20 years since them slags smashed into the twin towers...

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Imagine if Michael Jackson had been on one of them planes. What would the newsreader lead with?

If he was and Al Qaeda were right about martyrs, I'd have felt sorry for those little lads in Paradise...

[JamesTC]

The North Tower has been hit by-
The North Tower has been struck by-
A smooth criminal

[Cold Meat Platter]

What did your hero Jeremy Corbyn, the elderly benevolent wizard relative, do when he heard about the tragedy? Have a big wank, I suppose?

[touchingcloth]

Does anything compare to 9/11?

Everything does. That's what comparisons are.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

So Jeremy Corbyn was technically involved in 9/11? Interesting to see that confirmed

[Cold Meat Platter]

So Jeremy Corbyn was technically involved in 9/11? Interesting to see that confirmed

I was wondering how long it would take for one of you to bring up Jeremy Corbyn, the grandsire conjurer. You people are obsessed.

[gib]

Crews deigned to use the Davy Crockett would typically be mounted

kennethwilliams.jpg

[touchingcloth]

I think it was Jeremy Corbyn who said "let's roll", but he was talking about jam in crêpes.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

We were supposed to go straight from September 10th to September 12th that fateful year but SOMEONE in the secret socialist Islington elite said "oh no, I had a lovely vegan curry breakfast planned to raise money for cuba on that day" and they reinstated it.

[jobotic]

I said "these courgettes taste like heaven" not "do a nine eleven".

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Secret service aid: Sir, there's been an attack in New York, we think its the work of
George W Bush: enchanted Catweazle! I want an armed guard around the tofu aisle

[mothman]

"Nine Eleven" and "Jeremy Corbyn" both have the same metre or rhyme or whatever it's called. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

[Cold Meat Platter]

If you write Jeremy Corbyn in Wingdings font it says 'Mohammed Atta'.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

If you write Jeremy Corbyn but instead of using the correct letters or the right amount of them you write something else instead, you might end up with the full text of Mein Kampf

[kalowski]

Remember when those old school Monday Club type racists used to say Mohammedans?

It makes sense:
Christ -> Christian
Buddah -> Buddist
Whizzer -> Whizz Kids
Chips -> Chip-ites

[H-O-W-L]

^{I was legitimately quite terrified my effortpost would have me branded as some pro-nuke war mongering tosser but it's really just a topic I've read a lot about, mostly out of fear/hatred for nuclear arms and proliferation. Much as I hate nuclear weapons I think it's important to be informed and realistic about them.}

[pigamus]

Imagine if Michael Jackson had been on one of them planes. What would the newsreader lead with?

He's out of my life

[kalowski]

Imagine if Michael Jackson had been on one of them planes. What would the newsreader lead with?

Wacko Jacko Building Smacko

[MojoJojo]

I'm sure it's been tightened significantly but even now, if somebody who knew how to fly a plane could get into a cockpit, I think there would be very little anybody could do about it in time to mitigate a disaster.

There have been a couple of sonic booms here in Cambridge which have been reported as fighter jets going to "escort" passenger planes whose radios have stopped working. So I think it would be a lot more challenging.

[Replies From View]

Life After People, great show, good for background noise when sleeping too

"background noise for when the human race has all died off" is the hoover dam's code name

[idunnosomename]

Sunshine

Moonlight

Good times

Jet fuel

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

Pilots? In '40s Japan, anyway. Also presumably anyone who pilots a plane that drops a big old nuclear warhead, if they get caught in the explosion.

Speaking of Vulcan pilots, weren't they issued with piratical eyepatches, so that they would have one usable eye after the flash?

But speaking of suicide missions, sooner or later, the plane would run out of fuel. Where would they land? Still, at least they had better options than their ground crew. I once got chatting to a former Vulcan fitter. I asked him that question, and he said his plan was to smoke a cigarette once the bombers had scrambled. He reckoned he would just about have had enough time to finish it before the Soviet missiles arrived on base.

