On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 16:15:00 GMT, Mike Marron
wrote:

Chad Irby wrote:
Mike Marron wrote:

Which brings me back to the topic of the ALLEGED catastrophic failure
of F-4 ECM pods in combat over Vietnam. Had such incidents actually
occurred, rest assurred that the facts as to precisely WHY the pods
ripped away from the airplane would be widely known by the thousands
of dedicated professionals in the F-4 community whom were intimately
involved with flying and fixing the multi-million dollar jet.

Actually, in the field, the pilots wouldn't have any reason to know
this. The people who would be expected to deal with it are the
flightline troops.

Whoa! Time to throw a flag. If stuff were ripping off of airplanes,
whether through fatigue, corrosion, maintenance oversight or exceeding
design G limits, you can bet your butt, the pilots would know it. They
would NEED to know it, since separations for whatever reason can
endanger the whole airplane.

We couldn't even get most of them to learn how to use the stuff that was
installed in the planes every single day.

Don't know where you were in the food chain of aircrew training, but
if it was installed in the planes every single day, you can bet we
knew how to use it. If it were mission essential or mission critical
we got trained in it, refreshed in it, tested in it, and briefed on
every single mission with regard to employment of it.