Back to the A-10 for a minute; I can fondly recall once while I was stationed at Ramstein AB in Germany driving along the flight line on some odd errand with an fresh from tech airman.We rode past two F-16s and an A-10 that had stopped over from Spanghlem AB which is where they sent all the F-16s that used to fly out of RA in 1993 RA and the A-10s from various bases in West Germany is mostly a cargo base now.RA is close enough to SP that it is used as a diversion base in case of weather or in flight emergencies.
This young airman had never really seen any combat aircraft up close before and wanted to stop so I agreed.There where three planes but only one pilot standing by one of the Vipers.So we ask him what happened to the others.
Turned out this captain had accidentally locked his canopy and well the "keys" are 60 miles away
so his wingmen left him to wait for the SP guards to show up which was taking some time.What was really funny was that this Viper pilot clearly envied the A-10 pilot said the Hog was a more fun plane to fly than the Viper and decided that he was going to request that he be assigned to one of the Hog squadrons when he got back to base. The young airman was surprised a pilot would prefer the A-10 to an F-16 or 15. I wonder if he locked his canopy on purpose in the vain hope that theyd simply assign him to Hogs seeing as he could not handle the complex nature of the Vipers egress systems.
