Military Affairs & History

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Feb 27, 2020 3:48 pm

The commandant has banned Confederate symbols from USMC bases.
They..... weren't?

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:22 pm

This is from several years ago, but damn cool.


shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:25 pm


tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:32 am

This is from several years ago, but damn cool.

:thumb:

There's apparently a fantastic plane spotting place southeast of this camera position that I've been wanting to visit for like 20 tears. Nellis is one of the best spotting sites in the world because of the international participation in Red Flag exercises.

Freddy Rumsen
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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:58 am

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Pittsburg's Landing (otherwise known as Shiloh).

The whole war in the West would have been different had Albert Sidney Johnston saw a field doctor rather than be a brave moron.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:45 pm

This Man Owns The World's Most Advanced Private Air Force After Buying 46 F/A-18 Hornets

Image
His company (Air USA) provides dissimilar air combat training (DACT) to the US military.

Shyster
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Postby Shyster » Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:59 pm

Rafale Ride Leads To Inadvertent Ejection By Overstressed Passenger

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/ ... -passenger

Oopsie.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:14 pm

It happens.

Image

Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:43 pm

Wait... Does that mean Maverick COULD reach the ejection handle?

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:23 am

One of the many quibbles with Top Gun is the F-14 also had an ejection loop between each crewmember's knees, not just the face curtain pulls on the top of each headrest......

You could set either crewmember to command both seats to eject.in the Tomcat, and with a normal crew during ACM it was common for the RIO to have control, so it made sense when Goose fired they were both sent for a ride. But if the non-commanding crew fired their seat, only they would blow out, leaving behind one very confused aviator. Iirc in the case above the Guy In Back was a VIP RDML who accidentally pulled the lower loop under G-loading and sent himself into the Wild Blue.

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Postby willeyeam » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:17 pm

My great grandpa whom I was named after was in the Army in WW2 and served under Patton. He was captured by the Germans in December 1944. My parents just gave me a scrap book of all the letters he and my great grandma sent back and forth beginning with him going to basic training in early 44 and deploying to Europe in the fall, along with the telegraph of him officially MIA, newspaper clippings, and the telegraph of him being rescued and ensuing letters and such. Pretty neat stuff that it's all still in good shape. Oh and a $5 reichsmark note too.
Last edited by willeyeam on Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:28 pm

Wow. All my grandpa brought back from Korea was potato peeling skills. Cool thing to have.

willeyeam
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Postby willeyeam » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:34 pm

Ha funny you mention that, his assignment was on a potato farm while he was captured

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Tue Apr 28, 2020 1:31 pm

The Thunderbirds and Blue Angels don't often fly together, do they? I almost passed over this Tweet, because I didn't realize both show teams were involved.


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Postby Kaiser » Tue Apr 28, 2020 2:59 pm

They dont collaborate for airshows as far as I know.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 28, 2020 4:19 pm

DoD has a pretty hard rule against them performing at the same show. (They don't want to cannibalize recruiting) Major airshows that repeat every summer tend to alternate between the teams, but certain shows (usually at military bases) will get the same one every year; Miramar always gets the Blues, Langley always gets the T-birds, etc. Those shows and the respective service academy commencement weekends are blocked out on their calendar years in advance.

They have flown together in the past, usually for a PR tour at a major international event like RIAT or the Singapore Airshow, but even that is extremely rare, and often in those cases they are only doing parade flybys and not performing a demonstration. As I think about it, it's probably more common to see the US teams flying with foreign demo teams than with each other.

Every few years they'll do a crossover during winter training (the Thunderbirds are based in Las Vegas, the Blues do winter training in El Centro, CA east of San Diego), which is not technically open to the public. They did a full team exchange this winter, but usually it's just the #7 from each team (the narrators/pilots for influencer rides).

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Postby Kaiser » Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:17 pm

We get the blue angels every year over Lake Washington for Seafair. Only saw the Thunderbirds in Daytona, but the single F18 that opened for them was better. Their show was too high and not loud. The hornet did a tail-drag about 30 ft above the waves.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 28, 2020 6:05 pm

From an airmanship/pilotey perspective, that tail squat is actually one of the more difficult maneuvers in the Hornet demo profile. One, you can't see where you're going because the nose is close to 30 degrees up; two, with that much of the airframe exposed to oncoming airflow the engines are basically just converting jet fuel into drag; three, that added drag means you have to run an abnormally high power setting for the low speed to keep the engines on the good side of the power curve. It's a lot more complicated than it looks.

But Seafair is sort of a bucket list show for me. Those over-water remote shows are just killer.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon May 04, 2020 7:32 am

Today marks the 50th (!) anniversary of the Kent State Massacre.

Today also marks 78 years since the beginning of the Battle of the Coral Sea, one of the most underappreciated (outside of Australia) naval battles of WWII. If Midway was the knockout punch to Japanese naval strength, Coral Sea was the flurry right before that set it up.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon May 04, 2020 2:56 pm

Coral Sea was the most significant engagement of the Pacific Theater, even if it was technically a push at best, or even a tactical win for the Japanese.

When asked to plan for Pearl Harbor, Adm Yamamoto told Japanese high commanders that he did not think seeking conflict with the US was a wise decision. He had been schooled in the States, and had a more fulsome understanding to the industrial might of the US - which traded heavily on an abundance of the natural resources that Japan was seeking to secure in conquering the southwestern Pacific - and knew that they would ultimately come up short if they poked this sleeping bear with a stick. "I will run wild for six months. After that, I have no expectation of success." The commanders cast aside his pessimism, having seen some National Guard units drilling with broomsticks on a recent exchange tour. The thought was that the Americans were too soff with no appetite for battle, as a culture, while they, the superior Japanese, were built for this thing. Bushido, n'at.

Coral Sea was a week that was six months to the day after Pearl Harbor. It was the last significant engagement that the Japanese could claim any measure of victory. And when the Yorktown showed up and was in the fight a month later at Midway, the high commanders who had poo-poo'd Yamamoto's concerns got the picture.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Mon May 04, 2020 3:10 pm

I recently learned that Yamamoto never said the “awaken the sleeping giant” line that he’s attributed to in Tora, Tora, Tora or some other Pearl Harbor film. I thought that was an actual quote.

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Postby Shyster » Mon May 04, 2020 7:02 pm

The description of Coral Sea that I usually see is that it was a tactical win for the Japanese, but a strategic win for the Allies.

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue May 05, 2020 12:38 pm

The description of Coral Sea that I usually see is that it was a tactical win for the Japanese, but a strategic win for the Allies.
Yup. Simplest way to put it. If Port Moresby would have fallen...I don't want to say the War in the Pacific would have ended much differently because in the end American industrial might was too great for the Japanese Empire, but it would have lasted much longer and been far more costly. We would have been fighting battles to liberate Darwin, and maybe even Brisbane/Sydney.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue May 05, 2020 2:01 pm

It was more or less the first time in something like four years of conquest that the Imperial Japanese forces failed to secure the goal of a strategic campaign. Basically, the bully got punched in the nose, and they found out they didn't much care for it.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri May 08, 2020 7:29 am


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