Lower Than A Snake's Belly In A Wagon Rut is a delightful post about very low level flying:
Man, that's some scary stuff. Like this Jug, which flew so low on a strafing run that its propeller hit the ground. Bird made it home anyway. Man, that was one tough plane.
And there's a nice shout out to Peter from Bayou Renaissance Man. You'll spend a most enjoyable half hour on this. You're welcome.
The prop on that last one looks like my lawnmower blade.
ReplyDeleteThere are some crazy people out there.
I'll bet the pilot said "Drat!"
ReplyDeleteOne of the guys I used to work with flew recon missions in 'Nam in an RF-4.
ReplyDeleteMan, does *he* have some scary tales.
He came home once with all kinds of foliage stuck all over the bottom of the aircraft, and told the crew chief he had to "fly pretty low to get out of there", and another time came home with all kinds of SALT caked all over the belly.
Same story, but had to take "The beach route" on his way back.
One of my uncle's friends is a crop duster, whenever he has to be in the area he buzzes the house. It's always fun when you're out in the back 40 and a Bell 47 or little Air Tractor goes over your head 20 feet up.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of, I've got some good pictures I oughta post...
Boys and their toys... :-)
ReplyDeleteLove that P-38! There's also stories of the B-24 pilots coming back from flying low-level missions over the desert in preparation for the Ploesti Raid, quite a few had the paint sandblasted off of the prop tips from "high-flying sand dunes", or had suspicious scratches and sand in crevices on the underbelly from the same.
ReplyDeleteAnother story out there about an SR-71 crew who was supposed to do a flyby at a local British training squadron, I guess to help drum up volunteers for their spyplane program. Americans took off from their base, but word never reached them that the British training base was socked in with fog. They were cruising along, pretty much IFR the whole way, and kept reducing altitude in hopes of spotting the ground and verifying their position. Pilot looked up and noticed something in the fog ahead....the base's control tower. Hit the burners and did a yank-n-bank, buzzed the tower so close that the students, who were up in the tower waiting for the fog to clear for the flyby, could actually see the water droplets on the underbelly. Apparently it impressed them so much that those who didn't crap their drawers immediately signed up for the spook program. Base CO met the -71 on return, asked exactly how low they were and WHY they were that low, but admitted that the Brits called and gushed over the 'bloody magnificent display'. Crew chief later found that one of the instruments they were flying on was....er....miscalibrated. Oops.