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Thread: 5 hours with no tail...

  1. #1
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    5 hours with no tail...

    No this is not a story about Phillbo's younger, pre-marital adventures...It's about how superior training by a USAF bomber crew enabled them to not only survive the loss of their B-52's vertical stabilizer and rudder to violent air turbulence, but also safely land their 90 ton crippled aircraft after flying five hours with nothing but landing gear and wing flaps to stabilize and guide their flight......Ben

    The future is forged on the anvil of history...The interpreter of history wields the hammer... - Unknown author...

  2. #2
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    Not too shabby. I hope the crew was rewarded for their performance..

    Hunter
    I don't care if it hurts. I want to have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. - Creep by Radiohead

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by UTAH View Post
    I hope the crew was rewarded for their performance..

    Hunter
    They got to go home to their families...Others didn't......Ben
    The future is forged on the anvil of history...The interpreter of history wields the hammer... - Unknown author...

  4. #4
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    I'm not sure I even want to bring that up to my SIL
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Truckman View Post
    They got to go home to their families...Others didn't...
    Sadly, true. I served during peacetime - which meant no "hot" wars, just the middle of the expensive "cold" one.

    Hunter
    I don't care if it hurts. I want to have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. - Creep by Radiohead

  6. #6
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    WOW! And the little diddy about the guesstimated 1200 accidents that involved nuclear weapons during the sixties that were kept quiet because of cold war paranoia.
    Yep I just listened again to make sure I was correct, there were 64 reported broken arrow incidents but the pentagon estimates there were 1200 incidents concerning nuclear weapons that were never reported to the public.
    This is your mind on drugs!

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by mgrist View Post
    I just listened again to make sure I was correct, there were 64 reported broken arrow incidents but the pentagon estimates there were 1200 incidents concerning nuclear weapons that were never reported to the public.
    In my truncated career in the USAF as a weapons technician, I was privy to the knowledge of a few of them...The key is in the definition of "incident"...Handling mishaps are the most common in which a nuclear device is exposed to the kind of unintended handling that would necessitate partial disassembly and inspection to verify that no damage occurred that would deter a mission...That job was performed by the AFSC 463 guys; I was 462 - weapons release...

    The worst incident that I may or may not remember might have involved a certain F-105 that hypothetically could have augered in to the fuel dump at an unidentified fighter base in an undisclosed NATO nation...The resulting impact could have shaken the nearby hardened underground nuclear weapon magazine to the extent where all stored devices had to undergo testing to verify suitability for deployment, if it actually happened, which of course I can neither confirm nor deny...

    This message will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3,......Ben
    The future is forged on the anvil of history...The interpreter of history wields the hammer... - Unknown author...

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Truckman View Post
    In my truncated career in the USAF as a weapons technician, I was privy to the knowledge of a few of them...The key is in the definition of "incident"...Handling mishaps are the most common in which a nuclear device is exposed to the kind of unintended handling that would necessitate partial disassembly and inspection to verify that no damage occurred that would deter a mission...That job was performed by the AFSC 463 guys; I was 462 - weapons release...

    The worst incident that I may or may not remember might have involved a certain F-105 that hypothetically could have augered in to the fuel dump at an unidentified fighter base in an undisclosed NATO nation...The resulting impact could have shaken the nearby hardened underground nuclear weapon magazine to the extent where all stored devices had to undergo testing to verify suitability for deployment, if it actually happened, which of course I can neither confirm nor deny...

    This message will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3,......Ben
    This is your mind on drugs!

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