Really Fast Aeroplanes!

No direct association with boy scouts, but one of the other squadrons I recall had an eagle scout/cadet colonel. The religious angle wasn’t anything official, they just “happened” to mostly be catholic, most of the people with actual air force experience were academy graduates and catholic, our chaplain was catholic (and an F-4 pilot during the Vietnam war (had to check dates)). I didn’t learn till much later in life that this is all fairly related. It’s actually an official program tied to the air force, so the uniforms, saluting, marching, PT, etc are all “kinda” real. You pass tests x, y, and z and you get promoted. Pass the first major test and you enter the enlisted ranks one rank higher like maybe the eagle scout thing? It also potentially could provide you with the necessary connections to actually get a state rep to forward your application to the actual academies, or if you want opportunities to play with search and rescue stuff or something.

I don’t know if I had the idea first or my grandfather, but when I was 12 or 13 I had a brochure show up for the program. Told my grandfather, who was an army sergeant way back, and he was very into me doing this. Also him and his wife are Catholic, so the religious angle didn’t seem that weird to me or him at the time. He paid all the dues and volunteered there to manage the uniform inventory, essentially the quartermaster, though he didn’t bother “joining” the adult program with a rank and blah blah blah. But since he was there he was privy to behind the scenes drama that he didn’t tell me about until I left the program.

Anyway, most of the kids that showed up there were maybe not dumb, but not super academically talented. Also the difference between a 13 year old and a 17 or 18 year old is so massive, but you were treated as peers. I had an easy time passing all the aerospace/leadership exams, and eventually I got in slightly better shape doing the PT stuff, so I had an easy time climbing ranks. Some older kids that progressed more slowly seemed to resent that, but the “adult” part of the org seemed to encourage me to continue doing that. I kinda stopped progressing eventually because of peer pressure and the desire to hold myself back long enough to earn my stripes one way or another, and this made the adults irritated. To this day I’m not totally sure why, maybe funding or something else is determined by cadet progress?

The “bad parts” I alluded to above had various degrees of badness.

At the low rung, there were some weird stupid power politics going on with the adults, and some of them lacked certain kinds of comprehension. I once worked a parade (watch a post for a couple hours, tell people not to drive through x, easy enough). I got into some kind of situation where at 13 I worked 12 hours out in the sun alone in different places because this woman from another squadron that I did not know (former enlisted air force) said to do so. She was all bark and orders, and I was of a mind to do what I was told (discipline, right?). Some degree of heat stroke, no water, etc were involved and she treated it like my 13 year old self was the problem. Well, as an adult now, I think that’s farther than you go. I recall my grandfather being a bit pissed about it. Adults on power trips that shouldn’t be in charge of kids (or possibly anyone), etc.

Mid rung was weird favoritism for certain kids. If they came from certain families they get easy treatment, better clothes/gear, oh you don’t have to make your bunk, clean the bathrooms, etc. And it was really nested into the behavior patterns. Families that had actual air force officers in them were also golden, though those families also tended to actually have some discipline. On one hand, that seems like not a big deal. One family was basically in charge of our unit, and had three sons make it into commissions. And they did useful things for the community like actual search and rescue work, etc. However, all of this leads into…

There were a few adult officers sleeping with 14 to 16 year olds, and apparently this was kept quiet. Happened repeatedly with a few specific officers. This made a lot of other things make sense in retrospect. I never knew great details, but combine that with knowing about all the Air Force academy rape allegations and cover ups it all kinda fits together now.

Excellent jets:

image

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Can’t believe you left this one out -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5rQHoaQpTw

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It’s not an exhaustive jet list.

My favorite jet, the F-5 Freedom Fighter / Tiger II

They just look so cool, very sleek and you can see the lineage of the F-16

My favorite Jet, the Airbus A320 (or A320A). The vast majority of the time I fly somewhere, this bad boy gets me where I’m going.

