F-117 secrecy.

[NutLoose]

I remember our brand new Chinook at Macrahanish on a visit and sharing the hangar space with a bunch of seals, they had a big built like a bricksh*t house Sgt who was doing the old US thing when they were exercising after having been for a run up some nearby hill, and the Sgt was calling out a seal song, you know the type of crud, "we are in the US Seals,. 1 2 3 4 taking it like a bitch that squeals 1 2 3....4".
So we did one when pumping up the Chinooks accumulator taking the mickey out of the Chinook, the stupid system and the yanks that built it....... He was not impressed.. Station was like a time warp from the 40's, felt sorry for whoever got posted there.

I believe the artist for Flight that did the cutaways worked out what would be where in the F4 and did the drawings for Flight, he had a visit asking him who was slipping him secret drawings, they showed how the had worked out the interior from panel and rivet lines, he later stated during a visit to the factory he was suprised to see his drawing in use as he had got it that correct.

Not exactly a stealthy wobbling Goblin here

http://www.murdoconline.net/2008/F117_Farewell.jpg

[chopper2004]

Unfortunately SEALS don't have sgts rank as they're all sailors this guys must have been a Chief Petty officer 'Chief'

[Ewan Whosearmy]

BomberH

Bandit numbers for the F-117 started in the mid-80s, IIRC.

The MiG pilots of the 4477th TES at Tonopah were the originators of the Bandit call sign, meaning that they had the block of numbers from 0-c.80 to themselves.

Al Whittley was Bandit 150. Wayne Mudge was 163.

[GreenKnight121]

Unfortunately SEALS don't have sgts rank as they're all sailors this guys must have been a Chief Petty officer 'Chief'

Or they weren't actually SEALS... or someone is making up porkies...


Of course, a plain, ordinary Sgt is an E-5... same as a Petty Officer 2nd Class.
A Staff Sgt is an E-6 (PO1).
It takes a Gunnery Sgt (USMC) or Sgt First Class (Army) to equal a CPO (E-7).

[SASless]

Being a Chinook....it wouid have been Army not Navy.

But I guess we all look alike as we don't have hat badges like the other side.

[NutLoose]

Chinook was RAF as we had just got them and night stopped at Macrahanish, American who we were told were seals by RAF inmates at Macrahanish, had lots of stripes.. Not being US rank savvy I just put him down as nearest UK equivalent, they did have a fit young lady in their group.

Its runway is 3,049 m long. The United States maintained a Navy SEAL commando unit, a 20 person team known as Naval Special Warfare Detachment 1 (The other overseas Naval Special Warfare Detachments, 2 and 3 were based at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, and Subic Bay, Philippines) at the base and the Royal Marines occasionally use the facility for training exercises. The civilian airport is located at the opposite end of the base from the hangars, bunkers and the SEAL building.

So must have been seals

RAF Machrihanish

[DADDY-OH!]

Weren't the SEALs at Mac' a forward deployment covering security for Holy Loch?

[Pure Pursuit]

There were indeed Seals there. Met a few of them in 89. I remember them having their own little area and all being chuffing massive.

Thankfully, I was only there for a week. Not a nice place...

[SASless]

Daddy.....Security for Holy Loch......why sure that sounds good.....lets go with that shall we!

Just like the bunch at Subic Bay were there for security of Cubi Point Air Base and the NavWeps Depot and the Rosie Roads crew were there to guard Camp Garcia on Vieques.

[chopper2004]

Did / Does TR-3B ever exist?

Other programs like Boeing Bird of Prey, the Whale battlefield surveillance platform we're revealed and placed in museums over the last decade or so, and even the RQ-170 is now acknowledged (just about) and our lovely F-117 retired (sort of) what's with Tr-3B assuming it is 1000% airframe exists! not being unveiled ?

Cant rememebr offhand around 2 decades ago where there was a reference in 1994 Air International Farnborough issue, special or was it Flight International Farnborogh issue, casuallh mentioning the complement of the TR-3B with the F-117 as a FAC / low obeservable ?

