military pilots "hot dogging"

[Huggyu2]

Ah, yes,... SemperFido did get a bit fired up with the name calling. But, "tighta$$"? Semper must not know you. I've never met a CJ-guy that didn't fight to buy the first round for a room full of bro's ;-)

 

[semperfido]

just a knee-jerk reaction. it seemed appropriate at the time. got the desired results. ..but i think we are square now. i would be glad to buy for anyone in uniform

 

[Wild Weasel]

I never understood the showboating because of simple cost/benefit analysis. Doing something stupid and losing the opportunity to fly was far outweighed by the joy and fun of flying a high performance aircraft while getting paid to do it. Never made any sense to me.

 

[Huggyu2]

Who did you do the Tornado exchange with?

 

[VaB]

Yeah the guy who was flying a routine MTR with an undepicted tram system on the charts? Snow covered terrain provides almost as good vertical cues as flying over water. Did I mention that their Rad Alt was griped on previous flights? Don't believe everything you read in the media. That was a witch hunt, plain and simple. Thankfully the court ruled in their favor as well.

Hey Purpledog,

What was the final outcome of that situation? Is there a link somewhere? I thought the pilot and guy in the front seat got flogged for that. I also thought that it was ruled they were in the wrong valley and flying to low.

Not judging or anything, just curious. I flew those same routes over there in Italy and 2000' minimum altitude was indeed a boring "low level".

 

[NavyGuy]

VaB,

Those guys did get run through the ringer. The pilot was brought up on charges, convicted and went to jail. For how long I don't know. The right seater was also court-martialed and run out of the service. But I don't think he got any time in the slammer. The back seaters got off relatively light considering. In fact one of them went on to instruct down at NAS P'cola a few years back. It was a bad deal all together but there were some extenuating circumstances. However it doesn't excuse what happened and unfortunately innocent people were killed.

 

[Purpledog]

The pilot was brought up on charges, convicted and went to jail. For how long I don't know.

He was 'convicted' on the charge of obstruction of justice and did 5 mos. He was aquitted on all charges of manslaughter. Nobody else did time at all.This whole thing stunk like bad politics. There was no mishap board because they didn't want the Italians thinking something was being done in secret. They faulted the command, resident Air Force Wing, Defense Mapping (for not depicting gondola). They also had an expert run the same flight in an AF sim under the same conditions and that guy got down to 300-400'agl. I can't remember the specifics on the Ob Justice charge but I think the pilot just looked at the vid and gave it back. From that point it disappeared. I think the Nav even testified that the pilot had nothing to do with it. However it's been a while and those brain cells have been killed long ago.
Vab I'm not sure about a link. I'm sure there is one out there though.

 

[VaB]

I remember at the time hearing about a video that they had of the incident from inside the cockpit or some such thing. And the RUMOR we heard at the time was that the CO of the squadron and some of the other guys saw it and told his guys to get rid of it and destroy it. Don't know how true that is, but it sure did start to sound stinky after a while.