buzzpat

OK.......

buzzpat

Pretty close. Good brakes though......I hope.

Boomer

Sorry, meant to say Mathias Rust. I called him Rudy when we planned his little cross-country caper.

80ktsClamp

I wanted to make this separate from the political-ish mumbo jumbo:

RIP Neil Armstrong. The true definition of a beyond world class pilot and astounding humility.

Boomer

The (West) Germans flew 104s when they got their Luftwaffe running again in the 1950s. A lot of guys bailed out and got killed.

Boomer

Those guys were, and still are, incredible.

The only thing that would have made NASA more awesome back in the 1960s? College cheerleaders.

Elvis90

Oh Bar--Ben Rich worked for Lockheed, the B-1 was a Rockwell International design. It may have been his opinion that it was obsolete, but he was incorrect. It still has the ability today to fly below some surface to air missile defenses. The restriction making it a nuclear-only bomber was the real mistake; today it's conventional-only with numerous precision conventional weapons and a defensive avionics suite that's pretty impressive.

Carter cancelled the B-1 because it cost too much. The B-2 cost to much as well, which is why today we have 60 B-1's in the inventory and only 20 B-2's. If Carter were president during similar years of the B-2, I'm sure he would have cancelled that as well.

His public statements were that he favored ICBMs, SLBMs and ALCMs launched by B-52s over B-1s. He did authorize the early research & development dollars in 1978 to begin the Advanced Technology Bomber project.

The original B-2 buy was 132, then reduced to 75, and finally 21 was the final purchase. With one crashed at Guam on takeoff, we're down to 20.

Carter was weak on defense despite his initial support for the ATB. Recall Desert One among other things.

Here's a piece of trivia for you: was the B-2 designed with flaps? Yes. Do they use them? No, they've been welded shut. Someone eventually figured out that a flying wing can fly slow enough at touchdown by itself. I've landed no-flap in the B-1 before, and our approach speed was about 200 kts @ 225,000 lbs.

I've flown in the B-2 simulator and can tell you from a pilot's perspective, the B-1 was much more maneuverable and fun to fly. The B-2 is very difficult to Air Refuel because of its low drag design, so it's easy to overrun the tanker during closure.

I do wish we had more than 20 B-2s because it is such a capable weapon system.

Elvis90

As one who has got about 1,100 hours in it, I will attest that the B-1 is not a POS. While deployed overseas it maintained a 97% mission capable rate.

Elvis90

Hey Timbo, you should run for Congress and fix these things. Be like Chip Cravaack, the former NWA Captain who beat 18-term Congressman James Oberstar in 2010 in Minnesota.

N9373M

One of my CFII's flew 104s for the Gemermans. He told me, if you lost the engine, look over the canopy rail- straight down- that's where you'd be landing. He also told me about getting 'parchuted' candy from the C54s (?) on short final during the Berlin air lift. Great guy.