[gr4techie]

I also have an encyclopedia from 1982 that states that part of the break in the 'century series' numbering was to go on a stealth aircraft.

I read that one way of knowing these aircraft existed was looking at the defence spending, there was a black hole that was unaccounted for.

Area 51

Saw something on area 51 that claimed it was the test centre for the U2 and SR-71. Amazingly the staff carried around a chart that had times of the day printed on it, the times were when Soviet spy satellites were due overhead. As the times approached, everything would get towed indoors and once the satellites passed over the aircraft would get towed out again. But what gave the secrets away was when the aircraft were outside their shadow would cause a difference in temperature on the concrete apron that would leave an outline that would show up on a IR camera. So some American with a sense of humour played tricks by drawing fake outlines of funky shaped aircraft with pots of paint. It was a good trick as it fooled the Soviets into thinking the US had superior technology.

[NutLoose]

Bruggen used to move the dead Frightnings around for the satellites, the someone realised there was no heat signature, so for a while they used weed burners to heat the ground behind the stone cold engineless hulks, eventually they saw sense and gave up on it all.

[LowObservable]

Someone finally twigged that the Sovs didn't have IR recon sats?

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by NutLoose

Bruggen used to move the dead Frightnings around for the satellites, the someone realised there was no heat signature, so for a while they used weed burners to heat the ground behind the stone cold engineless hulks, eventually they saw sense and gave up on it all.

Apart from the fact that Bruggen didn't operate Lightnings, nor did RAFG as would have been well publicised at the time.

Didn't one of the stations have a half-sized Bloodhound SAM site with nice white missiles?

[NutLoose]

So true PN, but a Frightning standing still looked quicker than a Jag flat out.

[Norma Stitz]

Chopper re 'TR-3B' - the rumours at the time were for a 'TR-3' or 'TR-3A' (and the name Black Manta connected). To this day, it's still believed that the designation came about from distilled conversation regarding Lockheed's Tier 3 UAV.

GR4techie - re sat recon of Groom Lake, 'scoot and hide' taxi-through shelters were eventually built to deal with the problem

Cheers

Norma

[MPN11]

NutLoose ... during one MoD tour I was looking at buying a few sqns of Tornado decoy aircraft for deployment at MOBs. IIRC they came in around £15k per 'airframe', and had built-in thermal (and radar) decoy capability.

And then The Wall came down ....

[Megaton]

Boscombe Down incident was an F3 dangling a long piece of fibre optic behind it. The road was closed because the bit on the end of the fibre optic hadn't been jettisoned in flight so was trailing behind the jet as it came in to land.

[chopper2004]

Cheers Norma, and HP, remember this



lol

lots of 2 + 2 = 4.5, 6.71 etc etc in the story....in the article itself was an artists impression of what happened to include

C-5A with its nose open ready to receive tarpaulin covered airframe

8 Flt A109A hovering and numerous MoD Police at port arms!!

Prob was in that pic and story depicted many different aircraft that landed in the week or so after whatever incident was said...from a corporate jet with N reg that happened to land at Exeter Airport! Then the T-43A / 737 supposedly visited that they thought was one of EG & G's one (then again hey, didn't USAFE 3 or 4 star have a C-40 anyhow replacing VC-137 'Miss Piggy' anyway at time) oh and throw in one of Odiham#s finest (not sure if that was part of the artists impression)

They claimed the C-5 'happened' to be one of a pair assigned to Palmdale / Plant 42 or whatever its called and on its way to Ramstein on a trans atlantic flight / deployment when it got diverted to Boscombe....

Cheers

[chopper2004]

Hmmm the plot thickens, I heard on the rumor mill, (bar the youtube vid going around) that there are a couple of handfuls of F-117 now in active condition.

Which begs the question, why was it retired anyway? Was it part of costs or the initial kickback that F-22 Raptor and F-35 to a more or lesser extent, classed as more stealthier?

Cheers