Bought the wife a new car

Goober McTuber · Post by **Goober McTuber** » Wed May 30, 2007 6:03 pm

It seems to me that when a jet takes off, it does take a bit of time to get up to speed. The jets are pushing against air, whereas the Vette’s tires are working against a solid surface. Might be different if the F-18 started out backed up to a bigass wall. But I’m not a physicist.

smackaholic · Post by **smackaholic** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:26 pm

AP 'splained it purty well. Anything with a tailhook is a pig. It has to be. Try dropping an F-16 onto a flightdeck the way any carrier plane does it and it will collapse like TiVo trying to catch KCPaul from a third floor window. The F-14 is the heaviest thing that normally lands on a carrier. The old whale, A-3, I think, might have been heavier, but they quite using it back in the mid 80s. Those things were suicidal to land on carriers. Actually anything with a tailhook is suicidal, but, they were more so.

AP, you ever see deck camera footage of one of those pigs slamming into the deck? The fukking wings would flex so much, you'd think they were gonna scrape the deck or just snap off.

smackaholic · Post by **smackaholic** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:26 pm

AP 'splained it purty well. Anything with a tailhook is a pig. It has to be. Try dropping an F-16 onto a flightdeck the way any carrier plane does it and it will collapse like TiVo trying to catch KCPaul from a third floor window. The F-14 is the heaviest thing that normally lands on a carrier. The old whale, A-3, I think, might have been heavier, but they quite using it back in the mid 80s. Those things were suicidal to land on carriers. Actually anything with a tailhook is suicidal, but, they were more so.

AP, you ever see deck camera footage of one of those pigs slamming into the deck? The fukking wings would flex so much, you'd think they were gonna scrape the deck or just snap off.

Atomic Punk · Post by **Atomic Punk** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:42 pm

Never saw one actually fly but remember being told the A-3D stood for "All 3 Dead" as they had no ejection seats but had to bail out under the fuselage.

I told this story before about getting a ride in the F-14 from the VF-111 Sundowners XO out of NAS Miramar. That thing may have been a pig on the ground... but once in the air it was game on. Going through the sound barrier not too high above the clouds in the Warning Area off the coast of San Diego was the coolest thing I've ever experienced.

smackaholic · Post by **smackaholic** » Thu May 31, 2007 12:41 am

I think the final straw was when the Nimitz lost one. After multiple bolters, they rigged the baricade. They came in a little high and got waved off, but, the baricade made a shoestring tackle on the whales gear. The whale flipped, slid down the angle and into the drink. It sank like the stone it is with all hands.