OT Cool pic from the cold war, circa 1967

Here's something you don't see everyday. From my time in the USN, VF-114, riding the USS Kitty Hawk, somewhere in the South Pacific.



pigpen

 

Cool pic your were a fighter jockey?

 

No, I was a Phantom Fixer. (AE shop)

pigpen

 

Well at least you weren't a BT.

 

Wow!

 

Civil defense alert. Crouch under your desk and fold your hands behind your neck. Do not come out until the sirens stop!!!!!

When clear light and smoke one cuban cigar. Proceed gently, pick up and discard any fallen tufts of hair Cover burns with Vodka!

 

Pretty Cool. Anymore details of the situation? I take it we were keeping an eye on that Soviet plane flight path?

How big is that Soviet plane compared to the US fighter?

 

Cool pic!

What kind of Russian plane is that? It looks like a "Beer", but no props!

 

Soviet bomber tech from an airplane nut I knew:

The modern Soviet bomber programs all derived from reverse engineering American B-29's in 1944-45. They continued to develop, adding jet engines, swept wings, and so on, but supposedly all their bomber developments retained the basic B-29 cross section of fuselage! If this is correct, we must admire their sense of tradition...

 

Did someone say 'tradition'? Does it's landing gear run bias-ply tires?

I get the impression that the Soviet plane is much further away than your fella.....so that's gonna be one big mofo.

Flat Ernie will know....

 

Tu-16 (TUPOLEV) "BADGER" from what I could find.

 

When I was on the Kitty in the 70's a guy from the Anteaters showed me a great pic he took of a Russian gunner grinning at him while holding a beer and a playboy up in the window.

The Russians used to send the bombers or migs out just to show us they could find our carriers and play chicken. We'd send a couple of fighters to escort them as they made their pass. I was the guy on the radar tracking them and ready to designate missiles if anybody sneezed or farted at the wrong time. Great sport...

 

at least back then you KNEW who the fuckin badguys were. . . nowadays you cant keep score even with a program.

Cool pic of the Badger and the Phantom

 

The Russian plane looks like it was designed after the B-17 to me.

 

wow interesting, how far into the south pacific ? I'm guessing not too far the Soviets were not big on midair refuelling fom what I understand and shouldn't have had too many places to land/take off in this neck of the woods......
on a similar vein, an old teacher of mine spotted a sub off NZ way back when, we don't have any so it wasn't ours, there must be some great stories untold from back then, I bet the Russians did all kinds of crazy stuff (and the rest of us too probably).

 

Hey cool, my dad was a Phantom Fixer (Phixer?) as well, Air Force, though. 433rd in SE Asia, '69-'70.

Funny story, the F4 in the Air Force Museum is painted up like an aircraft he actually worked on. So when we visited he ducked behind the ropes and actually started climbing on it! He kept referring to it as "his" aircraft. He then told us about how he used to sleep in the air intakes. I asked him if he wasn't nervous about somebody starting the thing up with him in there and he said that nobody started "his" aircraft without him, the crewchief.

He also has a neat story about a fake bombing run on Anghorr Watt in Thailand, but I won't take up a bunch of board space with war stories.

By the way, what's the bomber? Backfire? Bear? I'm not really up on my '60s Soviet heavy bombers.

 

Gotta respond to this one: Do you know how they got those B-29s to reverse-engineer? They crashed in Siberia after bombing Japan. Don't forget that Stalin was only our ally against Germany until 1945, when he finally accepted our request to join in against Japan. You know, just in time to grab North Korea and assist the Communist Chinese.

Oh, and I did see now that somebody identified the Russian bomber as a Tupolev "Badger." Nifty.

 

USNATC Patuxent River MD 1965-67.Had about 12 F-4's(A,B,and 2 G models)in our outfit(ASEG;All Services Evaluation Group).Mostly evaluating new weapons systems and the like.AO by profession.Only Russkie aircraft I ever ran into were Antonov AN-2's that were being hijacked from Fidel's air force when I was in Key West.Nice picture by the way;brings back a lot of(mixed)memories.

 

I was with the Aardvarks (Anteaters) for a second tour from '71 to '75. Our paths may have crossed. For those that asked, the Russian airplane in the photo is called a Bear, and it is a big mofo. For more info on the mighty Aardvarks and their escapades, see www.vf-114.org.

pigpen

 

My Dad was an MP stationed with the Gunfighters 366th at Da Nang, 68-69. He brought home a few F-4 odds and ends. I have a picture of me standing in front of the Gunfighter Phantom at the Seattle Air Museum. He thought that was pretty cool. I've been trying to talk him out of one of his squadron beer glasses with the 366th logo on it for years.

 

Let's get "pissed" sometime and I'll tell ya some of the ones that still wake me up at night. You're buying

 

wasnt 29's... doolittle's raiders flew the Mitchells (B-25b) which at the time they flew that bomb raid over Japan was a squirrely fuck and had a ton of bugs in it.

 

The B-29's came along a couple years after the Doolittle raid...
Planes in trouble had Siberian fields as one of their alternatve landing places, and a good number ended up there.
There was an agreement of some sorts with the Russians specifically covering the B-29 raids, but there were both diplomatic issues (since Russia wasn't at war with Japan until the very end) and the customary Russian general paranoia and uncooperativeness.
Aircrew were interned and eventually repatriated via the south, India and Tibet, and planes were simply kept.
There were also lots of planes that landed or crashed in Russian turf earlier in the war, especially around the Aleutians, and planes and crew (including some known to have survived) simply disappeared.

 

For all you guys that served, THANK YOU!
If you can read this thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.

Pigpen,
I worked on Phantoms also, '71-'75. Only mine were the recce variety in the Err Farce (Air Force for you civilians). RF-4C's with the 67th TRW, Bergstrom AFB, Austin, TX. That is except for the year and half I spent working on my favorite fighter, the AC-130-A/E gunship at Ubon RTAFB, Thailand. 16th SOS assigned to the 8th TFW. One round from the 105 mm howitzer on the E-model would put a BIG hole in your Russian. Search the Internet and you'll find that my gunships are still flying, or rather improved models. They are using them right now in Iraq and Afganistan. Best close air support aircraft for our guys on the ground, provided we have air superiority.

If the Russian looks like a B-17 or B-29, the guys are right. All the technology the Soviets ever got that was right, was stolen from us, some way, some how. Remember all aircraft are developments of each other. Look at the names. B-17 Flying Fortress, B-29 Super Fortress, B-52 Stratofortress. Each one improved upon the previous. Same way with cars (most of the time).

 

None of the Doolittle B-25s crashed in Russia.

The Soviets got a B-29 and completely reverse engineered it. Exactly. Unless you know what you're looking for, you almost can't tell them apart. So basically, the bastards were ready to kill us with our own plane.

 

Badger is/was jet.
Bear is/was a 4 engine turbo-prop.

According to the web info I could find anyway. Both look huge!

 

I was also a Phantom Phixer, '72-'78. I was an AME, also a plane captain and QA, on the Independence. Spent my last two years in Key West, tough duty.

 

In addition to his time with the 433rd, my dad was a flare kicker aboard those Spooky gunships while "over there." I wonder if you guys ever crossed paths.

 

Well, no... not a crashed anyhow but one landed there
Doolittle flight number Eight commanded by Capt. Ed York ran out of fuel early and flew to some field near Vladivostok in the USSR thinking that the ruski's would give him enough fuel to fly to China... but the soviets stole the plane and imprisoned the crew.