Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubblehead Nuke
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.
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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.
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.
