B-52 15 ship MITO..... i recieved this email from my uncle Larry who flew the buff, this text was in response to a video i got from a friend, thought you guys would appreciate it.........
........The most incredible thing to me is that they got all 15 "Buffs" off without a single abort! And I was glad to see that this was for a named exercise...(Global something or other). If this had been a standard, weekly "horn" (klaxon) exercise like we used to do, you'd only accelerate down the runway to about 80 knots, then abort and taxi back to parking---you'd only take off if it was World War III and the real thing! (If I was driving casually by and saw these things taking off without knowing it was an exercise---I'd head to my nearest airport, steal a P-51 and jump in for a final ride!)
A couple of things to note here: All the smoke from the starts is from a "cartridge" (about a 6 X 6 inch shotgun-shell looking thing loaded with gunpowder they stick in a breach) that spins up the engine turbine without external air or electrical power. Once you get that engine started, you run it up and use the bleed air off that to start the other engines. (In the tanker, we would spin that engine up to 95% power before starting the other engines. One time in Spain, we were doing an exercise like this (no takeoffs, however) and an Air Force "bread truck" van drove behind the aircraft across from us and got rolled over a couple of times toward us, terminating the exercise -- I think everyone got out ok!)
Also, we used to do these things 18 seconds behind each other...(the airlines require 2 minutes). The first few times I thought it was pretty cool (although the vis and turbulence were terrible and you were choking on jet exhaust). After the novelty wore off and a sense of survival sunk in, we'd stretch it out to 30-40 seconds---lollygaging getting on the runway---(to the dismay of the wing commander who was usually off to the side of the runway with a stopwatch). You can see the one guy here getting rocked all over the sky from wake turbulence. That was standard at 18 seconds and your engines would sometimes "chug" in protest from the air disruption.
I don't know if I ever told you about that near-miss I had with a Cessna out at March. We we're # 2 in a MITO behind a B-52 (18 seconds, as I recall) and making a left turn right after takeoff (left-seater flying -- me as co-pilot in the right seat). From this video, you can see why the captain flying our plane was pre-occupied keeping his eye on the Buff turning to his left, with me looking out to the right. For once, I wasn't day-dreaming. (Shockingly, Karil had never heard this story so I dug this thing out. She made me send it -- I swear... And I have absolutely no idea who the Neo-Nazi is with the Hitler mustache!! ):
I wonder if Sully got one of these during HIS Air Force tour?? --Lar
http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4632948Enjoy
ADT