A-10 Warthogs Could Serve Until 2040

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

(not sure if you are being sarcastic in your post or what).

It wasn't even sarcasm. He was just making a little joke about how old he'll be then. I thought it was pretty good.

[Stealhead]

Yeah I did not really even think about that I suppose it makes alot of sense then what he said though he wont be all that old I will in my early 60s by 2040 I will be "old". He will still be 25 years from retiring while I will be only 10 years from retiring if things keep going the way they do.

Who knows maybe the singularity will have occurred by then and we will all be slaves of now much smarter than humans self aware computers who will electronically laugh at our primitive aircraft.Maybe we will use A-10s and B-52s to bomb Skynet.

[Sailor Steve]

If I'm still around I'll be 90, and probably won't care much one way or the other. But whatever happens I'll probably say "See? I told you so!"




And of course "Get off my lawn!"

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

And of course "Get off my lawn!"

You'll be ok Steve:

[Stealhead]

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.

[Oberon]

Nice.

We used to get the Hogs over from the 81st TFW at Bentwaters and Woodbridge. I remember one banking low over my primary school, so low I could see the Warthog face on the side of the plane. It was a terrible shame when they all left in 1993.

Here's a couple of A-10 related shots from the Bentwaters Cold War Museum:




What an awesome plaque to be given, eh? Big salute to MSGT Robert D. Hale Jr

[Platapus]

I think the GAU-8 qualifies as a BFG.

It is almost like General Electric built this gun and the Air Force told Fairchild "build an aircraft around this, OK?"