:dead: That was far too close! Brown alert there! :doh:

I do recall several instances during the Second World War where pilots stayed with their stricken planes to prevent them hitting civilian areas. Heroes those men, each and every one of them.

Aye, Gallant chaps they where :salute:

HunterICX

One of the more scary air crashes I've seen. The Sea Knight catches the fence at the edge of the heli pad, I guess the pilot increases power to get loose and causes it to flip. :o

Sadly fatal too IIRC. :cry:

Six marines and one sailor were lost:

http://navysite.de/planes/ch46.htm

On final approach you are in a nose up position and pretty close to stall speed. If your engine quits now you will not only lose speed quickly (due to the nose up attitude) but you will also be in the nasty situation of not having any altitude left that you could trade for speed which you need for a controlled flight. The pilot was all out of options here.

Exactly....

Landing is one of the most stressful time. As you said, you are up against the wall. You are at or near minimum control airspeed and no space to trade altitude for speed. Been there, done that. Got the tee shirt and the soiled shorts to prove it. Piper 140 on final with a loss of engine. Full flaps and downwind. It was NOT fun. I got lucky, I planted the main wheels about 3 feet short of the runway and bounced over the lip to the runway. Good thing the weather was dry and the ground was not spongy.

Back to the Harrier: I can guarantee you that this guy KNEW he was going to stuff the plane into the ground. He could have bailed at ANY time after the engine failure with a reasonable chance of survival. The fact that he rode it into the ground says volumes about his professionalism.

I have WATCHED U.S. Military planes go in. I have watched them go all the way in because the pilot wanted to insure that his plane was going into that space BETWEEN the houses and not into the house. My father was a Naval Aviator. I asked him in the past what he would do in such an emergency. He told me that he would ride it in to make sure nobody was hurt if there was the SLIGHTEST chance of it coming down in population.

Well obviously I had missed the part where his engine had failed but the impression I got from the video was that he seemed to have plenty of air speed. What the harrier glide ratio is 1 to 8?

There was a gent with the Idaho ANG that took his A-10 all the way in specifically to avoid the possibility of his aircraft crashing into a natural gas storage tank. That didn't leave him any time to eject, but he did save some nearby residences the trouble of being burned up in a large explosion.

I wish I could find at least one article about that because I distinctly remember watching his squadron perform the missing man maneuver over the church during his funeral. :salute: But the closest I've come since last night is an undeniably large number of unrelated stories about another pilot from the 196th (same unit), who also died in an A-10 crash near Boise, and who had previously been involved in a blue-on-blue during one of the Iraq wars. :damn:

I don't think it's that good. The heavy plane (especially with the bomb still attached to it) and the tiny wings usually demand very high speed and provide a very bad glide ratio.
This thing here has had a glide ratio of round about 8:1http://latvianaviation.com/SG38.html
and that is a glider (although a pretty bad one for modern standards:O:).

I believe the Harriers glide ratio is only a little better than a thrown manhole cover :hmmm:

Which brings us to my well known theory of flight...

Anything will fly if you can 'throw' it hard enough :O:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/2117/f10403.jpg
'nuff said... :DL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI

:haha:

:har::har: to both

@TLAM - That's the Lawn Dart isn't it? I recall a German joke.

Q: What's the cheapest way to get a F-104?
A: Buy a plot of land and wait.

WTF, I don't even...I think I need to cut back on the Weißbier.


:up:

Q: What is an optimist?
A: A German F-104 pilot who quits smoking to prolong his life.

Though a F104 mechanic told me that we had even a worse accident -rate with the F-84 that we used before the 104.:dead:

Did you use the Autobahns for take-off and landings, reckon you'd probably need the length for the Lead Sleds? :hmmm: :dead:

LOL :DL

There were/are Autobahns that can be used as runways in a war situation (or so I have been told) when the regular airfields would have been a primary target.
Actually a lot of pilots and mechanics liked the 104 and from what I hear it was even more reliable than the French Mirage (again that's just hear saying when I talked to some former 104 ground crews and I'm too lazy to look it up now:O:). And be honest, it's a cool looking bird!
http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/al...3866626662.jpg