[buzby]

Speaking of Vulcan pilots, weren't they issued with piratical eyepatches, so that they would have one usable eye after the flash?

V-bomber pilots (don't forget the Victor and Valiant squadrons as well) were issued with eyepatches to use on the run-in to the target to try and preserve thier eyesight for as long as possible as the flashes from the first strike attacks were going off. Both pilots would put on their eyepatches, the first flash would blind them both in one eye. The captain would then remove his patch and use his remaining eye. The next flash would blind that eye, so then the copilot would remove his patch and fly using his remaining eye.

However, most of the run-in would be guided by the navigation team (the Nav Plotter and Nav Radar, who sat in the rear crew position alongside the AEO, who took care of communications and defensive countermeasures) via radar, so they had zip-on blackout blinds on the cockpit windows that would only be removed prior to the final stages of the bomb delivery manouver (a variant of toss bombing where the bomb was released in a climb and followed a parabolic trajectory slowed by a parachute, to allow the delivery aircraft a chance to clear the target zone).

Later on, when the difficulty of delivering a freefall bomb against heavily defended targets became apparent, around half of the Vulcan and Victor squadrons changed from delivering the Yellow Sun Mk2 freefall bomb (whixh was a Yellow Sun Mk1 casing with the original British-designed Green Grass warhead replaced with the US-derived Red Snow warhead) to the Blue Steel standoff missile, which also carried the Red Snow warhead and could be released up to 500 miles from it's intended target. Blue Steel was, however, notoriously unreliable, so the crews still trained to be able to drop it as a freefall weapon in the event of a system failure.

But speaking of suicide missions, sooner or later, the plane would run out of fuel. Where would they land? Still, at least they had better options than their ground crew. I once got chatting to a former Vulcan fitter. I asked him that question, and he said his plan was to smoke a cigarette once the bombers had scrambled. He reckoned he would just about have had enough time to finish it before the Soviet missiles arrived on base.

The flight crews were given no plans for what to do if they survived their attack run. They knew it would be pointless returning home as the UK woudl be glass and cinders by that point, and they didn't have the fuel to do so anyway. They used to joke that in that eventuality best they could hope would be to get as far east as they could and 'marry a plump Mongolian woman and raise a new family'.

[Ferris]

Always like seeing a Buzby reply.

Re: Avro, my wife's family members were instrumental in the Canadian branch of the organization in the '50s when the shenanigans around the CF 105 Arrow (ordered for production by the RCAF in 1958, order canceled by Diefenbaker and all plans, prototypes and production line tools ordered destroyed). Everything was cut into pieces not exceeding 2" cubes.

The story goes it was a far superior plane to anything the Americans managed, and a Canadian alternative would have put their aircraft industry out of business so a backroom deal was done to not only cancel the project, but destroy it utterly in such a way it could never be recreated.

The Canadian Avro engineers were all laid off because the company had been essentially shuttered by the federal government, so a lot of them moved to the US and giving the American space program a helping hand. Anyway, I had no idea Avro had a UK branch but I recognized the name (and the plane silhouette actually) and thought that bit of boring plane history might be of interest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

That's fascinating extra information, Buzby, as ever from you. Thank you.

As always when I contemplate these matters, I am struck by the complete mismatch between, on the one hand, the imagination that has gone into, say, the sequence of eyepatch deployments between captain and co-pilot, and on the other, the total lack of imagination regarding the unspeakable consequences should such baroque procedures ever have to have been put into action in anger.

[imitationleather]

I'll just add to the chorus of appreciating how interesting that post was.

And I don't give a shit about planes!

[mothman]

Blue Steel was, however, notoriously unreliable

(I love Buzby posts!)

