"Jim Carriere" wrote in message

One of my friends hit a turkey with a P-3. Or maybe the bird was
hotdogging
and made one pass a bit too close. I guess it isn't any easier to miss a
buzzard than a J-8

The aftermath pictures were interesting. The bird hit the leading edge of
one of the wings, clear of the engines, made a big dent. One end of the
neck was hanging from the dent. The other end was still attached to the
lifeless head. That and a few feathers was about it.

I took out four seagulls with a T44 one night doing a practice approach at
Navy Dallas (I didn't know seagulls flew at night). We did a "flashlight
visual inspection", noted what appeared to be minor damage to the leading
edge and wing tip (the light still worked), and determined to return to NAS
Corpus.

Bad idea, as it turned out. The impacts not only damaged the starboard
leading edge but fractured the wing spar. The aircraft was in rebuild for
almost 90 days.

Beechcraft never could build a wing spar worth a good a ****.

Bill Kambic

P.S. God seems to have a soft spot in His heart for Naval Aviators.

If, by any act, error, or omission, I have, intentionally or
unintentionally, displayed any breedist, disciplinist, sexist, racist,
culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, localist, ageist, lookist, ableist,
sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist,
phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other violation of the rules of
political correctness, known or unknown, I am not sorry and I encourage you
to get over it.