Originally Posted by
BEagle
Some years ago I was flying from Saudi to Cyprus on an international flight plan in Saudi controlled airspace. I had 2 UK fighters in the formation, as per the flight plan.
As we approached the Red Sea on our flight planned route, some Spam Navy person called up on 243 "This is Red Crown on Guard - aircraft approaching Wejh identify yourself!".
WTF?? No-one was at war....
Having told the Spam who we were, we were told "You are clear to proceed". To which I replied "We are indeed proceeding in accordance with our clearance from the FIR controller. Thank you for your interest, but we do NOT need any clearance from Americans sailing their boats in the Red Sea to fly on international airways. Goodbye!".
US 'warning' airliners flying over the Gulf - what gives them that right....
??
No doubt the usual trolls will accuse me of being anti-American. Not true - only some of them!
I have always been a lurker on here. Not an ATP, used to fly single engine Cessnas.
First of all, I wan't to apologize for my country for inconveniencing you. To ask you to ID yourself while being escorted by fighter aircraft in an area that, evidently, required you to have a fighter escort must have been a real boredom breaker for you. To their defense perhaps they may have either seen three aircraft on their radar or picked up transmissions from the fighters that alerted them to a potential threat. Thank God they communicated with you rather than doing the "American" thing of "shooting first and ask questions later." You know, we Americans are all cowboys by heart.
As to why we are there, many Americans ask the same question. We fought in two European wars in the last century, lost a lot of men and women in the process. Take a trip over to Normandy if you don't believe me. From what I understand they still like us "Yanks" in that region. Our integration into WWII kept most of Europe from having to speak German, despite the fact that we were actually attacked by Japan. Many Americans didn't want to involve ourselves in another European war, that is, until Pearl Harbor. My grandfather went to the theater we weren't trying to actively win, defending Europe was out priority and those who fought in the Pacific suffered from that policy. We helped a lot to win the battle in Europe and we stayed afterwards to ensure the peace. I'm not saying other countries didn't contribute, they did, but it wasn't "our war" at the time. We even spent billions after the war rebuilding Europe, so ya'll wouldn't do it again. We continued to stay so ya'll didn't have to learn Russian, with us picking up most of the tab. Now, few countries in NATO meet their, rather low defense spending expectations in assuming that cost of their own for the defense against the Russians. The Brits do, as well as those countries who fell on the wrong side of the iron curtain after the last "great war."
Now we ask our young people to go thousands of miles away to ensure Europe can have the oil they want so that you can fuel your plane to do your job. No oil, no Jet-A. No Jet-A, no job by the way. We've lost people in the process. Anyone remember the Stark? That captain lost his command and was court martialed for not defending his ship. The USN doesn't allow skippers to make mistakes. No other Navy has the ships to do what we do. You can thank the American taxpayer for that.
As an American, I don't want your thanks. But I sure as hell don't need the insults. We do the best we can do, more than any other country can say. To be honest, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Oh, and my grandfather has his carrier sunk beneath him defending Australia, some thousands of miles away in the Battle of the Coral Sea. He wasn't defending America at the time and I can say that my mother and grandmother never knew if he was alive or dead, they only got a heavily redacted letter months after it was sent.
I want to apologize to others on here for my first post being as it is. I stewed a bit about the post I am responding to and finally decided I had to respond.