Atlantic Crossing

Those are really cool man, absolutely!

How far north or south were you guys?
 
The A-10 is by far one of my favorite looking airplanes. That thing is a tuff ass looking beast. Great pics Mike.
I could have sworn I read on these boards that the A-10 engines are the same as the CRJs. Any truth to that?
 
Ok Mike, I gotta know something about the 10's gun. When you fired that beast of a gun off, would it "Slow" the 10 down a couple of knots? I've always heard that tale that it would affect the forward movement of the 10.

True or False?

Love hearing about the cool things like this from the one's who know. ;)
 
SeanD said:
The A-10 is by far one of my favorite looking airplanes. That thing is a tuff ass looking beast. Great pics Mike.
I could have sworn I read on these boards that the A-10 engines are the same as the CRJs. Any truth to that?
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Close. The RJ uses the CF-34, we use the TF-34. CF is a little more thrust than the TF and, I believe, has reversers. A-10 and S-3 Viking use the same TF-34

Ok Mike, I gotta know something about the 10's gun. When you fired that beast of a gun off, would it "Slow" the 10 down a couple of knots? I've always heard that tale that it would affect the forward movement of the 10.

True or False?
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If it does, its not very noticeable, since we generally don't fire much more than a 2-3 second burst. GAU-8 fires 70 rounds/second, and the max I've done is about a 6 second burst in combat. But being in a 60+ degree dive, no aircraft slowing was happening....
 
A-10 = Coolest Plane Ever!!!
I always loved watching them do touch n goes when I worked the test cell at Barksdale. Such a nose high attitude while in the flare. Awsome!
 
I always thought A-10's are some of the coolest airplanes around. We used to have them at our base, I wish we still do.
 
Mike, how many times approximatley would you need to hit the tanker on a trans atlantic? From my limited experience when we would fly in Iraq and had Harriers as the high bird they were refueling like every 45 minutes. Please tell me you didn't have to do that all the way across the pond?

When my squadron went to Nellis for two months for training that was the first prolonged exposure I had to jets. We quickly learned to love the 10's for their quietness. We were setup at the very end of the runway, right next to teh taxiway and would go :panic: :banghead: every time a f16 went by on afterburners and go :nana2: when the 10s would roll by.

edit:I had a pretty cool pic of a -10 that cut between us and dash 2 at Al Asad but I can't find it. The pic showed all the armament he had on board, pretty awesome sight.
 
juan valdez said:
Mike, how many times approximatley would you need to hit the tanker on a trans atlantic? From my limited experience when we would fly in Iraq and had Harriers as the high bird they were refueling like every 45 minutes. Please tell me you didn't have to do that all the way across the pond?

When my squadron went to Nellis for two months for training that was the first prolonged exposure I had to jets. We quickly learned to love the 10's for their quietness. We were setup at the very end of the runway, right next to teh taxiway and would go :panic: :banghead: every time a f16 went by on afterburners and go :nana2: when the 10s would roll by.

edit:I had a pretty cool pic of a -10 that cut between us and dash 2 at Al Asad but I can't find it. The pic showed all the armament he had on board, pretty awesome sight.
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The big variable for ocean crossings vis-a-vis fuel was maintaining enough fuel to be able to divert to the nearest suitable airfield in case your next air refueling doesn't work for whatever reason. Planned is something like (I'm going back in remembering here) 10 AARs going over the Atlantic. To give you an idea of this, when I was flying the -117 across the Pacific twice, there was a portion of the route where the nearest divert was so far away that we were tanking every 10 minutes just to be able to keep the jet topped off, and still reach the divert field of Wake Island with just our reserves.
 
MikeD said:
That's the deck angle of the KC-10 trying to fly slow enough to refuel us. We're actually in a slight descent.

.
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The refueling in a descent with the -97 was a 'toboggan'. Never did it in the -135 but did pick up more than a few loaded F-105s in the mid-teens. They looked like bumble bees even at 320kts hanging on the boom at that 'slow' airspeed.
 
Orange Anchor said:
The refueling in a descent with the -97 was a 'toboggan'. Never did it in the -135 but did pick up more than a few loaded F-105s in the mid-teens. They looked like bumble bees even at 320kts hanging on the boom at that 'slow' airspeed.
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I still remember when the PHX Guard unit had KC-97s in the mid-70s. Did the -97 ever work as a tanker in SEA?
 
MikeD said:
I still remember when the PHX Guard unit had KC-97s in the mid-70s. Did the -97 ever work as a tanker in SEA?
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I never saw a -97 during my two tours. But here is a picture that throws off my time line. I would have strongly doubted that the -97 was still around for this.
Other sources note the -97 was out of the active duty in the early 70s but Guard/Reserve units continued until the last 70s.

The recommended 'toboggan' was 300-500fpm or as necessary. As mentioned earlier, the -105 would be draggin' at 320kts IAS and would be in and out of burner as it got fatter. The one thing you DID NOT want to do was disconnect with pressure still on the boom. The intake for the -105s air cycle machine was near the refueling receptacle and if there was any spray, the Thud driver got both a strong whiff and potentially a light shower. NOT good...

060810-F-1234S-037.jpg
 
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