[greenamp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg3sKtPTWPQ

Amazing.
(yes, found on digg, but what isn't)

[Doofy]

[Troll]

The F-16 pilot referred to at the end of that documentary is a friend of mine. They were astounded by what happened but everyone thought he should have ejected.

[badidea]

Ok, seems like wings are not needed for flying!?

Does this mean that we can now kick those Brits out of the A380 program?

[willed]

Originally Posted by badidea

Ok, seems like wings are not needed for flying!?

Does this mean that we can now kick those Brits out of the A380 program?

Heh! 'The New A380 rocket' - just point it in the right direction and with any luck it should make it!

[Peter]

thats insane.

[Wiskedjak]

I imagine it has something to do with the F-15 being a delta-wing configuration. It still had at least 60% of it's wingspan remaining.

[ghporter]

Damn. That's amazing, just plain amazing.

During an aerial contest I was involved in, an F-14 had a problem while refuling and ripped the drogue and a bunch of its hose off the tanker. Everyone thought the pilot was something else for having landed with that stuck to his aircraft. I guess in light of this event the drogue and hose was NOTHING!

[Landos Mustache]

I don't understand why he didn't eject either. It is much more dangerous to land the plane at twice the speed. If he would have realized just before they landed that it was going to get ugly it is more dangerous to eject from the plane that close to the ground.

What ever happened to the plane that hit him?

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by greenamp

(yes, found on digg, but what isn't)

Railroader's banned, you don't have to worry about that bitching anymore.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

I don't understand why he didn't eject either. It is much more dangerous to land the plane at twice the speed. If he would have realized just before they landed that it was going to get ugly it is more dangerous to eject from the plane that close to the ground.

What ever happened to the plane that hit him?

It's a pilot thing. There are a lot of dead pilots because they thought "I can bring this thing in." A LOT of them.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Dakar

Railroader's banned, you don't have to worry about that bitching anymore.

Yet strangely Pachead is still around even though he is pushing genocide, racial profiling and is laughing at Non-American civilian casualties.

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Yet strangely Pachead is still around even though he is pushing genocide, racial profiling and is laughing at Non-American civilian casualties.

That's because his comments aren't directed at anyone in general.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Dakar

That's because his comments aren't directed at anyone in general.

So just a country is ok but not an individual?

[Dakar]

I imagine. Its not personal abuse.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

So just a country is ok but not an individual?

You're not banned, so it must be.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Gossamer

You're not banned, so it must be.

Show me where I have called for genocide, racial profiling or laugh at civilian casualties.

If not... STFU.

[chris v]

Thanks for turning a boring old thread about airplanes into an instant lounge classic, guys.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by chris v

Thanks for turning a boring old thread about airplanes into an instant lounge classic, guys.

I didn't think the airplane stuff was that boring

[baw]

Originally Posted by chris v

Thanks for turning a boring old thread about airplanes into an instant lounge classic, guys.

chris v FTW!!1!

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Show me where I have called for genocide, racial profiling or laugh at civilian casualties.

If not... STFU.

I'd explain it to you, but you would just reply saying that you were sleepy.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Gossamer

I'd explain it to you, but you would just reply saying that you were sleepy.

[GSixZero]

Long flat fuselages tend to add a lot of lift, so planes like F-14 and F-15 can sustain lots of damage before they fall out of the sky. There's a picture of an F-14 which has just returned from a fire fight and you can see though large sections of the wings a tail. Pretty amazing.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by baw

chris v FTW!!1!

Why, thank you!

(<--- please not my location)

[Kerrigan]

Blackhawk helicopter can fly with all of its blades shot off.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Blackhawk helicopter can fly with all of its blades shot off.

Say wa?

[Kerrigan]

Maybe not, but it would be funny if it could.

[FulcrumPilot]

Neat! Betcha that a hezbolla pilot would have said his prayers and done something else! lol!11

[Pendergast]

Back on topic: whether this guy should have ejected or not:

1) what an ace!
2) what a discovery!

