Brave chap who tackles a Ch-47 these days; Minigun, M-60’s, chaff, flares, etc…!

On a tangent, I believe the reason that the RAF have the only M60s in the UK inventory is that they were qualified on the Chinook and came as part of the package ( ‘associated equipment’ in FMS parlance ).

Ideally they would have fitted the L7 GPMG for commonality but since the M60s were on the sprue they decided to use them. Just means they need a separate logistics channel to maintain them for that one application.

Re: clarification that Chinook was on ground in the incident; thank you, I had conflated it with another incident.

Re: the hazard of helicopters with door guns, I know at least of a Botswana Defender that met its end after harassing a Rhodesian Alo III which had an MG151/20 mounted in the door.

A fair few Iranian Chinooks survived aerial attacks during the war with Iraq, so I wouldn’t say it was ‘no contest’.

Helicopters, even of the size of a Chinook, are said to be remarkably hard targets for jets. They can drop-out of the bottom of the attacker’s sight with a simple manouevre, or hover over water to ******-up his radar lock.

I do recall that the attacking SHar was too heavy to move into a semi-jetborne attack astern so had to make the usual slashing jet attack.

Cherry Ripe: don’t forget that Atlantique is still in service.

Indeed; my defence on a technicality would be that I referred to the Atlantic, not the re-badged Atlantique 😉

Managed to find my link to Flight’s summary of the infamous 1981 Dutch Atlantic ditching, which resulted from a broken elvator control rod:

Flight Archive

One of the crew, positioned in a rear-fuselage observation window, noticed that the left elevator was
down, while the right elevator was so far up that it was not visible.

I recall there was a lot of mud-slinging after the incident, with Breguet defending the aircraft and implying sub-standard maintenance. It all went rather public and the Dutch ran a ‘Safety Conference’ inviting all other operators, none of whom seemed particularly concerned.

Edit: whilst digging that out I found a reference to the Nimrod being considered by the Dutch to replace their remaining Neptunes, but being rejected on account of operating costs and ‘high noise level’. In the end they went with Orions and these also replaced the Atlantics, which in Dutch service had three fatal accidents ( don’t have details of the other two ).

Edit2: the other Dutch Atlantic accidents: http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/waf/neth/mld/types/atlantic.htm. Not honestly sure why they had such an accident rate, though they do seem to have flown in rotten weather.

Edit3: One of the strangest sites I’ve found recently, pictures of aircraft crashes arranged by year…

Nah; they’re implementing budget cuts in most publicly visible ways possible so as to drum up support for repealing them. They’ll go back on it in a few months, one way or another.

I agree entirely; these are cynical moves by the DoD to popularize their ‘plight’.

The FY 2013 defence budget at $613 billion is nearly twice what it was a decade ago, and that does not bear the majority of costs of overseas operations which are drawn from the $97 billion OCO allocation.

If they can’t fund the Thunderbirds display team out of that when they could do so out of vastly less money 15 years ago then.. something is very wrong with how the Air Force is operating.

Edit: consider that the DoD is ‘saving’ $10 billion this year by freezing salaries for its 750,000 civilian staff. Compared to that the Thunderbirds are a drop in the bucket.

Pilot Keith Hartley, test flight ( as Freehand cleverly deduced ).

The other forum has details: search down for Hartley.

Purpose was to validate that the pilot could operate the controls and eject after departure of the canopy.

j10 would be very good option for iraq.

Where are Chengdu’s support offices in the region?

What is their aircraft-on-ground contingency response?

What is their logistics train to the region? Where is their local warehousing?

Where can Iraq buy non-OEM compatible spares?

Where are alternative flight training simulators installed, for competitive training tendering?

These are the questions that Air Force officers will be asking. They don’t care about pretty pictures.

Edit: up-thread thanks for sheytanelkebir in post 146 for more details of the Iraqi budget; seems a little ‘ambitious’ but even half that level of procurement funding would be incredible.

Interesting, thanks Daniel.

Your post led to start thinking over supper. According to my old Jane’s Infantry Weapons an M134 minigun required 260A or current to spin-up and up to 130A during operation ( depending on rate of fire ).

How on Earth were such huge currents supplied on a gunship with three or more such guns? An immense battery replenished from extra engine generators?

I would assume that the guns also span-up in sequence, instead of all simultaneously.