Jersey and anyone else who wants a laugh.

[Comrade Trapp]

Jersey, saw this and thought of you. ........

Chair-Force.com

Not trying to bashing the airforce here, I'm sure theres alot of this in the other branches as well.

Comrade Trapp

[JerseyJohn]

Comrade

Laughed like hell, really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing it.

But, if you think that $960* figure is bad, let me tell you a little story from my own days in SAC.

When I was in we still had the Failsafe System, in which B-52 Bombers, each loaded with enough joy and good cheer to wipe out a small country, would fly to rendevous points and await the signal to either proceed, circle, or return to base. You know about that, I'm sure.

Of course, we also had bombers flying around the world being refueled along the way and back dropping extra conventional bombs in our hobby war in missions which, officially, never took place. You probably also know about that.

Here's what you may not know. When not flying these vital -- and I mean that seriously -- missions, those bombers required considerable maintenance. They also required more than a few gallons of jet fuel per flight.

Below are some figures so you can get a better idea.

Specifications

Primary Function: Heavy bomber

Contractor: Boeing Military Airplane Co.

Power Plant: Eight Pratt & Whitney engines TF33-P-3/103 turbofan

Thrust: Each engine up to 17,000 pounds (7,650 kilograms)

Length: 159 feet, 4 inches (48.5 meters)

Height: 40 feet, 8 inches (12.4 meters)

Wingspan: 185 feet (56.4 meters)

Speed: 650 miles per hour (Mach 0.86)

Ceiling: 50,000 feet (15,151.5 meters)

Weight: Approximately 185,000 pounds empty (83,250 kilograms)

Maximum Takeoff Weight: 488,000 pounds (219,600 kilograms)

Range: Unrefueled 8,800 miles (7,652 nautical miles)

Armament: Approximately 70,000 pounds (31,500 kilograms) mixed ordnance -- bombs, mines and missiles.

Crew: Five (aircraft commander, pilot, radar navigator, navigator and electronic warfare officer)

Accommodations: Six ejection seats

Date Deployed: February 1955

Inventory: 44 combat-coded Active force, 85; ANG, 0; Reserve, 9

Now, before going any further, you need to understand these babies couldn't land safely with all but a fraction of a full load of jet fuel.

So, every day, my fellow Airmen and myself would get these birds shined and ready to go up and we never knew which of those missions they'd be filling.

Or, if they'd just be going up and circling the base a few times to conduct tests before landing.

The ones that went up for routine tests carried fuel for a 7,500 mile mission.

They'd circle a few times, inside the crew would click switches and say things to one another like "Check" and "Roger," and "Affirmative," typical Roger-Wilco lingo.

Enough fuel to carry that Leviathon half way round the world, or thereabouts.

And after a few hundred miles flight time almost all of it would need to be sprayed out the wings to enrich the environment, making a pleasant misty haze sometimes visable from the flightline.

Then it would land. I used to love watching them go up and come down, having to do both at an odd angle, not quite nose straight on, though you'd need to see it live to appreciate the effect.

And I got to see it a hundred times a day.

So, did I hear someone say something about dwindling fuel supplies?

Anyhow, I'm not sure they can do it any other way as the tests probably need to see how the aircraft responds while fully loaded.

I think I stopped thinking about military wastefulness on my third day in Strategic Air Command.

* There are also tales of $500 screwdrivers and similar items. The truth is, unless it's a case of outright corruption or kickbacks, the military squeezes it's full value out of every thin dime. However, each branch spends tens of millions regularly on things they don't want anyone to know about. The only way they can do so and still account, officially, for the funds they've received, is to bloat of the figures spent on routine items. This nearly always leads to absurd paper items like the one mentioned.

The E3 pictured was a typical office variety who'd spend a normal forty hour week in admin somewhere; the rest of us were stuck on the flightline for seventy and eighty hour weeks, freezing and roasting, and I don't recall any of us sporting that sor of physique.

Not that we were health nuts, it's just eating wasn't the great free time activity. It was alcoholism.

[ December 18, 2003, 07:28 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[KDG]

I just want to know why and how 1.2 million was spent on recreating the Wright brothers first plane. Then the thing doesn't fly.

I work for a company that makes some parts for the Govt. Many times the cost of a part is high because they order small qty's of certain parts. Add in tooling, setups, minimum charges for plating, paint, material, etc., its actually easy to see why some things cost what they do.

As long as all items are sent to multiple vendors for bids, things should work out. What really needs to be done is for the Govt. to standardize its parts that it uses. Oh well.

[JerseyJohn]

"I just want to know why and how 1.2 million was spent on recreating the Wright brothers first plane. Then the thing doesn't fly."

KDG

The first statement they kept making long before the centenial flight, was that most people who know about the event have it confused with their filmed 1909 flight which was recorded on film. By then they had a better idea of what they were doing. In 1903 they were still groping. I think that flight was more a success based upon dumb luck than anything else. Everything had to have been perfect, the wind, the pilot's weight, the temperature, everything. Maybe 99 out of a 100 times it would have failed but on that particular day it didn't.

The first and most successful of these historical restagings I recall is Thor Haverthal's (sorry if I mispelled it as I'm sure I have) long voyage with his co-researchers in the expanded raft, Kon Tiki. I've always enjoyed reading about these things, but people have to understand that in many instances the probability of success is very low, as it was historically.

A lot of people speculate about how extraterestials had to have built the Great Pyramid, but how many of them know about the earlier failed broken pyramid, proving that the Egyptians went through trial and error to achieve such perfection.

What amazes me is that the 1909 Wright Brothers aircraft is so primitive in comparrison to the warplanes that came only a few years later. Shows where the motivation was; but then how do the Pyramids at Giza fit in with that theory?

The Government does a lot of things ass ways. I remember when I was a kid they wanted to build a huge concrete pad at Cape Canaveral, anticipating future large rockets. The politicians insisted on building a small one for the immediate need and enlarging it, at tremendous extra expense, for each new project.

It's like the Civil War story about the Union general who decided to actually test a pair of army boots. Next day he complained to the manufacturer that they wore out in a single day's walk. The contractor said, "But general, you've got to understand, those were riding boots!"