The A320 is such a good plane, both to work around and to fly in. Much roomier than a 737 both in the cabin and cargo bins, easy to load, and service parts like the lavatory panel and hatch switches rarely break. I worked on these and the E190s at Jet Blue and the E190s were pieces of shit comparatively.

Best Jett.

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Very cool MiG-28s!

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I think you mean the F-18, not the F-16.

The F-16 was a General Dynamics (now Lockheed since they bought GD’s aerospace business) single-engined fighter. The F-5 was made by Northrop, now Northrop-Grumman.

There was a fly-off between the F-16 from GD and another plane, the F-17, from Northrop. The F-17 was basically a bigger, badder version of the F-5. However, the F-16 won that particular fly-off and got the Air Force contract.

Fast forward a bit and the Navy was in the market for a light-weight fighter. They looked at the F-16 but at the time were like, “Naah, we want a twin-engine plane as we don’t want our pilots stranded should an engine give out on a mission.” Northrop then dug up the old F-17 blueprints, partnered up with McDonnell-Douglas (since purchased by Boeing) and remodeled it to the Navy’s specifications into the F/A-18 Hornet.

Fun fact: the oddball narrowing of the fuselage (often referred to as “wasp-waist”) of the F-5 and similar aircraft of the time were due to just understanding the ramifications of the Whitcomb area rule for transonic flight. The “wasp-waist” was the first whack at solving the problems associated with transonic flight, only to be improved as both the area rule was better understood and better design tools were developed.

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You are correct I mistyped.

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There goes the opportunity for West Side Story jokes!

Yeah, or any fun references to Cowboy Bebop.

Or references to fictional super hero action figures on the show Jimmy Neutron…

And so I put the kebash on this now, or any of these:

Took this long to get an SR-71 in this thread?

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If I recall correctly that’s the only plane ever to go to space, twice both times with the same pilot.

Also I’m a baby in this thread, everyone here clearly knows like orders of magnitude more about real fast aeroplanes than me.

But the one I always liked is the B-2 Spirit triangle lookin’ motherfucker.

What’s the deal with that guy, still in use? Still fly? Actually stealthy? I bow the superior knowledge on display around me.

What are you talking about, it’s been to space plenty of times with at least two different pilots. Scott Summers took it to space several times.

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Now it’s time for X-Men references… j/k

Fun facts about the SR-71:

  • It was originally supposed to be designated the RS-71, but then president Lyndon B. Johnson flubbed the name and reversed the letters. The new designation stuck.
  • It runs on a very non-flammable jet fuel. In fact, if you spilled it on the ground and dropped a lit match on it, it wouldn’t ignite. The stuff would only burn under the specific conditions of its unique engines.
  • Speaking of fuel, it leaked fuel like crazy until it got up to operating speed. This is because the body panels, including those that make up the fuel tank, had gaps in them to allow for thermal expansion as the skin heats up nearing top speed. Therefore, the tanks wouldn’t be fully sealed until then. As a result, it pretty much needed to be aerial refueled immediately after take-off.
  • The body was made up mostly of titanium and titanium alloys as it was the only metal capable of withstanding the high operating temperatures that result from air friction at near Mach 3. The world’s leading producer of titanium at the time: the Soviet Union. The SR-71’s contractors had to set up all sorts of shell companies in order to import the necessary titanium from the Soviet Union without them thinking it was being used for a top secret spy plane.
  • It was built by Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works, lead by one of the all time great aeronautical engineers, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson. The name “Skunk Works” is a reference to both the Lil’ Abner comic and the fact that the Skunk Works’ office was originally located next to a plastics plant that tended to emanate a horrid stench.
  • Finally, this story about an SR-71 crew is absolutely hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyHH9G9et0

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Are you sure you’re not confusing it with the X-15?

Sorry I was citing this and was misremebering. I was thinking about the X-15 and the pilot Joe Walker

Ok in future these posts were made within seconds of each other.