The TCU Football Jerk
Active Member
For old time's sake. TCU at Navy, 2000:
You don't own that plane, the taxpayers do. Son your ego is writing checks your body can't cash.
For old time's sake. TCU at Navy, 2000:
Sigh.Not according to spellcheck, Big Guy.
I'm just spitballing here, but I'm pretty sure that one reason the Air Force kept it around wasn't "just because it's cool."
A pretty cogent reason for keeping it around was because the DoD needed to justify the inordinately expensive cost of developing and producing the plane on the eve on an entirely new generation of military aircraft technology that the B-1B lacked. It was a short-sighted decision and the Air Force had to put the best face on it.
Retrofitted B-52s have largely the same capacity for rotary weapons, smart weapons, and customizable payloads as the B-1B at a fraction of the cost. And the subsonic B-1B doesn't get places much faster than the B-52.
I suspect you're being lulled by the appearance of the B-1B. Well guess what? A Chevrolet Corvette looks sleeker and "cooler" that a Tesla Model S, but doesn't have any greater acceleration and barely more speed.
There's an old saying about a book and its cover. I'm sure you know it.
Maybe we could also pay to have it do a bombing mission 90 miles South.
Define common. Other than training units, each squadron had 1 family model, and 90%+ of the time you flew it with the trunk empty.#2seatvariantsofthef16quitecommon
She’s a big girl but man does she have some awesome curves.IMHO the B-1B is the sexiest plane in the military. Say what you want about the F16 or the F-117(?). The curves on that B-1 could inspire Versace.
One of my best friends was Air Force but not a pilot (his dad had flown the Berlin Air Lift, though). He got married in ATX about 20 years ago, and I was in the wedding along with a few of his pilot buddies. One told this story:
They were doing a flyover for an event. They punched in the coordinates after takeoff and headed on their way. After a bit, he radioed over to the leader, questioning the coordinates. Leader says, no we're fine.
Later he calls over again and says, this doesn't look right. Are you SURE we have the right coordinates? Leader looks again and says, oh [ steaming pile of Orgeron ]. He punches in the correct coordinates and finds they are way behind schedule. They punch it down, and make it to the stadium on time but hauling ass. He said they hit the mark but the people better not have blinked or they would have missed them. Different type of flyover that day...
Normally your cliffiness doesn’t bother me, but you have zero idea of what you are talking about on this subject and it irritates the scheiss out of me.Not according to spellcheck, Big Guy.
I'm just spitballing here, but I'm pretty sure that one reason the Air Force kept it around wasn't "just because it's cool."
A pretty cogent reason for keeping it around was because the DoD needed to justify the inordinately expensive cost of developing and producing the plane on the eve on an entirely new generation of military aircraft technology that the B-1B lacked. It was a short-sighted decision and the Air Force had to put the best face on it.
Retrofitted B-52s have largely the same capacity for rotary weapons, smart weapons, and customizable payloads as the B-1B at a fraction of the cost. And the subsonic B-1B doesn't get places much faster than the B-52.
I suspect you're being lulled by the appearance of the B-1B. Well guess what? A Chevrolet Corvette looks sleeker and "cooler" that a Tesla Model S, but doesn't have any greater acceleration and barely more speed.
There's an old saying about a book and its cover. I'm sure you know it.
IMHO the B-1B is the sexiest plane in the military. Say what you want about the F16 or the F-117(?). The curves on that B-1 could inspire Versace.
I strongly disagree.........but then again I'm a little biased........
Used to live in the LA, every few months we would go up to "Star Wars Valley"
Nothing like seeing an F-18 doing 600kts in a 5G turn below you
So good to see my favorite - the F-14 Tomcat! I spent hours on vulture's row and in the tower watching flight ops on the carrier. The early F-14s needed their afterburners to launch, so watching them launch after dark was oh so cool. I was sad to see them go.
You sure you saw an F 14. I saw no swing wing jets, saw F15s, F 18s, F16s and even a couple F 5s. Do we even fly 14s today?
Knew a chief that ran the laundry on the Forrestal and the Tomcat drivers would always come requesting special tapered unis and other pain in the butt requests. He said he finally said he wouldn’t do it unless he could get a ride. Said he wished he hadn’t done it afterwards. He said the cat launch was fun, the high g turns were fun, but they did an evening landing. The pilot told him to prepare to trap a wire and asked where the ship was. Said he never saw anything until the ass end of the Forrestal showed up at the last second and thought they’d hit something when they caught the wire. He said that part was scary as hell.
Callsign?There was no F14 in that clip, the only cats still flying are in Iran which we sold in the 70s and 80s. We shredded all of ours after retirement to stop any possible export of planes or parts.
Aunt was a 14 RIO out of Miramar with VF-124 before moving on to VFA-14, retired from the navy when they retired the jet after 20+ years.