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Africa North
How a Pilot Risked His Life To Spy On Libya
2011-02-24
In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111's had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a 'line of death,' a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra , swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.
Note: this is about the bombing and BDA over Libya under President Reagan's command in 1986. I am very proud of what we did back then, although if he had not picked that specific time to step out of his tent, we would not be seeing Libya tormented as it is today. Go read the whole thing at the link, now that we can finally talk (mostly) openly about such things.
Posted by:OldSpook

#9  i think NASA has a coupls stashed for research purposes. or else commuting to the nearest mosque.
these were wonderful airplanes. all the ones that have been retired had the spars severed to ensure they would never fly again. and the USAF had the tooling destroyed.
Posted by: USN,Ret   2011-02-24 23:38  

#8  There's nothing quite like taking your hand off the throttle a little too late over Sicily and overshooting Gibraltar.
Posted by: Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division   2011-02-24 21:49  

#7  2250 mph. Somewhere around mach 3.4, if I use whatever scale OS was using.

(Mach number, of course, varies with temperature. Some settling may occur during shipping, etc.)
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2011-02-24 20:28  

#6  From the article:

One day, high above Arizona...

Har! I heard that story told in legend form. In that case, the Cessna pilot was an instructor showing his student that he could request his airspeed from ATC.

Another good one, shorn of real pilot lingo, 'cause I don't know it:

Pilot: Requesting clearance to 100,000ft.
ATC: *snort* OK, if you can get there, it's all yours.
Pilot: Roger, descending to 100,000...
Posted by: Angie Schultz   2011-02-24 20:09  

#5  I know they've been retired, but I hope they've still got a couple stashed someplace. Put fake solar panels on them and rename them "Greenbirds" to keep Fearless Leader happy...
Posted by: tu3031   2011-02-24 19:36  

#4  Thanks for the correction. I was wondering how the hell it went that fast, Id never heard numbers like that even on the classified side of things.
Posted by: OldSpook   2011-02-24 18:43  

#3  That's 1.6 s/mi, not 1.6 mi/s. :-)

In any case, there is a story I read about Kelly Johnson being interviewed and he was asked if it could really go mach 3.5. His answer was along the lines of "Yeah, and a $hitload more."

I don't believe anyone ever really tried to get it up to full speed. The probably would have run out of room.

Those engines were the closest thing we had to a ramjet until a few years ago.

Not bad for '50s technology, eh?

Given their drive, common sense, breadth of understanding, and ability to absorb information and take it to the next level, I wonder what those engineers could do with today's technology.
Posted by: gorb   2011-02-24 17:09  

#2  From the article:

I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance. After several agonizingly long seconds, we made the turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean 'You might want to pull it back,' Walter suggested. It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. ... I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily , but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar.


Thats 5760 mph - Mach 8.73. Whoa.
Posted by: OldSpook   2011-02-24 15:53  

#1  Of course, this was back when we had a REAL leader as President, not an empty-suited union-tool machine-pol narcissistic leftist moron that we have now.
Posted by: OldSpook   2011-02-24 15:47  

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