Vietnam B789 at Munich on Aug 15th 2026, late rotation, tailstrike, runway overrun, tyre damage

[Pilot Fighter]

That would have been an unmitigated death trap.

One day I’ll do a deep dive on Whale losses,
I’m curious about the numbers.

My father’s last five flights had in-flight emergencies, that’s crazy. Imagine the deferred maintenance as they were being replaced by Prowlers.

Maybe the Navy should consider a mix of KC-46’s and MQ-25’s. KC-46’s are cheaper than MQ-25’s.

 

[Beaker]

General rule of thumb applies. 2/3 of rotation speed by half way down the runway. Eg, 165 knot rotation. You should be 110 knots at least by half way down the runway.

It's good to have some approximate gut checks in mind. I'll also agree that if you do not have 2/3rd (or 70% is the rule of thumb also goes) by half way down the runway, you should abort. However, the logic behind the adage is simplistic and you can be in trouble even if you pass this test. It also gives absurd guidance when there is a large mismatch between available runway and aircraft performance. As in, "If I don't have 35 knots in my Cessna Bugsmasher by 1-mile down this 2-mile runway, I don't care what you say, I'm aborting!"

AOPA article on the subject:
Reality check

Within my simple world of light GA airplanes, I follow the recommendation of the article and make sure the runway can support the takeoff ground roll followed by the landing ground roll (with my margin factors applied). The abort point occurs at the end of the predicted takeoff ground roll. Either I'm in the air, or I bring it to a stop. To be clear, I'm not saying this is practical for other contexts.

 

[Beep]

I knew that, I was just testing you.

THAT sounds an awful lot like something old people with CRS Syndrome would say.

 

[///AMG]

One day I’ll do a deep dive on Whale losses,
I’m curious about the numbers.

My father’s last five flights had in-flight emergencies, that’s crazy. Imagine the deferred maintenance as they were being replaced by Prowlers.

Maybe the Navy should consider a mix of KC-46’s and MQ-25’s. KC-46’s are cheaper than MQ-25’s.

I don't think we will ever get into the big-wing tanker game, other than maybe maybe potentially possibly fielding some pods for our forthcoming fleet of reserve C-130J's that big navy reserves are so f'ing proud about......yawn. MQ-25 is supposedly going to reconstitute the E/F fleets to relieve them of the burden of mission tanking, but that specific role is almost always optional anyways. The path to them filling the recovery tanker mission, which is a requirement for fixed wing CVN ops, is much less clear. To be blunt, I don't think it is capable of that mission, nor do we plan to have "operators" who have any clue what they'd be doing in that role. They will certainly increase the amount of near mid airs, but that will happen regardless, once they arrive. That's my pessimistic take. I remember a day, over a decade ago, I was sitting in my office in Fallon, and some jabroni from the navair side of the MQ-25 program came in, and asked me what I thought the plane would be good for. That's a real good start to a program, I'd say. "We're building it, you tell us what it should do". I think enough of us shrugged and said "I dunno", and then the persistent ISR part (its original, programmatic mission and reason for funding) proved to be too heavy and the airframe too ill-equipped, so someone (with no knowledge of CVN tanker ops) just said "make it a tanker!" in order to save the program.

 

[Pilot Fighter]

I don't think we will ever get into the big-wing tanker game, other than maybe maybe potentially possibly fielding some pods for our forthcoming fleet of reserve C-130J's that big navy reserves are so f'ing proud about......yawn. MQ-25 is supposedly going to reconstitute the E/F fleets to relieve them of the burden of mission tanking, but that specific role is almost always optional anyways. The path to them filling the recovery tanker mission, which is a requirement for fixed wing CVN ops, is much less clear. To be blunt, I don't think it is capable of that mission, nor do we plan to have "operators" who have any clue what they'd be doing in that role. They will certainly increase the amount of near mid airs, but that will happen regardless, once they arrive. That's my pessimistic take. I remember a day, over a decade ago, I was sitting in my office in Fallon, and some jabroni from the navair side of the MQ-25 program came in, and asked me what I thought the plane would be good for. That's a real good start to a program, I'd say. "We're building it, you tell us what it should do". I think enough of us shrugged and said "I dunno", and then the persistent ISR part (its original, programmatic mission and reason for funding) proved to be too heavy and the airframe too ill-equipped, so someone (with no knowledge of CVN tanker ops) just said "make it a tanker!" in order to save the program.

Yeah, MQ-25 seems like a problematic tanking solution.

Doctrine and dogma probably conclude consideration of a heavy tanker but I think 20 KC-46’s could be a game changer. Rhino’s will tank forever.

With regards to doctrine, if we look back to the Vietnam era we see a precedence for land-based tanking.

For the most part, EKA-3B’s supporting Tonkin Gulf carrier ops were land-based in Da Nang.