You’ve not seen it then Arthur? Probably just as well, it’s bloody awful, and I really can’t imagine what was going through his mind while they were doing it. Regardless of ‘sides’, religions, rights and wrongs of the situation in Iraq, I struggle to see how one human being can do this kind of thing to another. Turns my stomach. 😡

The murder was savage and stomache-turning, definately. But Berg died in a matter of seconds. Not minutes, not hours, not days. That is why i call it a relatively humanely way of killing him. Yes it’s disgusting, yes it’s vile, yes it’s savage, yes it’s horrible and it is definately unforgivable.

But i’d rather be killed like Nick Berg than fried on an electric chair if i had the choice.

And Skythe, i’m sorry you feel offended just because i commented on the ironic combination of the Nick Berg murder during the US hearings on the Abu Ghaib-scandal. It wasn’t ment to be an anti-American slur or anything, although perhaps i didn’t formulate myself clear/sober/objective/unprovocative enough.

Probably the most sensible idea concerning the CH-46 replacement ever, and one that has been discussed before. The biggest problem would indeed be the Not Invented Here-syndrome, and the end of (at least) Bell’s military division. With currently a Texan president in the White House i don’t think the latter is going to happen though. Remember that a previous Texan president from another political party made the lingering Bell helo company one of the biggest in the business.

But the clock keeps ticking, especially for those CH-46s, some of which are over 40 years old now and almost all which have seen combat over Vietnam. Even if V-22 development from now on suddenly goes perfectly smooth (which is highly unlikely), i doubt the Osprey will be available in large enough numbers in time to replace the dead-beat Frogs. I expect at least an interim order of off-the-shelf assault helos to be placed within a couple of years, probably linked to the presidential helo program – don’t forget that the presidential helos are operated by the Marines, which should make the purchase of additional non-VIP helos somewhat easier. The competition is between the EH-101 and Sikorsky’s S-92 Fathawk, so i guess we’ll have to wait for that.

No Mod status here yet… otherwise, these polls would have vanished by now. Sorry.

Because a lot of the people at Scramble know how to gather and compile data, Ja. One of the nice advantages of being a non-commercial team of people rather than individual correspondents trying to sell their information.

Great job Jaap and Frank!

That’s the one Steve.

I believe it was returned to Russia – don’t know how long it was between defection and return, though.
Would be interesting to hear what, precisely, happened to this particular airframe afterwards.
And what happened to all those Afghan and Russian aircraft that defected to Pakistan in the eighties?

Flood.™

Belenko’s MiG-25 was examined by Japanese and American inspectors for almost two months before it was crated and brought back to the Soviet Union by C-5 Galaxy transport. The returned aircraft was incomplete though, as appearantly some parts of it’s systems were kept behind. I don’t think the airframe itself was airworthy anymore, as plummeting the aircraft off the runway threshold into the grass behind it severely damaged the landing gear. The aircraft was most likely scrapped for spares, or put to some other non-flying use.

As for the Afghan defections to Pakistan: of the three Mi-24 Hinds that i know of to have defected, two ended up in the US and one in China, although at least two served with the Pakistanis for some time. The latter is now preserved in a horribly childish blue butterfly-camo scheme in the Datang Shan museum in Beijing. A defected Su-22M4 is preserved in Pakistan, and a former Afghan An-26 transport was pressed into service by the PAF. There could well have been more defections, but these are the ones that i know of.

There have been a lot more defections obviously, and even during peace not always was the aircraft involved returned. A Romanian Yak-23 which defected to Yugoslavia in or around 1953 was sent to the US never to return, nor did the USAF T-33 which accidentally landed in Albania.

And then there is the pretty substantial amount of defections both ways across the Taiwan Straits (quite a few PLAAF aircraft are preserved in the RoC, and you can find a few RoCAF aircraft in the PRC as well), and a number of North Korean defectors running South. Making the trip north from South Korea only happened once if i’m not mistaken.

Tom Cooper has written an article on it at ACIG, called “Gone with the wind” with quite a few of these incidents.

There was a similar variant of the B-24, which was equally worthless for the task it was thought out for.

Yeah! Big flying things are cool! I’m a bit confused though about the actual companies involved: this flying-wing-Zep is definately Cargolifter design which i thought was from a British company? A scale model of such a zeppelin had at least been built and flown at one of the Cardington hangars near Bedford in the UK.

But nowadays, Cargolifter seems to be the company based at Brand, the former Soviet MiG-27 base in the woods to the SE of Berlin where a huge hangar was built. Does anyone with a slightly better insight in the industry (Distiller 😉 ) have a short rundown with the rigid-airship companies around? My 96/97 Brassey’s is definately not up to date anymore…