[hey!_Zeus]

I flew in this morning. My arms are tired.

Not funny cuz I forgot to put my clothes on.

Thankfully I woke up.

[FulcrumPilot]

Guess this also means that the f-15 wings produce no lift whatsoever, and are mostly designed for housing those hardpoints/payloads.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Blackhawk helicopter can fly with all of its blades shot off.

More accurately, it can *fall gracefully* with all of its blades shot off.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Oneota

More accurately, it can *fall gracefully* with all of its blades shot off.

I even doubt the graceful part.

[Oneota]

Depends on the skill of the pilot and the severity of the damage, I'd guess.

Army pilots simulate trouble (meaning they auto-rotate, or land unpowered) more often than they land normally for a very large portion of their training. If all the blades are completely gone, then yeah, you're probably screwed. If there's just severe damage, though, a well-trained military pilot will get you down. Commercial pilots? Maybe, maybe not.

[FulcrumPilot]

Funny.

"
This is what "Flight international" wrote about the incident: "The most outstanding Eagle save was by a pilot from a foreign Air Force".

During air combat training his two-seater F-15 was involved in a mid air collision with an A-4 Skyhawk.
The A-4 crashed, and the Eagle lost its right wing from about 2 ft. outboard. After some confusion between the instructor who said eject, and the student who outranked his instructor and said no, the F-15 was landed at it's desert base. Touching down at 290 knots, the hook was dropped for an approach end engagement. This slowed the F-15 to 100 knots, when the hook weak link sheared, and the aircraft was then braked conventionally.

It is said that the student was later demoted for disobeying his instructor, then promoted for saving the aircraft.

McDonnell Douglas attributes the saving of this aircraft to the amount of lift generated by the engine intake/body and "a hell of a good pilot". "

[black bear theory]

Originally Posted by FulcrumPilot

Guess this also means that the f-15 wings produce no lift whatsoever, and are mostly designed for housing those hardpoints/payloads.

i think it has less to do with the wings and more to do with the engines. remember he landed at twice the normal speed. wings (or lack of) had something to do with that.

i remember reading somewhere that the engines are powerful enough that an f-15 could take off w/o any landing gear. i read it as shooting down the runway kicking up sparks until it reached take-off speed and lifting off. probably not actually ever done.

if you watch the end of the video, they show the engine nozzles and one is wide open while the other is closed tightly. very good piloting.

[ghporter]

There's a part common to all helicopters; the Jesus nut. It's basically the fastner that holds the main rotor hub onto the main shaft. I think it's pretty selfexplanatory where the name came from. But whatever, any helicopter will fly beautifully in one direction with no rotor blades - straight down. Autorotation works when there's no power, but not without airfoils to do the autorotation. The one really great thing about a helicopter in combat is that it's awfully hard to hit a rotor blade (on purpose anyway) with aimed fire-the odds are way against you because of the proportion of blade width to space between blades.

Most jets' wings are more for directing air moving over them than generating lift through the Bernouli principle. Take a look at the cross section of an F-15's or F-16's wing, and you won't see the classic large, round leading edge shape that tapers gracefully; you'll see a fairly sharp leading edge, not much camber at all, and a smooth taper. The engines push the plane through the air and the wings and control surfaces just cut the air and hold it in something like stable flight.

And this is true for allmost all jets-the A-7 was known to glide like a brick, as was the F-4. While I was stationed in Biloxi, MS in 1981, a Navy pilot put an A-7 into the Sound just off the beach because the plane's single engine quit way out over the Gulf. He ejected seconds before it hit the water, so the plane stopped in two or three inches of water (lined up on a beachside restaurant, by the way-the customers were, to say the least, shaken) and was recovered so they could figure out what went wrong. The pilot got a medal for flying it almost all the way down and thus ensuring it didn't hurt anyone. F-4s glide similarly, but have two engines, so they don't fall because of a single failure.