On The Clock Humor

General Discussion
21

Mountainbike, you’ve no doubt seen the video a few years ago where the B-52 went down in Washington state I think it was. The pilot was being a comedian apparently and put the aircraft into a near 90 degree bank at low altitude while trying to impress some bystanders.
The plane went in and killed everyone on board because of this clown and what ticked me off was finding out later he had pulled a low level flyover of his son’s baseball game or something like that and the AF did not ground him.

On a similar note, I live near Vance AFB and last fall some pilots pulled a stunt at an Iowa football game. They were supposed to fly from OK up there and do a pass over the stadium at the end of the national anthem.
So 3 Majors and 1 Lt. chose to pass over the field at about 200 feet altitude and 400 knots in T-38 Talons while coming dangerously close to the scoreboard which was 135 feet up.

The paper here reported that 3 of the officers got reprimands in their files and the major who led this mission resigned from the AF after his authority to fly was yanked which then effectively ended his career.

Both of those incidents are on Youtube and while some of the comments seem to be
yucking it up it’s definitely not a laughing matter. Maybe a bit OT but aircraft get me going. :slight_smile:

On a genuinely humorous note, I did pull one on the detail guy I had mentioned before; the guy who went back and forth with me on pranks.
As I mentioned, he owned a very slick older Subaru that was a FWD car. One day (a few weeks after he got me again) he left on some errands so I took a pair of old trashed Subaru engine crankcase halves, jacked his car up, and placed a block half under each side of the car. This raised the front wheels about 1/8" off the ground.

When he started to lunch I filled a few others in and we all watched out the window while he started the car and was revving the dickens out of it while not moving. He raised the hood, looked around a bit, and then came in looking for advice about whether his transmission or clutch was gone. We threw out theories for about 5 minutes before dropping a hint about “are you sure the wheels are on the ground”.
At that point he really got to looking, noticed the block halves, and started cursing along with threatening to get even with whodunit. :slight_smile:

22

We had a guy call in and pretend he was arrested and in jail and needed to be bailed out. He really had the receptionist going, “oh my god, Randy’s in jail!!!” for a while until he said “April Fool”.

23

OK4450, I visited Youtube and was unable to find the near-90 degree pullup, but I did review some other B-52 crashes and was sickened watching them. Alll of them were preventable. As I know you realize, when banking a plane it’s necessary to “yaw” the plane to prevent “slippage” (increase in altitude due to reduction in direct lift forces), unless the speed of the plane creates “sliding” (the exact opposite effect) or you have enough thrust available to “push” the plane to “slip”. Despite the large vertical stabilizer, the B-52 has limited ability to control sliding in a turn, and it cannot compensate with thrust (like a fighter can).

When flying close to the ground, lift surfaces experience “ground effect”, they ride on the high pressure “squeezed” air between the lift surface and the ground. “Ground fefect” varies with airspeed, air desnsity, altitude, and aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft. In the turns I saw in the videos it’s obvious that the ground effect caused the vertical stabilizer to push the empennage (tail) upward in the turn, heading the aircraft straight into the ground. A B-52 has neither the thrust or control surface ability to correct for this.

I feel compelled to add that while visually it appears that a B-52 has significant control surface to manage yaw, it’s an illusion. The flexability of the fuselage is so great the plane needs a “stability augmentation system (SAS)” that utilizes rate gyros and hydraiulically moves a trim surface on the trailing edge of the rudder. The actual rudder is a servomotor & cable setup the response time of which is useless in the filmed maneuvers.

I’m appalled and sickened by these needless deaths. My heart goes out to the loved ones of these crews.

24

OK4450, that incident was at an air show. There were more than a few spectators. I don’t know about u-tube, but I remember seeing it in the news and if I remember correctly, it happened in Colorado.