Charlie Wolf wrote:
Well, I hate to disagree with you, but I remember many incidents of
FOD'd engines on S-3's (I have 1600 hours in them). On one occasion,
we flew into Warminster PA and the engine got FOD on touch down on the
runway. By the time we taxied up to the hangar area, #1 was nearly
fully engulfed in flames. We came very near to a strike A/C on that
one. Riding in the back seats, I recall many instances of seeing
things sucked up at high power on the deck (including birds in
flight). I also saw many instances of damaged fan blades form FOD.

Last thing I want to do is get in an argument with you, Charlie - and
you're right, we had fan damage on occasion that I should have
recalled. I never heard of that Warminster incident, sounds like you
had a wild ride! Glad you made it to share the story.

That being said, you are correct about one thing. Because the TF-34
is a high-bypass turbofan configuration, just because an object is
sucked into the fan duct, doesn't necessarily mean it will ingest in
the engine intake. That's the big difference between an S-3 and and
an A-7 sucking something up.

That's what I meant, without saying it well - sorry about that. The
actual intake on the TF 34 is pretty dang small in relation to the size
of that giant fan in front of it - there were certainly incidents of
the bypass fan getting dinged. I should have said it this way: in my
squadron, there were far less FOD incidents than the other squadrons on
Ike. Damage to the blades was never a good thing, but the TF 34 seemed
a lot more resistant to ingestion than the other types in service at
the time.

v/r Gordon