I vaguely remembered a spread of Botha details photos in the Flight archive, starts from here for four pages:

https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/view/1941/1941%20-%202289.html

As usual the fuselage sides are generally obscured but one shot does show three small windows to starboard, tucked under the wing. Might be some other useful shots there for you.

In another issue was an unusual view of the split bomb-bay.

For the cost of one CH-53K you can buy three CH-47Fs and pocket a cool $20m.

And here I thought USMC was about doing more with less.

First they’d have to develop a navalised Chinook. One that can stay embarked for more than a few days and doesn’t need washed-down afterwards. And which is resistant to the EM spectrum of a ship.

Then the Marines would have to determine how to fit two Chinooks into the space of one Stallion on a ship, in order to provide the same or better lifting capacity.

Then they’d have to throw away those decades of accumulated ’53E spares and buy new inventory for the Chinook. Plus new training & process development.

Add all that up as program cost and divide by total number of airframes and let us know how much a Sea Chinook will cost. It certainly won’t be anywhere near the 47F’s flyaway, no-spares, no-training sticker-price.

*Then* try to estimate the cost of monopolising to one heavy-lift capable manufacturer for the future. How much would Boeing charge for a Chinook without competition from Sikorsky, their only non-Mil rival.

what about the NC Fallout from such detonation, seems to me you would have to put such missiles and SAM systems on far remote area, or pointing out towards sea or whatnot..

Which is why Canada ended-up with Bomarc missiles in the 1960s; there’s a whole story about NORAD’s basing-options that led to that. “Lovely country you have there, be a shame if we had to use our nuclear-tipped missiles to drop irradiating wreckage on it.”

However nuclear-tipped SAMs have different warhead designs and terminal effect to nuclear-tipped ABMs, which attempt to render the inbound nuclear warhead inert through frying its electronics with x-rays.

There is a beautiful underside view of the F-117 here:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA-Air-Force/Lockheed-F-117A-Nighthawk/1268420/L

and there do indeed appear to be two hatches outboard of the radar-altimeter diamonds, but with the typical stealth-serration edges one would expect, rather than the straight-edged design shown above.

I think there might be some careful phrasing going on; note that the designer states that “This picture doesn’t look like anything that was ever put on a F-117A airplane”. Which does indeed appear correct, but doesn’t state that the RLS wasn’t fitted.

The reliability and precision of the 30+ years old Tomahawk remain striking.

There’s not a lot in common with the current TLAM Block IV and that of the 1980s other than the basic airframe ( even the engine is different). Primary navigation is now by GPS, rather than inertial with TERCOM updates, so that they can operate much more accurately over poorly-mapped regions or after prolonged overwater ingress. I think they still have the capability for scene-matching terminal guidance but again GPS is available.

Have there been any post-strike photos issued by the US DoD?

When suffering a hit that causes ammo cook off, any tank will go “Jack in the Box” and blow off turret. There probably isn’t much of a difference in the % of time that occurs be the tank Russian, U.S., French, etc, even with the inclusion of blow off panels on ammunition storage.

Absolutely there is a difference in the % of time. The late-series M1 have the primary ammunition storage in the turret bustle, with an overload of six rounds in the hull; either the latter are used first or not carried. Hence a hull-hit won’t find any charges to cook-off.

Challenger 2 has wet-storage for all its bagged charges, in the hull but at least protected. I don’t believe there has EVER been a turret-flip on a C2.

Leopard 2 has its primary ammunition storage in the forward hull beside the driver; not wet-racked and very dangerous now that ATGM pose a risk of breaching the hull.

With the air sampling missions there was also a need for CBRN training of the crews, and inflight / pre- / post-flight personal contamination monitoring and testing. It wasn’t just a case of strapping on pods and launching.