One of Taiwan’s seven “RF-5E” reconnaissance planes crashed into the sea yesterday. And a few weeks ago, one of the IDF figher planes also crashed.
Are there any military experts here? I’m curious as to whether Taiwan has an abnormal number of military aircraft crashes for a fleet of its size. What would be the normal attrition rate for aircraft?
I couldn’t tell you what’s considered “normal,” but in my 4 years working on a Marine Corps flight line, I saw 4 or 5 go down. Three in North Carolina and one or two in Japan. Funny thing was, they were all the same plane. The AV8 Harrier. Appropriately nicknamed “The Widow Maker”. Something about vertical takeoffs and one engine that makes a plane dangerous.
Anyhow, those were crashes that I was actually present to see. I heard of many crashes of US aircraft throughout the world because of my job. I don’t think Taiwan’s crashes are abnormal…but just my guess.
To end with some humor, I once saw a plane crash on the GROUND. In this case, there was no pilot. It was during an airshow…at the very end…when a bus carrying tourists plowed into an Airforce B1 Bomber. It took off about 4 feet of the top of the bus. Not sure what the driver was thinking…but he sure cost the US a lot of tax dollars to X-ray the entire plane for damages and replacement parts. Wonder what happened to him…
[quote=“ozzo”]Not sure what the driver was thinking…but he sure cost the US a lot of tax dollars to X-ray the entire plane for damages and replacement parts. Wonder what happened to him…
oZzo[/quote]
He was at the Cubs-Marlins game, the fan who interfered with Alou so he couldn’t catch a fly ball and get the Cubs one out closer to the World Series.
It would seem that the IDF has problems with negative G-Forces (they make it crash) and the pilots don’t know this. And there is a button for use in such emergencies to stop it crashing, which they don’t know about either.
The fortune-telling program is one of the measures that the air force has adopted in recent years in a bid to minimize the chances of crashes. It has suffered more than 630 in the past five decades.
Another question: Who fixes the planes? I assume the Taiwanese fix the IDFs, but what about the F-16s and Mirages. Did Americans and French technicians originally do it and train the Taiwanese how to do it? Or do U.S. / French technicians still do most of the work?
There’s also a gaggle of yanks employed by a certain US aircraft manufacturer hunkered down in a little walled community near the air force base just north east of Taichung.
The following is a picture of an Alphajet converted for civilian use, crashed yesterday afternoon in South-Germany.
What you think to see on the picture is actually true, the entire front of the jet is burried several meters deep into the ground and the 2 pilots are still suspected to be in the cockpit (though the rescuers are searching the area around the crash site, too). Most likely they are dead and the cause for the crash is still unknown.
That picture reminded me of The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, the scene where the officers are coming to the house to tell one of the wives that her husband died in a crash, and everyone wonders whose door they are going to stop at. What a terrifying situation to be in, like some kind of lottery in which the person drawn dies.
[quote=“HakkaSonic”][quote=“ozzo”]Not sure what the driver was thinking…but he sure cost the US a lot of tax dollars to X-ray the entire plane for damages and replacement parts. Wonder what happened to him…
oZzo[/quote]
He was at the Cubs-Marlins game, the fan who interfered with Alou so he couldn’t catch a fly ball and get the Cubs one out closer to the World Series.[/quote]
.
look at the other people near him. there is another guy who seem to go for the ball too. he should stay away from the greater Chicago metro area. Perhaps a retirement to Florida (with all the rest of the Canadians) is in good order sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/b … thefan.ap/