Mig-29 taken out by Volkswagen

I wonder what's more embarrassing. This accident or having 10% of the U.S. F22 fleet destroyed or damaged because someone decided not moving them out the way of a massive hurricane was sound strategy.
 
Wingsofglass said:
...having 10% of the U.S. F22 fleet destroyed or damaged because someone decided not moving them out the way of a massive hurricane was sound strategy.
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My understanding was the F-22's not relocated were not airworthy for various mechanical reasons at the time.
 
Hope the F22’s were insured.


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Every time I read about one of these types of collisions, I remember this incident when I was at Eglin.

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https://fighterjetsworld.com/latest...-15-fighter-jet-crashed-into-police-car/9166/
 
TCABM said:
Every time I read about one of these types of collisions, I remember this incident when I was at Eglin.
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The article states "The landing gear of the F-15 fighter jet was damaged by the impact, and the repair required $62,000, while the policeman driven by the security guard (the price of the car was $130,000) was directly scrapped."

What kind of upgrade did that Chevy Lumina have to make it worth 130 AMUs (in 1999 dollars, no less)???
 
DrewG said:
The article states "The landing gear of the F-15 fighter jet was damaged by the impact, and the repair required $62,000, while the policeman driven by the security guard (the price of the car was $130,000) was directly scrapped."

What kind of upgrade did that Chevy Lumina have to make it worth 130 AMUs (in 1999 dollars, no less)???
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A US Government contract price.
 
While I was at Eglin, we had a guy get sucked into the port engine of an F4, a crew chief eject himself halfway through the (steel) roof of a hanger, a bomb knocker shoot himself with a 20mm gun, and part of the squadron hospitalized during the snowstorm of Jan 10/11 1973 while trying to report to the base, but no car/aircraft collisions.
Bunch of under achievers, we were.
 
Wingsofglass said:
I wonder what's more embarrassing. This accident or having 10% of the U.S. F22 fleet destroyed or damaged because someone decided not moving them out the way of a massive hurricane was sound strategy.
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They were down for maintenance and weren't flyable or reparable in the time needed to extricate them.
 
Nam Phong 1973. C141 wingtip takes out a Deuce n Half driving in the dirt a little way off the runway edge. Don’t have pics of that but below is a 2 1/2 ton 6X6 just like it. Now think of Sherriff Buford T. Justice’s car in Smokey and the Bandit.

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Since Vlad is building up his forces getting ready to invafe Ukraine, it was very convenient that a "drunk driver" just drove right up and took out one of the few operational fighters Ukraine had.

I don't believe it.
 
kyleb said:
They were down for maintenance and weren't flyable or reparable in the time needed to extricate them.
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Possibly equally embarrassing, if not more so. How much of the fleet is not airworthy if enough unlyable F22s at one base constitute 10% of the entire fleet? Is that normal for modern fighters to only have one in four planes actually able to fly? I’m just guessing at the number here but I can’t imagine this one base happened to have all the non-airworthy F22s. I profess great ignorance when it comes to military aircraft so maybe it’s normal and acceptable to have so much of the fleet unusable, particularly with at least a few days notice that they needed to get in the air.
 
Wingsofglass said:
...How much of the fleet is not airworthy if enough unlyable F22s at one base constitute 10% of the entire fleet? ....
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There’s a whole thread on it here somehwere, but it doesn’t take much to get to 10% of a really small fleet number. There is/was only 168 total aircraft acquired, some of which are relegated to test and training uses.

If it’s an 18 Primary Assigned Aircraft (PAA) ops squadron and there’s two PAA squadron’s on the base (normal numbers) 10% is 4 aircraft redlined. Each of the four could be down for various reasons to include phase inspections due.

Context is everything, search for it and you can generally discovery what is true verses what is hyperbole or designed to generate a reaction.
 
Wingsofglass said:
Possibly equally embarrassing, if not more so. How much of the fleet is not airworthy if enough unlyable F22s at one base constitute 10% of the entire fleet? Is that normal for modern fighters to only have one in four planes actually able to fly? I’m just guessing at the number here but I can’t imagine this one base happened to have all the non-airworthy F22s. I profess great ignorance when it comes to military aircraft so maybe it’s normal and acceptable to have so much of the fleet unusable, particularly with at least a few days notice that they needed to get in the air.
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The 17 aircraft left behind all flew within a month after Hurricane Michael. They weren’t destroyed.

F-22s around that time had approximately a 50-60 % mission capable rate. That’s not unheard of for a military aircraft in garrison. Their current goal is 80 % which would be a huge accomplishment.
 
LesGawlik said:
Since Vlad is building up his forces getting ready to invafe Ukraine, it was very convenient that a "drunk driver" just drove right up and took out one of the few operational fighters Ukraine had.

I don't believe it.
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Let's be honest. Vlad is posturing, possibly moving towards military action. But Ukraine's fighters would do well to stay on the ground in a conflict with Russia. I think Russia's SAM fleet alone would be overwhelming vs Ukraine.
 
Wingsofglass said:
Possibly equally embarrassing, if not more so. How much of the fleet is not airworthy if enough unlyable F22s at one base constitute 10% of the entire fleet?
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I just assumed 33% of all military hardware is down for overhaul. Kinda like how carriers and subs need major work after every handful of deployments.
 
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Reminds me of the meth heads that ran through the gate onto NAS Lemoore and then out onto the ops side/ramp in the dark only to find the horizontal stab of a parked Super Hornet. Both were killed, I believe one of them being fully decapitated in the process. That jet fared much better than this one though.
 
35 AoA said:
Reminds me of the meth heads that ran through the gate onto NAS Lemoore and then out onto the ops side/ramp in the dark only to find the horizontal stab of a parked Super Hornet. Both were killed, I believe one of them being fully decapitated in the process. That jet fared much better than this one though.
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Doesn't even have to be an outsider. Circa 1988 a disgruntled sailor standing "line watch" (when we did such a thing) at NAS Whidbey walked down the line and using his nightstick whacked off every single lower antenna on his squadrons A-6's that were on the line. :eek: 13 of 16 planes down just like that. No one has that many spare antennas so even had to get some from Oceana to get the squadron back to FMC. Glad I didn't have to write that SORTS report.
 
Pugs said:
Doesn't even have to be an outsider. Circa 1988 a disgruntled sailor standing "line watch" (when we did such a thing) at NAS Whidbey walked down the line and using his nightstick whacked off every single lower antenna on his squadrons A-6's that were on the line. :eek: 13 of 16 planes down just like that. No one has that many spare antennas so even had to get some from Oceana to get the squadron back to FMC. Glad I didn't have to write that SORTS report.
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oh man, that's wild. Random question back to Intruder days........were KA-6D's just part of a normal squadron inventory? Or were they standalone assets owned by someone else? Nowadays we obviously get the buddy stores allocated, but they just plus up PAA for the "tanker squadrons".....and the particular sides that are configured at a given time rotate throughout deployment to manage hours, traps and scheduled maintenance/inspections. Either way, must have been weird to manage those assets from a mx perspective, since I assume they were limited in numbers within a deployed airwing.
 
35 AoA said:
Random question back to Intruder days........were KA-6D's just part of a normal squadron inventory?
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Yes. FWIW they also frequently carried buddy stores for redundancy.

ETA: Here's a VA-52 KA-6 with a buddy store in addition to the internal basket.
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Also note the handy checklist storage area on the left quarter windscreen. :cool: They'd get all scratched to hell.

Nauga,
and days of old thunder
 
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35 AoA said:
oh man, that's wild. Random question back to Intruder days........were KA-6D's just part of a normal squadron inventory? Or were they standalone assets owned by someone else?
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Depended on the Air Wing. CVW-8 in 89-91 was a strike heavy wing. Two A-6 squadrons with 10 planes each all bombers. They did carry buddy stores but for the most part we tanked off of S-3s (we had 10 I think) or USAF/Brit assets for pre and post strike tanking.

We also had our 5 EA-6B's, 24 Tomcats and 24 F/A-18's and 5 E-2Cs. Packed deck.
 
Fracpilot said:
Of course. That would make too much sense to have them insured. Silly me.
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Insurance is about sharing or spreading risk. The US Govt. spreads the risk to itself because it is big enough to do that. I once worked for a big company that had a lot of cars for us to drive about in. They self insured the vehicle hardware, but I doubt they did that for the liability. You avoid paying insurance co. admin and profit.

A similar argument can be made for universal health care - oops wrong forum, forget that last bit.
 
nauga said:
Also note the handy checklist storage area on the left quarter windscreen. :cool: They'd get all scratched to hell.

Nauga
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I blame the contractors and manufacturer's rep's.
 
kyleb said:
I blame the contractors and manufacturer's rep's.
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Get in line.

The gear handle is also located a bit below the general area of that stashbox, and there's a tale of a crew doing their best 2g DACM when a nav bag slipped out and knocked the gear handle down, lowering the gear at some multiple of gear speed a fair bit greater than 1.

Nauga,
who knows the doors were just added drag anyway
 
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