"HEMI-Powered" wrote in message
...
Dave Whiley added these comments in the current discussion du

Very interesting, thank you. I never knew that we parked B-52s in
the UK. I thought they were mainly based in the U.S., Turkey,
places like that. And, I have never heard that there is an
emergency Space Shuttle landing strip anywhere in the UK. I know
there are a number of them, several in the United States, but it
never occurred to me that in a real emergency they might not even
be able to hit something as large as the United States land mass
and would have to set down in another continent.


That was something I only found out myself a few weeks ago. My guess would
be that it's designated as a landing point for problems during launch that
prevent the Shuttle from reaching orbit, so the only way is down and you
don't get much choice as to the where. When you compare the Fairford runway
at (AFAIR) 10,000' with, say, Edwards AFB (25,000'?), you'd have to be
desperate to try to get in there.

(Answering another post)

The Thunderbirds were on a European tour in late June / early July, starting
in Ireland then going East to Turkey and the Balkans before coming back West
to the UK.

I think someone should have a word with the Blue Angels now. They can't
possibly let the Air Force steal a march on them like that :-)


--
Dave

not-me should be djw401 and there's no need for any wossname
HP, aka Jerry