People at yesterday’s (Tuesday) Farnborough flying display were hoping to see a flypast by a B-52H that had flown across from the states but were dissapointed when the crew gave a sterling display over…Blackbushe, five miles away. Just as well they weren’t on one of those “precision” bombing raids I suppose. The BUFF flew straight back to it’s base where (hopefully) the nav man will have another look at his 1:250,000 map of Great Britain.
The term “close” only counts when using horsehoes, hand grenades and nuclear weapons. [:D]
Everyone makes navigational errors…once took a wrong turn and it took me an hour and 1/2 tank of gas to get to the airport through stop and go traffic…a trip that should have taken 10 minutes. Oops.
On one of my first solo cross countries (required for rating I was in the pattern at a small town airport in Texas, when I noticed it had a tower (not on the approach chart, this tower) and the real giveaway were the four or five red and white TA-4Js parked on the ramp. I was at some Navy auxiliary strip (attached to Beeville or Kingsville NAS) 20 miles north of where I should have been. I couldn’t hear them screaming at this dumb civilian in their airspace, because I wasn’t about to switch to their freq. I simply flew away with my tail between my wheels.[:I]
I’ve heard of this sort of situation in the early years of WWII, but today with GPS?!? Come on, man! It has an error of, what… 3 feet? Well, at least it was only 5 miles away… I wonder what the crew were thinking: “man, Farnborough is drawing less and less visitors each year”… [:p]
Dad complained to me once about how the dead-reckoning skills he learned in the 30s and 40s had gone the way of the dodo. About 20 years ago he was flying in a friend’s Musketeer, when his friend asked him to take control while he figured out the right heading on his little hand-held flight computer. Dad looked around, knowing where they took off from and where they were going, and casually pointed the nose to a heading of (for instance) 240 degrees. After ten minutes of beeping buttons on his comp, his friend announced “241.”
(Maybe it wasn’t fair that Dad had flown all over the east coast from the time he was 14, and his friend was a newbie )
I’m sure that B-52 crew went to exactly where they were told to. They are given GPS coordinates to fly to. It’s not like they were told to fly to England and start looking for an airshow to fly-by. My guess is that, for some reason, they were told not to overfly Farnborough. Maybe because of traffic or something, and without tanker support already planned for the trip home they would have no time to loiter in the area and still be able to make it home safely. And Oggy, I think your comment about the USAF is out of line. Making a casual “joke” about killing friendlies is not amusing. Maybe we can get the Irish Air Force to come over to Iraq with their Cessna 172’s and show us how it’s done.
I strongly suspect that as is typical - the media have mutilated the truth (journalist slogan - never let the truth get in the way of a good story). Blackbushe is now very small light a/c only and the if the wind is in the right diection! Farnborough is only a short distance away - minutes and I cannot believe the B52 was not plotted continuously (given among other things the proximity to Heathrow and Windsor Castle etc.) or our security is truly non existent. Truth can be stranger than fiction however. We will no doubt learn the truth when everyone has finished scoffing about it. It is typical that America (big Country with good track record if one chooses to be honest) will be mocked by those who are envious due to their lack of ability - it is the fashion! Knock anything that is not inferior.
My former brothers in arms (RAF by the way) are well known globally for their professionalism , the above is a common fear coalition forces have when they deploy abroad.
One friend, when called up to go told me that ’ it wasnt the Iraqi’s he was most worried about’.
Also the Irish Defence Forces have an excellent track in peace keeping duties from East Timor to West Africa with the UN over the last 40 years, they are well respected by friend and foe alike - the facts speak for themselves.
Casual - no , joke - definitely not!
We all make mistakes , but give a dog a bad name…
Well, as long as offense if being given and taken here, as a professional journalist I don’t recall ever “mutilating” the truth, and the closest I came to it was when I was a trusting soul and printed what, for example, a US Air Force (or fill in your favorite Latin or European nation’s military) spokesman swore to me was true, only to find out later I had been lied to in order to save some general from embarrassment. Absolutely amazing how often that happened when taking official information from the military at face value. But journalists learn to grow thick skins. I mean, killing messengers (or blaming them when things go wrong) has an ancient lineage as sports go.
As far as the U.S. being responsible for friendly fire incidents, it is statistically likely that the combatant force contributing the overwhelming proportion of hardware and warm bodies to be thrown in harm’s way will undoubtably make the most errors, and the most tragic errors as well. By the same token, statistically, they are also most likely to hit the proper targets more often than those who contribute less. And lest this entire thread get more silly than it has because of my contribution, we won’t go into the number of GIs killed by strafing and rocketing Typhoons prowling the European countryside some 60-odd years ago. Gen. Sherman did indeed know what he was talking about.
Oggy
I’m not saying that the Irish Defence Forces weren’t good at what they did, but they’re not doing it anymore. And I’m not saying that bombs and guns aren’t dropped and shot at the wrong people. I spent 6 years in the Air Force and although I’ve never flown in combat, I am friends with a lot of people who have, and although I don’t know what they’re thoughts were I can say that the one time I was in a bad situation and it felt like the entire planet was trying to kill me, I didn’t make my best decisions. What irritates me is, when a country flies 100 missions and screws up on one mission, 1% error, it’s a tragic mistake. But when we fly 50,000 missions and have an error rate of well under 1%, we get this “usually shoot at friendlies” crap. It seems like whenever someant little country gets picked on by some otherant little country, the first people they call to fix things is the US.
Everybody’s a superstar when they’re sitting in the stands watching the game complaining about the players.
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