[famethrowa]

Yes thanks all, I'm fairly plane/military ignorant but the Vulcans are fascinating. These anachronistic, lumbering, howling instruments of world destruction. Also that maybe a talented pilot could have spent twenty years in the service, doing nothing but sleeping in a hut next to the runway through the 60s and 70s, and only getting to do a fairly futile bombing run to the Falklands and back?

[buzby]

Always like seeing a Buzby reply.

Re: Avro, my wife's family members were instrumental in the Canadian branch of the organization in the '50s when the shenanigans around the CF 105 Arrow (ordered for production by the RCAF in 1958, order canceled by Diefenbaker and all plans, prototypes and production line tools ordered destroyed). Everything was cut into pieces not exceeding 2" cubes.

The story goes it was a far superior plane to anything the Americans managed, and a Canadian alternative would have put their aircraft industry out of business so a backroom deal was done to not only cancel the project, but destroy it utterly in such a way it could never be recreated.

The Canadian Avro engineers were all laid off because the company had been essentially shuttered by the federal government, so a lot of them moved to the US and giving the American space program a helping hand. Anyway, I had no idea Avro had a UK branch but I recognized the name (and the plane silhouette actually) and thought that bit of boring plane history might be of interest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow

Avro Canada was the result of the rather strange, patrician attitude some parts of UK industry had to the Empire and export markets. Rather than just setting up a local importer or assembly facility to put together knock-down kits supplied from the UK, companies like Avro, De Havilland and Plessey set up what were to all intents and purposes completely independent subsidiary companies. It's the reason why there is still a Plessey Portugal and Plessey South Africa, decades after the original parent was consumed by GEC and Siemens

In Avro's case there was some technology transfer between the two, however - the CF105 benefitted from the delta wing research that was done for the Vulcan (which originated from material liberated from Germany at the end of WWII) and the Iroquois engine was very much a child of the Bristol Olympus used in the Vulcan (the Olympus was one of the engines being considered for the Arrow project initially). My uncle worked on the shop floor at A.V. Roe's headquarters in Woodford near Manchester, assembling and painting Shackletons, Vulcans, Nimrods, the tanker conversions on the Victor Mk2 and the initial stages of the disastrous Nimrod AEW3 before he was made redundant.

The fate of the Arrow very much foreshadowed what would happen to the BAC TSR.2 in the mid-60s - a potentially world-beating aircraft that was far in advance of what the US were developing at the time which was cancelled due to political manouvering both at home and abroad, and all the jigs, tooling and drawings were totally destroyed almost immediately. At least two of the five completed prototypes still survive in some form or other, unlike the Arrow (the other three, including the only one that flew, were taken to Shoeburyness ranges and used as artillery targets), and the Olympus 22R engines developed for it were combined with the delta wing experience from the Vulcan in the Concorde programme. Sir Sidney Camm, the chief designer at Hawker, said of the TSR.2 "All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.". The same quote would apply to the Arrow as well.

Yes thanks all, I'm fairly plane/military ignorant but the Vulcans are fascinating. These anachronistic, lumbering, howling instruments of world destruction. Also that maybe a talented pilot could have spent twenty years in the service, doing nothing but sleeping in a hut next to the runway through the 60s and 70s, and only getting to do a fairly futile bombing run to the Falklands and back?

The one thing a Vulcan was not was lumbering! It had all the manouverability of a fighter, and in high level fighter assimilation training the Vulcan could comfortably outmanouver the fighters of the day due to it's large, lightly-loaded delta wing. That same light wing loading is the reason why it carried on in the bomber role after the switch to low-level attack tactics - the Victor, which was faster, carried more bombs in the conventional role and was arguably the better pure bomber, had a higher wing loading which led to a bumpier ride and increased fatigue in the rougher air conditions at low level. After the experience of the Valiant's premature wing spar failures, they took no chances and the Victors were gradually converted to the airborne refuelling role to replace the Valiants.

[MikeP]

The one thing a Vulcan was not was lumbering! It had all the manouverability of a fighter

Until they broke up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYRKFkkyxh0