Air Force Releases Findings in F-15 Crash

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii - Pacific Air Forces officials here released the results of its investigation May 6 of the F-15D Eagle crash that occurred approximately 60 miles off of Oahu Feb. 1.

The accident investigation board, convened by PACAF officials, determined that there was no clear and convincing evidence to determine a root cause for the mishap.

However, the AIB did find sufficient evidence to conclude that both rudders failed in a mid-range position to the left, most likely due to a failure involving the Aileron-Rudder Interconnect. This failure induced a yawing, rolling motion to the left that the pilot was unable to correct.

Unable to get the aircraft to respond to his controls, the pilot safely ejected from the aircraft and suffered only minor injuries. The aircraft was destroyed upon impact. The financial loss of the aircraft totaled $43,777,279. No other property damage or injuries to military members or civilians resulted from the mishap.

The aircraft was assigned to the 199th Fighter Squadron at Hickam Air Force Base and was part of a two-aircraft basic fighter maneuvers training mission, involving one-on-one offensive and defensive maneuvering.

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F-117 Nighthawk Retired

I was lucky enough to not only see the Nighthawk fly on several occasions, but also to get an up close and personal tour as a scrub mechanic at an airshow in 1995. It was an amazing, beautiful aircraft in many ways, and it doesn’t seem right that it’s retired already when the F-15 and F-16 are still kicking after so many more years in the fleet. However, the F-117 Nighthawk was built almost with “spare” technology from earlier fighters, and was obsolete very early on.

From Wikipedia:

The F-117 has been used several times in war. Its first mission was during the United States invasion of Panama in 1989.^[23] During that invasion two F-117A Nighthawks dropped two bombs on Rio Hato airfield.

During the Gulf War in 1991, the F-117A flew approximately 1,300 sorties and scored direct hits on 1,600 high-value targets in Iraq^[1] while flying 6,905 combat flying hours.^[24] The F-117 comprised only 2.5 percent of the American aircraft in Iraq yet struck more than 40 percent of the strategic targets.^[25] “During their mission, the F-117A pilots delivered over 2,000 tons of precision-guided ordnance with a hit rate of better than 80 percent. Although the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing Provisional and its 42 stealth fighters represented just 2.5 percent of all allied fighter and attack aircraft in the Gulf, the F-117As were assigned against more than 31 percent of the strategic Iraqi military targets attacked during the first 24 hours of the air campaign.”^[24] However, during the war, it performed rather poorly in its dropping of smart bombs on Iraqi military targets, achieving a success rate of only 40%.^[26]

It was among the only U.S. or coalition aircraft to strike targets in downtown Baghdad. Among the aircraft the Nighthawk shared this distinction with were the F-16s which attacked Baghdad during daylight on 19 January 1991 during the “Package Q” mission - the largest single strike flown during the war.^[27]

Since moving to Holloman AFB in 1992, the F-117A and the men and women of the 49th Fighter Wing have deployed to Southwest Asia more than once. On their first trip, the F-117s flew non-stop from Holloman to Kuwait, a flight of approximately 18.5 hours – a record for single-seat fighters that stands today.^[1]

It has since been used in Operation Allied Force in 1999, Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

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Fast ‘n Low

Fancy flying. Gorgeous music, too.

ENJOY!

H/T: Cold Fury, who got it from All Things Beautiful. The music is “The Champions” track from “The Mass” by Era. The jet is the French Mirage and the chopper is a Puma. Still lovely, though.

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Amazing R/C Aircraft

Radio-controlled aircraft may bring to mind a large field devoid of power lines and trees, or maybe some great crashes as people who don’t know what they’re doing slam a very expensive toy into the ground.

This is what it looks like when a master flies one in a small, enclosed gymnasium. Blue Angels, move over. This thing is insane.

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F-22 Raptor Performance

Just in case you haven’t seen the F-22 in action yet, here’s a video from Lockheed showing some of the things this machine is capable of. It’s the most amazing fighter out there, and you should really watch this video. Pay attention to the part where it looks like it’s falling out of the sky…backwards.

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New Blues Boss & Some Jet Porn

We haven’t had any jet or weapons porn up for awhile…so where does one go for some hot pics?? Well, it’s the Blue Angels this time, baby!!

In the process of collecting jet porn, I stumbled across the *ahem* manly Boss of the Blue Angels…or is it Captain America? Wow.

The above poster-perfect specimen of an American fighter pilot is the outgoing commander, Steve “Axel” Foley. That distracting little commerical for testosterone was courtesy of Instapinch (who we met at the Milblogger’s Conference last weekend).

Navy Chooses Gulf War Veteran As Blue Angels’ New Commander

The U.S. Navy on Tuesday announced a Gulf War combat veteran as the next commanding officer of the Blue Angels — Cmdr. Kevin Mannix of Lindenhurst, N.Y. Mannix, 47, will replace Cmdr. Steve Foley when he takes command of the elite flight
demonstration team in November for the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

Anyways…on to the porn. Check these out (kudos to photographer Peter Steehouwer, who’s got a lot more where these came from!):

(click images to enlarge)

Nevertheless, when it comes to jet porn, nothing has ever been as hot as THIS!

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Cool Photo & Video Of The Day

The C-130 transport plane uses flares to protect itself from heat-seeking missiles. This rare photo shows an amazing pattern in the smoke from the flares.

(click to enlarge)

The video below shows how it’s done. Very cool.

This picture appears in a series of photographs of C-130 Hercules transport aircraft posted to the C-130 System Program Office (SPO) web site hosted at Robins Air Force Base. The swirling patterns in the photo and video above are are caused when the plane drops decoy flares to fool and evade heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles. They illustrate a phenomenon of wake turbulance known as vortex shedding. The drag from tips of aircraft wings tend to produce vortices or swirls, and the pattern shown here is a common sight at air shows where planes emit and fly through smoke to create amazing visual effects. [H/T: Snopes]

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Helo Thunder

It’s Friday! I’ve got a HOT DATE tonight and a busy weekend. So, it’s time to turn up the rock and roll.

Last week, I gave you guys Harrier BOOM. You know Kit’s the aviator chick, so I knew that would be a special treat for her to warm the nuts and bolts of her little heart. :)

But this week, I bring you MY kind of thunder - gunships! Here’s Helo Thunder - turn up the volume and rock with AC/DC’s Thunderstruck!

from Grouchy Media

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Harrier Boom - Video

Goin’ into the weekend, let’s rock a little!

Harrier Boom is full of shots of harriers and their support teams in action which we haven’t seen much in other videos. I’m sure the harrier fans out there will be sure to love it!
[...]
This video was made by Flt Lt Steve Long with the VMA-311 ‘Tomcats’ and sent in by a guy named Kevin who found it on the Militaryphotos.net website. It’s also been seen it in other military forums and was made back in early 2003. Even though it’s a bit old this will hopefully be a chance for more people to see it. I’m sure the folks from the USS Bohnomme Richard, LHD 6, appreciate seeing their fine ship in action too!

– Grouchy –

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Jet Porn

Tell me this isn’t hot!

(click the image to look closerrrrrr)

Are they doin’ what I THINK they’re doin’?!!!

LOL

SEX - Navy-style.

H/T: That old Curmudgeon via Homemade Sin

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The Day the Stars Fell

Twenty years ago today, I was an eleven-year-old whose bedroom wall was so plastered with photos and posters of planes that you almost couldn’t see the wallpaper. I, along with my six brothers and sisters, was home-schooled, and our little family-class huddled around the television every time there was a shuttle launch or news report about flight and space travel. None of us could get enough.

That day was no different. We all grabbed our spots on the livingroom furniture and floor, settling in to watch the shuttle demonstrate true freedom as it was literally launched out of this world. We cheered and hollered like the excited children we were.

Then the explosion happened. The only sound was my mother’s soft “Oh, my God.” My 8-year-old brother, not understanding the ramifications of the smoking fireball, commented that “it looks like a goose head,” but no one was really paying attention.

We ate dinner in the livingroom that night, watching the news reports and the near-constant showing of the Challenger disintegrating in flight. It seemed every channel was showing the same thing. My father just shook his head and mumbled something about the Tower of Babel, topping it all off with his ideas about how women shouldn’t be trying to do a man’s job. No one really paid attention to him either, least of all me.

Challenger was symbolic for so many reasons. Women, minorities, civilians, educators; they were all on that shuttle. I was oddly fascinated by the explosion, but equally horrified at the idea of what the final seconds of the crew’s lives would have been like. It never discouraged me from my dream of flight, and never swayed my decision to be a pilot.

Here’s to the seven individuals who gave their lives on January 28, 1986. May we never forget, and may we never stop reaching for the stars anyway.

Linked at Stop the ACLU

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Superior Firepower: The F-22A Raptor

[Note: The following was written over the last four weeks, for one of my classes entitled Research Issues in the Discipline. I thought readers may find it interesting, since I know I'm not the only Raptor fan out there. Many thanks to Stephen Crabtree and Rob Fuller from Lockheed.]

Sources are listed at the end.
————–

The United States has long enjoyed air superiority. Since 1947, when Chuck Yeager burst through the sound barrier, the rest of the world has been trying to catch up with varying levels of success. Even though the U.S. has not been beaten in an air-to-air fight in many years, the Russian-made MiG-25 Foxbat took over America’s sheer domination of the skies from a contest standpoint, outperforming the F-15 “Streak Eagle” in 27 record-setting instances between 1986 and 1988. (Duffy 1) Other Russian fighters such as the Sukhoi have also emerged as possible threats to American firepower in the air. Even while the Foxbat was beating the F-15 in the time-to-height trials, however, the United States was secretly developing an aircraft that would ensure American air superiority “for the next four decades.” (Fuller)

[Read more]

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A Thing Of Beauty

The Raptor, ladies and gentleman.

Now I don’t pretend to know much about aviation - that’s Kit’s thing - but I know a lovely weapon when I see it. :)

H/T to the Officer’s Club for posting on the Raptor a few weeks ago. It gave me the idea to hunt down some of our own very jet porn cool photos.

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As Long As We’re on the Subject…

I’m unveiling a new category on the site: Aviation. Specifically, military aviation. I love it, and therefore I’ll be bringing you awesome reports from people in the industry, pictures and video, facts, and hopefully all kinds of interesting stuff about the incredible machines we have in our arsenal.

This first tidbit is old, but I figured you’d find this interesting. This is video of a Thunderbird crash from 2004, taken from inside the cockpit. It’s 4 MB or so, but it’s worth a download, I think, especially if you never heard of the crash to begin with. Pilot error was the cause - he made calculations for his maneuver according to the altitude in Nevada instead of Idaho, where he was performing in an airshow. He managed to roll slightly and direct the aircraft away from the 85,000-person crowd, but he didn’t save the plane. He ejected eight-tenths of a second before impact, only 140 feet above the ground. (He only received minor injuries and now works at the Pentagon.)

Anyway, the video is pretty crazy, since it ends with him ejecting and the plane crashing.

PS: Bless Heidi for posting today and letting me have an extra day to unwind. Bless her, I say.

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Ohhhh, Baby!

This kind of photo is porn for Kit-baby:

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — Two U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform a mirror formation during the Aviation Nation Air Show at Nellis Air Force Base, NV. (11/14/05 AP photo)

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