And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
No one in the Air Force ordered any flying wing jet bomber destroyed, ever. The only B-2s destroyed have been in accidents like the one suffered at Andersen AFB, Guam. No B-21s have been lost. If you mean the post-WW2 YB-49 (which is easy to tell apart at a glance), none ever flew anywhere near far enough north in its test program to even be seen by the DEW Line, which began construction years after the only remaining YB-49 was lost in a high-speed taxiing test in early 1950 when the nose separated and the plane burnt the fuck up on the runway like the B-2 on Guam. The only other one crashed in flight tests in 1948, killing all aboard. The co-pilot, Edwards, was honored by the renaming of Muroc Air Force Base to Edward's AFB. There was zero need to hide it from the Russians as the plane was publicized at the time, and besides, the Soviets had captured many German engineers, plans, and test results just like we did. Nor was it very "stealthy" as it was made of aluminum with no special shaping or radar-absorbent coatings. It had a *lower* radar cross-section than, say, the B-36 bomber, but was still easy to pick up except at very long ranges. It looked like a small bomber on radar, not a big one. The technology of the day simply wasn't up to the job. Jet engines were still too primitive, nor were computers advanced enough to smooth the flight and keep the damned thing from yawing back and forth even after they added the vertical fins.
One cold moon lit night sitting in a fighting hole back in 92 on the Marine base Camp Pendleton I heard a slight whirring sound above and just happened to look up and see a B-2 pass under the moon. I thought it was a UFO initially but later realized what I had just witnessed.
I sometimes saw SR-71s operating out of Kadena AFB, on Okinawa. It was like science fiction; hard to believe that what I was seeing was real. The uniform matte black color also made it difficult to understand the plane's attitude. "Left wingtip up, or left wingtip down?"; that kind of thing.
Years ago, I saw that thing doing an approach and it looked like a shadow moving through the middle of the air.
ReplyDeleteazlibertarian
When you see one in real life your brain takes a little bit to figure out what you are looking at and then it's gone.
ReplyDeleteBig shots in the Air Force had them all destroyed.
ReplyDeleteYep. The DEW Line couldn't see them, so if the bad guys got the idea to build some of their own...
DeleteNo one in the Air Force ordered any flying wing jet bomber destroyed, ever. The only B-2s destroyed have been in accidents like the one suffered at Andersen AFB, Guam. No B-21s have been lost. If you mean the post-WW2 YB-49 (which is easy to tell apart at a glance), none ever flew anywhere near far enough north in its test program to even be seen by the DEW Line, which began construction years after the only remaining YB-49 was lost in a high-speed taxiing test in early 1950 when the nose separated and the plane burnt the fuck up on the runway like the B-2 on Guam. The only other one crashed in flight tests in 1948, killing all aboard. The co-pilot, Edwards, was honored by the renaming of Muroc Air Force Base to Edward's AFB. There was zero need to hide it from the Russians as the plane was publicized at the time, and besides, the Soviets had captured many German engineers, plans, and test results just like we did. Nor was it very "stealthy" as it was made of aluminum with no special shaping or radar-absorbent coatings. It had a *lower* radar cross-section than, say, the B-36 bomber, but was still easy to pick up except at very long ranges. It looked like a small bomber on radar, not a big one. The technology of the day simply wasn't up to the job. Jet engines were still too primitive, nor were computers advanced enough to smooth the flight and keep the damned thing from yawing back and forth even after they added the vertical fins.
DeleteOne cold moon lit night sitting in a fighting hole back in 92 on the Marine base Camp Pendleton I heard a slight whirring sound above and just happened to look up and see a B-2 pass under the moon. I thought it was a UFO initially but later realized what I had just witnessed.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes saw SR-71s operating out of Kadena AFB, on Okinawa. It was like science fiction; hard to believe that what I was seeing was real. The uniform matte black color also made it difficult to understand the plane's attitude. "Left wingtip up, or left wingtip down?"; that kind of thing.
ReplyDelete