There is cult among posters here that idolize the "Sled" and build legends regarding its performance and accomplishments. It's a remarkable aircraft and performed admirably over certain hostile countries with out ever being damaged. However if you read interviews with former pilots (Col Richard Graham for one),…

Guess I'd better dump by Jetblue stock. With loads like that, their earnings will take a nosedive along with the ticker price. :)

Secretaries usually come from the civilian side of the structure and the the top officer, Air Force Chief of Staff, General Welsh, was an instructor pilot in A-10s along with other senior staff in the chain of command.

Props....We don't need no stinking props!

Yup, Tyler managed to move the jet from Brunswick, Main to New Brunswick, Canada in the same story and threw in a reference to Canadian CF-18's to further confuse the issue.

You win the award for the most factual, no bullshit post so far. Congratulations!

Agree with all your points. There were a few UPT students, however, that made no bones about their ultimate goal of being an airline pilot. This was back in the early 70s. The top student in my class chose a C-141 cause he thought that would give him a leg up on that path. Fine with me because it left me with an…

"amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you plan to fly commercially, you can look at the expense as an investment, like a medical degree. Pay a bunch now"

OK. Since my 'hooters' post seems to be stuck in the 'Pending' basket, I'll add my own photo:

As a 20 year veteran, this is/was much more appropriate and I'm sure made Elvis happy to be drafted:

The cockpit at the beginning of the video is definitely not a 747 but a two engine aircraft. And although the narrator doesn't specifically say it's a 747, it's certainly implied.

Except this is an all cargo aircraft. Loading all the aft passengers first in a passenger jet is not a problem.

Although the Air Force version of the F-4 Phantom didn't have power folding wing tips, they were raised manually occasionally for maintenance. I know of at least 2 accidents in the Air Force F-4s where the wingtip panels folded on takeoff. The 2'' or so pins were not inserted and both pilots missed the the hard to…

"In 1956 two planes collided over the Arizona desert".. Another idiot who thinks all of Arizona is a desert. Both the north and south rims of the canyon are covered with pine forests and even though the canyon walls look arid, they get far more moisture than a 'desert classification' demands.

Those coordinates were provided by that Chinese news agency and are suspect. Without at least one decimal place or minutes, then it's meaning is 'about here'.

The actual projectile is only .4 kilos. Fires at about 4000 rounds per minute. A 10 second burst would deplete more than half of the loaded bullets besides overheating the barrels. Yes you could loose a few knots with a ten second burst, but it's a myth that it would have a detrimental effect on airspeed.

I guess you didn't quite grasp the description by the Swede aviator. They performed these intercepts from the front of the SR-71. A radar guided air to air missile would not have to outrun the SR-71 as it would be an "in your lips" shot. Assuming the target was in range, I think it's perfectible feasible that a…

Royal Navy F4Js were launched just like US Navy F4s with a catapult. Don't know why you say 'ramp'. Brit Navy F-4s did have extended nose gear to ensure they had an early angle of attack on takeoff with their shorter catapult throw. Hard to tell in this video..but Royal Navy F4s would probably not participate in…

I actually think that some of the observed 'jitter' or 'jumpiness' is intentionally introduced to align with the sound track. This can be done easily using plugins/effects in Adobe After Effects called 'beat trackers' or something similiar.

Bullets fired straight up reach a terminal velocity on the way down and are usually tumbling. That velocity is normally not lethal. However bullets fired at an angle off from straight up can maintain their aerodynamics (pointing end forward) and can be lethal. Google it and check Mythbusters.