but no trace was found.
The United States and Soviet Union had a long history of conducting surveillance operations against each other and in most cases, the reconnaissance aircraft of one country was intercepted and escorted by the fighters of the other. Since the CIA U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down May 1, 1960 (on a Soviet National “Holiday”) over Sverdlovsk, the Soviets were particularly sensitive about U.S. aircraft conducting flights over Soviet territory. President Eisenhower pledged to end the overflights, but the Soviet Air Force was under fairly intense internal pressure to protect its territory. The MiG pilot later indicated that the combination of this internal pressure and his belief that the USAF plane was headed for a secret naval base (unknown to the USAF crew actually) resulted in the shoot down of the RB-47H even though it was over international waters in international airspace.
Within days, Capts. Olmstead and McKone were sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow and held in separate cells while undergoing interrogation. The situation was possibly worsened by the fact that as military personnel, Capts. Olmstead and McKone were not required to give any more information than name, rank and service number (in accordance with the Geneva Conventions). Mr. Powers, as a CIA pilot was not bound or protected by the Geneva Convention and the CIA briefed their pilots not to withhold information if forced or shot down over Soviet territory. Mr. Powers acted properly given his instructions, but the USAF pilots may have suffered because they were bound by a different set of standards and were basically instructed not to reveal any information that could have been useful to the Soviets. The captains were not tortured but were interrogated at length nearly every day. Gradually, the Soviets allowed a limited amount of mail to flow to and from family members; however, the prison mail censors and interrogators continually tried to get the men to indicate regret for the mission and to agree that the United States should cease similar reconnaissance missions. The USAF officers resisted all attempts to by the Soviets to get the “confessions” they sought as part of the pretrial “investigation.”
On Jan. 24, 1961, after almost seven months as prisoners, Capts. Olmstead and McKone were released, never having been brought to trial. They never confessed to any wrongdoing and the Soviet espionage case was essentially groundless so the Soviets absolved them of any “criminal responsibility.” Maj. Palm’s body was returned to the United States about a month after his plane was shot down, and he was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C. The bodies of the three reconnaissance officers were never found.
Additional Information on the Crew
Col. McKone is originally from Tonganoxie, Kan. He graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1954. He was the Cadet Wing Commander for the Air Force ROTC wing during his senior year. He entered active duty on March 15, 1955, as a Second lieutenant, and his career began as a Strategic Air Command navigator in April 1956, flying RB-47 aircraft. Among his many assignments, Col. McKone was Base Commander, Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., and Air Base Wing Commander, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. His military awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster and the Prisoner of War Medal. He retired as an Air Force Colonel in September 1983.
Col. Olmstead was born in Elmira, N.Y. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and holds a master’s degree in political science from Auburn University. Col. Olmstead entered active duty in 1957 and attended USAF Squadron Officer School, USAF Air Command and Staff College, USAF Air War College and U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Col. Olmstead was Commander of AFROTC at Kent State University, Ohio. Among his assignments were Defense Intelligence Agency, Pentagon, U.S. Air Attaché and U.S. Defense Attaché, U.S. Embassy, Copenhagen, Denmark. His military awards and decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart and Prisoner of War Medal. He retired as an Air Force Colonel in October 1983.”
Why on earth buy into NATO?
It was used to bomb relentlessly the former allies in WWII namely the Serbs allowing an Islamic terror state to be established in Europe.
For NATO to be acceptable as a defensive alliance it has to be reconstituted as such...how about changing its name and its mission? For this administration to slavishly tag along the failed policies of the 90s is a huge mistake..and I see no signs of this changing any time soon.
That’s President GEORGE Bush to you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.