SR-71

John Szalay added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

"HEMI-Powered" wrote in Finally, even our drill
sergeant,
airborne infantry and Viet Nam tested himself said "son,
there is something unnatural about jumping out of an airplane
in level flight!"


Yep ! I agree, but boy is it a rush !

But then I was a firefighter for 17 years too,
& There is something unnatural about running into
a burning building too ! :-)

My same drill instructor was asked once by this kid we called
"Airborne" if there was any trouble getting men to make their
first jump. He said "nope, it's the 2nd jump that's hard to make
'em take" at which time the kid said "what'd you do?" He said "I
stood in the door but hestitated and the last thing I remember
was the jump master's size 12 on my ass - everybody makes 3
jumps, son!".

Our next door neighbor's daughter is a 1989 graduate of West
Point. She got enamored with Airborne and did that, then went to
Ranger School and did that. In her class's graduation from Ranger
School, the whole bunch jumped out of whatever aircraft it was.
Our neighbors were there to see it. One jumper got tangled in the
shroud upside down and couldn't right themselves until very close
to the ground but thankfully landed safely. After the jump, when
our neighbor's daughter came to see per parents she asked
exitedly "did you see me?! did you see me?!" to which they said
"all we saw was a couple hundred green things floating down and
the young woman said "I was the one hanging upside down!". Talk
about hearts dropping! She later went on to chute packing tool as
a officer - well, I did say she was gung ho - but somehow got
shoved into a logistics battalion when her division deployed to
Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. She and her husband, a 1998 West
Point grad she met there, were both just inside the Iraq border
with orders to spearhead 100 klicks in if the go code came, which
it never did, so she might've seen some action.

So, no, John, BCT and 8 weeks as a Pershing Communications
Specialist at Ft. Sill was enough excitement for me. I am very
tall and VERY thin and highly UN-atheletic so the physical stuff
was pretty damn hard on me, damn near didn't pass the PT test.
So, I was neither interested in the airborne gig nor did I think
I had a prayrer of humping that course for 3 weeks. Ditto for NCO
school when I was in Germany; rather, I just went before the
normal E-5 board probably similarly to what you did.

I have to hand it to you, John, you're either very brave or very
dumb if you were a fire fighter as well as airborne! grin
Serioously, I have great respect for the military as well as
state, county, and local law enforcement and fire fighter men and
women. Their job is difficult and dangerous, hours are long, and
pay is low. Again, my hat is off to you.

And, no, I had no desire to be a Marine like my father.

Have a good one, John!

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Don't say 'can't' when you really mean 'won't'"

On Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:24:28 -0500, John Szalay
wrote:

Maple1 wrote in

http://gizmodo.com/5052279/f+117-ste...terpillar-crus
her--pile-of-sadness




That aircraft was ‘Article 784’, the fifth full-scale development F-117A,
and it was destroyed at the US Air Force’s Plant 42 site in Palmdale, Calif
after being stripped of all useable and secret items..

All the remaining operational Blackjets were retired to Tonopah.
(other than the 4 now in museums)

My conspiracy theory de jour is that at least a couple of them now
speak with an accent and wear six-pointed blue stars...

Bob ^,,^

Bob added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

That aircraft was ‘Article 784’, the fifth full-scale
development F-117A, and it was destroyed at the US Air Force’s
Plant 42 site in Palmdale, Calif after being stripped of all
useableand secret items..

All the remaining operational Blackjets were retired to
Tonopah. (other than the 4 now in museums)

My conspiracy theory de jour is that at least a couple of them
now speak with an accent and wear six-pointed blue stars...

Seems like it'd be awfully hard to fly one of them from Israel to,
say, Iran, and not have everybody know about it. If the United
States were still flying them, at least we cotrol one of the
biggest groups 0f spy satellites but the Israeli's don't and also
would engender hoards of media crawling all over them that don't
especially like the Jewish homeland. Not saying this is entirely
far-fetched but if there is any truth to it, I would also think
that the U.S. would have to send a team over there to help maintain
the very expensive planes as well as either train the Israeli
pilots or covertly fly the planes for them.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Don't say 'can't' when you really mean 'won't'"