Two Libyan Mirage F1 fighters defect to Malta

I would love to hear the comments of the pilots after the briefing about the ord on the pylons. "Today you're carrying six inert Mk.82s."
Makes about as much sense at McNamara's Whiz Kids having the Navy head into the north with empty pylons. This way it took more sorties to carry the ord and sortie count was a BIG measurement of what was going on. (The other one was where for a period of time in Vietnam, we ran out of bombs and had to buy bombs back from the Japanese. We had sold them as surplus. And too, because we had not given the French the nuke at Dien Bien Phu, the French cut up the A-1s we had given them rather than let us buy them back)

BDU-50s and -56s with Paveway II....and sometimes III.....kits on them. Damn guidance system was 20 times the cost of the damn inert bomb. Saved costs and time of the Weapons troops seeing that there was no fuzing/wiring to do. :)

I had F-100s bringing down new Mk.82s sometimes and old Mk.117s. First strike I worked was with Mk.117s. The Mk.80 series was the Navy's newer low-drag bombs.
This is a -117. You can see the guys in the background fusing the -117 on the inboard station.

The WWII M117s were also used in Desert Storm, albeit only by the B-52Gs. 750 pounders were still useful. Dropped both low drag as well as high drag.

Wish we would've kept the M118 3000 pounders around.
 
Wish we would've kept the M118 3000 pounders around.
I never had any 3000lb stuff. We did have the Australians dropping 1000lbs bombs from a level delivery and they could drop with something like 25 meter spacing which was, for all intent, simultaneously. BIG holes especially with tail fusing.
The image is not always the best as you know. The F-4s had the Vulcan with 6000rpm fire rate and the F-100 had 4 20mm with slower rates. BUT if the Vulcan jammed, which it did more times than anyone wanted, the fire rate went to ZERO. With the F-100, one gun jamming didn't mean the other 3 jammed.
 
Now Strike Eagles can sport the 250-pound GBU-39, which packs a much smaller punch and is specifically for destroying one floor of one small building, and not touching the surrounding stuff.

Are those pretty effective? It was briefly mentioned in one of my A/G briefs a while back, but the IP didn't mention them being used much....can't remember why he said they (USMC) canned them in theater.
 
Are those pretty effective? It was briefly mentioned in one of my A/G briefs a while back, but the IP didn't mention them being used much....can't remember why he said they (USMC) canned them in theater.

I dropped several of them in 2007 in OEF. There were several issues that made them, IMHO, not very effective for use in CAS...at least in areas where there wasn't significant high threat of collateral damage.
 
I dropped several of them in 2007 in OEF. There were several issues that made them, IMHO, not very effective for use in CAS...at least in areas where there wasn't significant high threat of collateral damage.

Rog, I'm sure they will probably touch on this once I get into the CAS syllabus a few weeks down the road
 
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