Steeljaw Scribe

From strategypage.com   comes this story of life imitating art:

Snakes on a Plane Bring F-16 Down
Apparently, a poisonous insect or snake in the cockpit brought down a Dutch F-16 in Afghanistan last August. After a 11 month investigation, that ended up as the only plausible explanation for the loss. The dead pilot did not eject, [...]

Nah - just the latest in Iran’s attempts at an indigenously developed fighter…

Nice tailfins though…
(h/t: The DEW Line  )
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Story sub-arc starts here

‘New day, new site, new mission.’
‘Well, kind of’ thought the CICO as he prepared for landing. ‘Wonder what luck we’ll have with this change in venue…’
Settling to the runway, the Hawkeye made the midfield intersection and turned for the transient ramp. At the far end it, it was led to its parking [...]

If you are in the Greater NYC area today and are interested in compelling stories, you need to head over and meet Brad Peniston:

The National Maritime Historical Society 1 has invited me to talk about “No Higher Honor: Saving the Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf” tomorrow near their New York headquarters.
When: noon, [...]

Some folks   think that by enabling that most noxious of programs spawned from the den of inequity otherwise known as Redmond, WA to be displayed via the bolgsphere is…progress?  Forsooth!  Cease  and desist!  Do ye know not what evil thou hast loosed upon this goode land?  Evidently this most humble of scribes and servants [...]

 
Desperate times call for desperate measures… 
In 1940 Britain was in a desperate fight for survival.  Isolated from the Continent, Britain was relying on a lifeline extended from the States via merchant convoys.  Plying the North Atlantic, out of range of land-based air cover, the convoys were subject to attack from German submarines, operating singly [...]

 Ed note: We’re going to try something a little different here and change the POV for a couple of posts.  Note that the events portrayed here are a conglomeration of many encounters over several years and do not represent any one interdiction flight.  Think of this part as being ‘informed fiction’ and try not to [...]

Panama.

  
 
Two months into this endeavor and the novelty has worn off. Standing in the hangar at Howard AFB, the LCDR surveys the flight line – what little of it he could see through the sheets of rain, and does some mental calculations.
 
‘Do I make a mad dash for the plane and wait inside for the [...]

23 July 1947:  VF-17A becomes the Navy’s first all-jet squadron with the initial delivery of 2 x FD-1 Phantoms at NAS Quonset Point, RI and the era of props on carriers begins to close.  This followed by a year, the first carrier ops of a jet with a FD-1 onboard  USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Taking subsequent [...]

 
 
20 July 1969
 

102:42:08 Duke: Roger. Copy. (Pause) Eagle, Houston. You’re Go for landing. Over.
102:42:13 Armstrong (on-board): Okay. 3000 at 70.
102:42:17 Aldrin: Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3000 feet.
102:42:19 Duke: Copy.

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