MD

ISIS, Taliban, or both, trying to create another Dien Bien Phu, Khe Sahh, or Beirut airport.

In the interest of thread creep, same. I said my peace, he said his peace. All good. As the clock ticks down on Kabul, I’m not seeing many options getting out of this cleanly, and I don’t trust the Taliban not to do something stupid, just because of the easy opportunity to do so sitting right in front of them within sight. Even if it’s action taken un-sanctioned by rogue Taliban elements wanting revenge or any easy kill.

It’s entirely on the Eagles. From their fucked up VID forward. Had their been no VID, then maybe include everyone else. Once they went in for the one ID that trumps all others, and fucked it up in both how they did it and and what they came up with, then it became squarely on them. No excuses. At that moment, the other factors just became chaff to try and shift away from the true fault. The even bigger issue was the salivation to kill two helos that are tooling around in trail doing nothing, no hostile acts, just flying around; even if they were Hinds. Had the desire to kill them instantly, now, been tempered just a bit considering their doing nothing besides flying, there may have been another chance to figure out that they are actually friendlies. The Eagles saw what they wanted to see, and killed what they were dying to kill. And some O-3 taking a nap in an AWACS, would’ve made zero difference at that point.

Wonder if the B-52s ever hit the airfields, or if that mission cancelled or never put forward?

My eyes must be going out. It looks like 030 as opposed to 038 on the tail there. But if it is, what an amazing coincidence. Edit: and absolutely agree, the CH-46s and CH-47s doing the evac…….1975, welcome to 2021.

Trying to make out if that number on the tail of the parked -46 on deck there says 038 or 030.

The CH-46 in the foreground on the carrier deck appears to have the BuNo of 154030, not 038. Unless I’m looking at it wrong or looking at the wrong tail?

Absolute cowardice. At least the ARVN, South Vietnamese army, and other South Vietnamese forces fought against the onslaught of the North Vietnamese army…..even if they had to keep establishing defensive positions while retrograding. These Afghan government clowns have put up zero resistance. Which makes me think they’re either Taliban sympathizers, or outright cowards. Even the final night, 29 April 1975, saw a VNAF South Vietnamese Air Force AC-119G aerial gunship crew, along with two A-1 Skyraider planes, attacking advancing NVA armor and vehicles that were traveling south towards Saigon. The crews would land to refuel and rearm themselves since no one was available to do so, and relaunch in order to get airborne and keep attacking the enemy. Right up until sunrise when one A-1 and the AC-119G were both hit by SA-7 Grail MANPADS and shot down, with only a couple of crewmen from the AC-119 bailing out, did the resistance end as the last A-1 expended the last of its munitions, and turned west for Thailand.

Bag must have pleats and epaulets........... 🙂

Happy to help, and condolences for your loss. That unit a year or so after this accident, was renumbered to the 79th Rescue Flight, the last HH-1H unit in the USAF. Being that Grand Forks was retiring their missile Wing a few years after that, the decision was made to retain the H-model Hueys and not transition to the N-models. When the missile Wing shut down and the ICBMs were removed from GF, the 79th shut down and the last HH-1H-models were retired.

Coworker of mine was in that unit, but just a little after this accident occurred. According to him, and as he seems to remember, it was a suspected hydraulic malfunction of some kind leading to a cyclic hard over at low level that there was insufficient altitude to recover from.

Its a reasonable thought though, as the Tomcat does have a heck of a wingspan when forward swept!

I've only met him during dog and pony shows so I don't know the guy but close formation landings are a primary skill in helos. The Huey and Pavelow he flew regularly perform them in far worse conditions than a runway. He may not have a frame of reference for tactical jets but he has definitely has a frame of reference for the practical application of the maneuvers. I’m a dual-rated guy so I get where he’s coming from, and though form approaches and landings are indeed performed in both fixed wing and helos, there are operational and hands-on differences in actual performance between the two. In that sense, that is what he likely wouldn’t be aware of merely from the lack of having performed them in jets. Not a bad thing necessarily, just lacking that frame of reference simply due to not being involved in it. Same as a C-141 guy trying to understand helo-specific nuances and make decisions regarding them if in charge.

It probably doesn’t help with regards knee jerk reaction that the current head of AETC is a career helo guy, and one who went through the separate UHT when it existed, never doing anything fixed wing, as opposed to the first half of UPT. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, apart from having zero knowledge of the risks of certain maneuvers as it comes to tactical jets, what with no frame of reference in said aircraft to be able to accurately assess the risk vs the practical application.

Miramar and Oceana are both 200’ wide runways, more than enough to do section T/O and landings in a Tomcat. Unless something had changed prior to their retirement, Tomcats regularly did section T/Os and landings.