"Yeah he'll probably retire from flying and spend all his time posting on the internet...like I do."
Fixed it for ya!
And hey, I'm not retired. Why, just this morning I spent some quality time out earning money and cheating death in a Sikorsky S-55 that is...
yikes!...older than me. (Maybe older than SAS too! Definitely older than a certain N. Lappos who wasn't even a glimmer in his dear daddy's eye when this one was forged from steel at the iron works in Bridgeport, Connecticut.) I only thought I knew how to fly until checking out in this thing. (And do they even let me fly one of the two turbine conversions we have? Nooooooooooo, I get stuck with the round motor that I can barely kick-start on a good day anymore. Eh- it may be my own fault. I may have said *something* about having all the damn turbine time I ever needed or wanted. Teaches me to open my big fat mouth...)
But I digress.
And I wonder...
After all these years, the venerable S-55 is still dogging around, giving relative "youngsters" like me a chance to fly something my father thought was
modern and new! back in 1954
Think the V-22 will still be around 60 years hence?
Somehow I doubt it. They'll all have probably crashed and burned by then. That seems to be their
modus operandi.
If Maj. Luce is smart...and we sincerely hope he is and is not permanently grounded...he'll spend the rest of his days flying something safer than a tiltrotor.
And anyways, the question was never answered: What kind of "gunnery" can a V-22 do? Somebody finally figure out a way to mount a forward-shooting gun on that thing? Fifty cal. on the wings timed to fire through the proprotors, perhaps? The answer to this ought to be good!