Steve Davies

Why would they bother? You're the one with an apparent inferiority complex, not them.

A very interesting, if lengthy, read about the first American airman killed in Europe in WWII. I'd never heard his name before. Townsend Griffiss, forgotten hero of World War II

IIRC, it was listed as a contributory factor.

He said *your* dick.

It's not often that anyone here calls the French their 'allies'.

So, who did the flyover?

Better?

Asides from the long queues and the two ridiculous forms you have to fill in before landing (I particularly like the question, "Are you, or have you ever been, a member of a foreign intelligence agency?"), it's not usually a big deal for me.

What do my colonial cousins make of this? A complete failure to contextualise things and act in a reasonable manner by Homeland Security, or a stupid mistake by the Tweeter and a proportionate response by HS? Caution on Twitter urged as tourists barred from US

So, how long have you been in the sandpit for?

They do indeed. Various words from rhyming slang also make regular appearances in 'normal' British English dialects, too.

The Wing's Facebook page has some good reverse angle images of the flyover, as well as some close-ups of the markings:

No, nothing derogatory! From Cockney rhyming slang: Septic = 'septic tank' = Yank. You can also say 'lamb shank'.

I'll have to be the dissenter and say that these flybys always give me goosebumps, and I'm not even a Septic. If the RAF did this, I wouldn't care what it was.

Given that there have been a number of incidents discussed on here recently that pertain to filmed events, Rainman's advice, "Never talk to the media", should be supplemented with, "Don't film it". I don't know what it's like to be in combat, so I can't criticise the actions of those who are/do. But I can say that I can't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to put this online.

Liked the shooting stuff, but more impressed that you have your own farm!

Kayla I live in Cambridge (and once lived in Newmarket), so if you have any general questions that require good local knowledge then I would be happy to help. Steve We do all have yellow/rotten teeth, though. That's got to take some adjusting to.

Rainman?

Not referring to the Strike Eagle guys, but to the ones below them (wearing leather flying hat).

Pretty sure the above photos are of actors. However, here's a 1991 photo of a bonafide wearer of a handlebar mustachio, the controversial Pablo Mason: And as he is today:

What is it about moustaches that makes them verboten (edit: in the USAF)?

I don't think so. The ship was apparently scheduled to dock in South Korea - presumably, that's where the missiles were due to be offloaded. I understand that this kind of low key shipment is not uncommon. Where North Korea is concerned, discretion is quite desirable.

I think it's fair to say that a lot of the MX guys' hate came from the fact that they were quite literally learning on the job, and while the Dash-1 and Dash-34 type manuals had been sourced and roughly translated, codified maintenance procedures were not supplied. Sometimes this trial and error approach caused more problems that only became evident when a catastrophic failure occurred. For example, they very nearly lost an aircraft and pilot to a complete hydraulics failure. When the aircraft landed, it was discovered that something big had punctured the main hydraulic line. The cause was traced to a wiring loom. The wing pylons had been removed on arrival in the US, and this particular loom and its coke can-size connector had been stuffed up inside the wing as an alternative to ripping them out; the slack cable had snagged the wing sweep mechanism, and each time the sweep was cycled the loom was pulled closer to the hydraulic line in the leading edge root extension. Eventually, the mechanism finally pulled the connector straight through the line - while the pilot was way above the Mach and flying ACM against a pair of F-15s. His survival was a very close run thing. So, I don't doubt that some of the hate also came from the fact that there was massive pressure to fix these things without really knowing what the consequences of their improvised procedures might be. Same sort of thing happened with the US-installed fire warning detection system (taken from a KC-135, IIRC) which was installed because the Russian system was not trusted, but which constantly caused false alarms that MX was required to respond to by breaking the jet in half (a la F-100) and pulling the engine. Beyond that, the six month groundings due to wing through carry box cracks, leaking fuel cells, and a raft of other problems meant that I don't think that there was very much for the MX guys to like. Everyone seemed to really like the early-model Fishbeds, though. Thanks!

Bergman Yes, it is the symbol that the Soviets used to show that a particular a/c has a good MX record. The second edition contains a bit more information about it, but as a summary the MX guys called the FLOGGER a "pig" because it was always going wrong. The symbol was applied to those aircraft that required the least MX intervention, while the others received pig-related nicknames. The same system was applied to the other types.

Other than the F-22, which ones do you refer to?