Military Affairs & History

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed May 02, 2018 12:33 pm

I know that the CG Air Station in Savannah only flies HH-65s...the C-130s are out of Elizabeth City. That's terrible news.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Wed May 02, 2018 12:33 pm

Image
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was bound for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The military transport plane went down between Highway 21 and Crossgate Road, near Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.
I assumed it was out of MCAS Cherry Point, but, nope.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed May 02, 2018 12:39 pm

Was it going to the Boneyard?

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Postby dodint » Wed May 02, 2018 12:42 pm

Hope so, would imply it was relatively empty.

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed May 02, 2018 12:50 pm

Two dead so far from what I'm reading. Five on the plane.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri May 11, 2018 1:00 pm

Happy 112th birthday to our oldest living World War II vet (and oldest living man in the US), Richard Overton:

http://www.fox10tv.com/story/38167334/a ... -turns-112

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri May 11, 2018 1:39 pm

Ha, I just got back from some morning errands and they were talking about that guy on the teevee. It's hard to believe we're getting closer to the point in time where the oldest living US Persons were born after the first decade of the 20th century.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Fri May 11, 2018 1:54 pm

Was LBJ the last 19th Century born President?

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri May 11, 2018 1:57 pm

LBJ was born in 1908. Eisenhower was the last from the 19th century, because Kennedy was the first born in the 20th century.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Fri May 11, 2018 2:14 pm

Gotcha. For some reason I thought LBJ was older than that when he took over.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri May 11, 2018 2:42 pm

Putting a pin in the C-130 crash in Savannah. There were actually nine crew about the aircraft, all were killed, all were from Puerto Rico. The aircraft was manufactured in the 1970s, so it wasn't unusually old for the type. I've seen video footage of the accident: The aircraft is around 10° nose down at 1,000' AGL, then noses over sharply, rolls left, and goes into the ground almost vertically. It seems clear there was a mechanical malfunction, but there is also the possibility that the pilot found as wide open a spot he could, and augered it intentionally knowing it wasn't recoverable (eyewitness accounts state the aircraft had been in distress almost from the moment it went wheels up).

The aircraft had just undergone several days of maintenance in preparation for mothballing at the Boneyard. Either way, this was going to be this aircraft's final flight.

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Postby dodint » Fri May 11, 2018 2:43 pm

You really only need three people to man a C-130 flight effeciently. Shame they somehow had nine on board.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri May 11, 2018 2:59 pm

Each aircraft brings along its entire history of documentation, including maintenance actions over its years of service.

* All guns, ejection seat charges, and classified hardware are removed, along with clocks and data plates.

*Each aircraft is washed on arrival. The washing is especially important for aircraft that have served aboard aircraft carriers or in tropical locations where they were subject to the corrosive effects of warm, salty air.

*The fuel system is protected by draining it, refilling it with lightweight oil, and then draining it again, leaving a protective oil film.

*The aircraft is sealed from dust, sunlight, and high temperatures. This is done using a variety of materials, ranging from "spraylat" (a white, opaque, high-tech vinyl plastic compound sprayed on the aircraft) to simple garbage bags. With the white coating, interior temperatures will usually remain within 15 degrees of the outside ambient air temperature.

*The plane is towed by a tug to its designated "storage" position.
From what I remember, most of that's done by maintainers from the squadron that's handing over the aircraft. They're sorta directed by people from DM, but the squadron crew does all the dirty work. The final steps are handled by dedicated Boneyard people.

When the Navy retired the F-14, lo these twelve years ago, it was common for squadrons to send a det out on TDY just killing their Tomcats all day for a month or so. In this case, since the C-130 is still in service and operated by the squadron in question, it seems to make sense that the crew would then ferry at least some of that equipment back to their base in PR to be used as spares.

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Postby Dickie Dunn » Fri May 25, 2018 9:27 am

This one hits close to home. **** the Navy.
A 17-year veteran of the United States Navy got the boot after he discloses a mental illness, but it's what the government's been doing ever since then that had his family calling the FOX6 Investigators for help.

It was hard enough for Nate Duszynski to accept his naval career was over, but then the government started taking his severance pay, disability checks and tax refunds, even garnishing his wages -- more than $106,000 so far and still counting.
http://fox6now.com/2018/05/23/its-going ... -and-debt/

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Fri May 25, 2018 10:11 am

If one thing is consistent, is how our government treats veterans. **** them over since the Revolutionary War. It's disgraceful.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Fri May 25, 2018 10:14 am

Yeah, he made a long series of poor choices. It's a little more complex than they kicked him out and stole his money.

You're not going to maintain your clearance to work on nuclear programs when you're suicidal. You don't seek mental help and when you lose your clearance over it decide to stop taking the meds and say you're all better, you've actually made it worse.

The Body Composition v. Mental Health may be a valid complaint and I hope he wins there; but he failed weight three times so I could see it going either way.

Reading that article, both sides look bad.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jun 06, 2018 2:36 pm

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
Thankfully, that is not the speech the world heard on this day in 1944.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:08 pm

Came across this poem by a WW1 vet
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

God damn

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:03 am

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your ... nel-fight/

:shock:
The soldier managed to crawl into the narrow tunnel, but with no room for a long-barreled weapon, took only his Glock 9mm pistol.

For 30 minutes, he relied on sound, smell and touch to track and kill six terrorists in the pitch-black, suffocating environment.

The soldier used his Glock to kill the first three Taliban he encountered, but when he went to shoot the fourth, his pistol jammed, according to the Daily Star report.

Using a claw hammer, the soldier successfully fought and killed the remaining three militants before emerging from the tunnels soaked in blood.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:25 am

Good grief. SAS are real badasses, but the 30 minute fight he'll be reliving for the rest of his life.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:16 pm

This is for tif
This is the U.S.'s Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the next generation of American fighter jets. It has been in development since 1992. All told the program is slated to cost upwards of a trillion dollars.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeRoach3/s ... 1071329281

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Postby tifosi77 » Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:40 am

You did that on purpose. And I read it on a Saturday, no less.

Couple points to add context to that otherwise enjoyable and largely accurate thread.

- It is a steaming pile of dogshit.

- It doesn't help to note that the jet can't turn and then accuse USAF generals of having 'Top Gun fantasies' (which I'm sure the AF brass love hearing), and repeatedly make the point that the Dogshit can't dogfight. After every single step forward in aerial combat, air-to-air has been deemed 'dead'. And it never is. These complaints are developing aircraft to fight the last war, not the next war. Yes, it's true the Taliban does not have much an air-to-air component (they seem to prefer Toyota pickup trucks). But China does. Russia does. Even the NorKs do, to a degree. Ignore air-to-air at your peril.

- A note regarding the 2015 ACM test against the F-16 that had drop tanks: Plugging in stores on those stations on the F-16 is not just an aerodynamic penalty, it engages the flight control computer's G-limiter. The jet can't pull more than +5.5G in that condition, which is about what a WW2-era P-51 could do at 350 mph.... in other words, the test was rigged to benefit the F-35 Dogshit, and the Dogshit still lost.

- I didn't know that bit about the fuel truck paint. Noted and filed away for future snark.

- It is very true that the USAF does not favor the CAS mission. For this reason, the A-10 and its mission should be turned over to the Army.

- I would argue that the C-model (the Navy jet) is actually the least bad variant, because it has more wing area and is the best turning and climbing of the three Dogshits.

- "The Pentagon's report found that lightweight pilots had a 23% chance of being killed and 100% chance of being injured by the ejection process." -- This is a bit of a red herring, as that has been largely true since the first days of rocket assisted ejections. In fact, even with the excellent ACES II system it's common for crew to permanently be about 3/4" shorter after an ejection thanks to spinal compression. But yes, the F-35 is worse at this than existing systems, which means a large number of female pilots will never be able to fly the jet because of the minimum weight requirement. Joy.

- The thing that doomed the aircraft was insisting on three-service commonality when one of those services was demanding VTOL capability. It just doesn't work. And then requiring stealth on top of all of that was monumentally stupid.

- The thing that most crippled the F-35 was actually the cancellation of the F-22 program. They were designed to work in concert, especially in the early days of a conflict before the enemy air defense network could be taken out. Fewer F-22s means the Dogshits have to fight more autonomously, which means carrying external stores, which means all the design compromises that were made in the name of stealth were for naught, and you're now flying a highly incapable and not-at-all-stealthy jet into combat. Either that, or sit them out until a few days into the conflict. Which is super helpful.

*sigh*

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Sat Jul 07, 2018 7:51 pm


tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Jul 09, 2018 11:50 am

The 'rebuttal' is picking semantic nits.

The fuel comment, for example: The first thread you linked said "because the F-35's fuel is heat sensitive, EVERY TRUCK THAT CARRIES IT ALSO has to be painted with a special heat-resistant paint," and the rebuttal claims, "...implies the fuel is specifically for the F-35. Hint: It isn't. The F-15/F-18/etc uses the same fuel." While this is accurate, it doesn't address the issue from the original thread: The F-35 can't run fuel that's hot, and so trucks delivering gas to the jet on the ground have to be painted a reflective white color to keep the gas as cool as possible. So it's not that the F-35 uses special fuel, it's that special care has to be given in how that fuel is handled and delivered.

Rebuttal also makes the point that the combat radius of the -B is 505 nm, refuting the immediate need to refuel after VTOL takeoff. This is not accurate (the actual radius is around 50-60 nm shorter), although it is common - if not SOP - to immediately refuel after takeoff, especially for at-sea ops. This is not a practice unique to the Dogshit; what is problematic with the Dogshit is that the range of the jet without refueling is shorter than the design goals specified.

"The F-35B is already IOC. The F-35C by comparison is not IOC which is not supposed to be IOC anywhere between August 2018 and February 2019 but that was based on an estimate in 2013." And the 2013 estimate was revised from a previous IOC date.... which was revised from a previous IOC date...... which was revised from a previous IOC date........... you get the picture.

The rebuttal is not really a factual rebuttal, but more of a stylistic thing.

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Postby relantel » Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:51 am

We happened to do a daytrip up in Gettysburg two weeks ago during their 155th reenactment weekend. Swarms of people in period dress up there and in the town. In the three hours we were out on the battlefield, all we managed was the new (2008) visitor's center to the Meade headquarters to the High Water mark, then along Cemetery Ridge via The Angle and the Copse of Trees to the Pennsylvania Monument, and then back to the parking lot. Afterward, we had dinner at the Appalachian Brewing Co. and ended up doing a ghost tour in the evening before returning home.

Found out after the fact that my second cousin and his father were up there with an artillery battery, and would have given us behind-the-scenes had we wanted. We live in Manassas, whose battlefield park is quite large. But Gettysburg and the stops there dwarf Manassas. In three hour blocks, it might take a month to traverse the whole thing. They had people dressed up as President Lincoln and General Grant engaged in historical discussion at the Pennsylvania monument - these people knew their roles well. Though why Grant was at Gettysburg I am not sure I understood, given that he was at Vicksburg, but nonetheless it was a compelling performance.

(I'd post some photos but I haven't uploaded any yet - way behind in uploading to flickr or the like)

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