Skinner Would Have Wept with Professional Pride
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Quote of the Day Your brain did not evolve for 24-hour cable or a phone
that never sleeps. It evolved for a band of 150 people, a horizon you could
walk, a...
10 hours ago
1 comment:
If you read the history of the origins of the design, you'll get annoyed. Typical bureaucratic meddling. Oversized, overweight, and therefor under-powered.
That fancy landing gear? It could handle rough surfaces that the pilot couldn't deal with. And it wasn't used off field in 'Nam. Always from a base, so that very heavy system was worthless. They weren't allowed to change it.
That zero-zero ejection seat? Very heavy, and I'm not sure it got used. IIRC, each seat was about 700 lbs, x2.
Ditching was contraindicated. 100% fatality rate.
More than a few were lost when they couldn't out-climb the slopes of the hills, and performed the classic "controlled flight into terrain".
The Marines armed their aircraft, the Air Force didn't. Birddog only, just marking rockets. Stupid politics.
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