Airman Steals C-130 from Mildenhall

OMG, I wasn't sure where to post this, but this here is funny. Seems 50 years ago some crew chief got drunk and stole a C-130 from Mildenhall so he could fly back to his new wife. He crashed it in the channel and now a group of people are trying to raise some money to locate it! The RAF and AF both sent up fighters to intercept him...so I cant see why it would be that hard to locate the wreck...
Anyway, this was 1969, so I imagine it was a bit more than beer!
www.stripes.com...


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Reminds of a story I heard back in my Navy days. A maintence expert petty officer once took an F-18 for a joy ride at NAS Cecil Field. He took off, flew around, landed and parked perfectly...only to be court martialed for his ride. I kind of get the guys frustration, bust your butt for years, know the plane in and out yet not be allowed to fly but some arrogant kids with a gold bar are given keys to the machine after a couple years of service.

It happens every now and then.

I strongly feel enlisted personel with a decade of experience on an air frame deserve a chance to fly a bird they know. The Air Force is finally starting to let enlisted members fly, hopefully the Navy will take note.

Rumour has it they used to have a list of people at my old work who requested the chance to fly and occasionally one was selected to get in the back of a Tonker or Hawk. The story goes that some new HR headshed decided she would go top of the list, the pilots refused and the list was canned.

However, having watched the cockpit video of a Tonker pilot punching out in the north sea I would think that random civvies in charge of a bang seat are not a good thing, as the aircraft was rotating about 1 roll per second the pilot had to time his punch out so it didnt fire him into the sea.

The EFA radar test bed aircraft was one which noone volunteered for, asking to sit in the back of an old aircraft on a 6 hour test flight over the ocean was not very appealing.

We have incintive rides for people who bave done something really good....like an annual award or something. I got a ride in one of our 15e's. It was a 3 hour flight and i got to grab the stick for about 30 minutes. It was epic. I puked til i thought my ribs wo5uld bust.

a reply to: Forensick

There's a lot more to flying than knowing the airplane. Unlikely the services will entrust a multi-million dollar asset to someone who has not been trained. I was enlisted. I was an officer. I was a pilot in the USAF. Trust me. Not gonna happen.

a reply to: jrod

Our Skipper and the senior officers in my squadron were all Vietnam Vets. They believed that every air-crewman should know the basics when it came to flying the aircraft. When we would fly plane guard it wasn't too unusual for one of the pilots to swap seats with an air-crewman and the other to supervise his flying. I got real good at making left hand turns in a Sea King.

a reply to: jrod

Our Skipper and the senior officers in my squadron were all Vietnam Vets. They believed that every air-crewman should know the basics when it came to flying the aircraft. When we would fly plane guard it wasn't too unusual for one of the pilots to swap seats with an air-crewman and the other to supervise his flying. I got real good at making left hand turns in a Sea King.

When I was in the Air Force, we all wanted to steal a plane.

All the good ideas have been done before, damn it.

originally posted by: JIMC5499
a reply to: jrod

Our Skipper and the senior officers in my squadron were all Vietnam Vets. They believed that every air-crewman should know the basics when it came to flying the aircraft. When we would fly plane guard it wasn't too unusual for one of the pilots to swap seats with an air-crewman and the other to supervise his flying. I got real good at making left hand turns in a Sea King.

It makes sense if there is an emergency then someone else can perform a survivable landing or other basic maneuvers to keep it upright and going in the right direction, safely for the machine and occupants, rather than just "winging it"...
EDIT TO ADD: the video is purely intended to reference the hilarity that ensued over a pun, not any form of a sexual erection type of a reference.

a reply to: JIMC5499

I do recall aircrew guys in the helo squadrons getting some flight simulator time, just in case. That is not the case for maintence guys in VFA(f-18s) squads.v

yeah, some slob got a free ride for 40 minutes in an FB-111F over Birds of Prey Idaho,

I was restless at the age of 15 and ....oh cant say, was flyin since 13 rebuilt a T-Craft in my next door they were all airline pilots on Princeton Dr. in Irving, so it was ok to....

a reply to: 3n19m470

The exact reason was "This is one of the few aircraft that you can yank a wounded pilot out of the seat and save yourselves and the aircraft. An unwritten rule was that if there was any chance of taking fire there were always two people at the controls in case one of them got hit. A wounded pilot would be removed and an air-crewman would take his seat. We practiced pulling a pilot out of the seat.

C-130 found in the English Channel.

It's taken 10 years, but professional diver Grahame Knott has finally found a US Air Force plane that crashed into the Channel in 1969.

..... the plan is for the Deeper Dorset team to dive down to the wreck site in spring, when the underwater visibility in the Channel will have improved, and to video the wreck from all angles. This will enable a computerised, 3D-image of the crash site to be constructed, and studied by air accident investigators.

BBC News Link