“Donk” becomes “Sleepy” as a qualified naval aviator experiences the joys of naptitude in the trunk of Blue Angle #7
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJi1vi9XHWY[/youtube]
Hee-hee! (H/T to Tailspin)
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Callsign changeBy lex, on January 30th, 2008
24 comments to Callsign change |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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Could be “Dopey,” too…
Heh,
I used to love watching the F-14 types who came along on our P-3′s for some FAM time. They’d be sitting in the back, with their knuckles turning white at low altitude.
For some reason, they never liked being 400-500 feet off the deck in turbulence while onboard a turbo-prop.
They also didn’t like it when we shut down #4 engine to conserve fuel on station
Heh. Just trying to do our part to be green…..
Seriously, these Tomcat guys would get all pale and nauseous on flights with us, and it always amazed me that someone who bragged about G-forces and all the evolutions they went through in AC would get to perspiring and queasy on the patrols we flew.
Ah well.. 2 sides of the coin, parallel universes, I guess.
Respects,
So short people can pull more G’s than taller people? Sweet! Score one for the shorties! Too bad I’m too short to actually FLY a fighter jet…*sniff*
Ever wonder if “Donk” always wakes up cussing?
Reminds me of the story about the Cessna full of sport parachutists, some with hundreds of jumps, which got into a situation which wouldn’t allow jumping. They had to come back to Earth inside an airplane. The story had it that every one of those guys wet his jumpsuit, having never before landed in an airplane.
HomeFront, don’t forget that Our Boys back in Dubya Dubya 2 were rarely over 5’7″, and those were the strapping examples of hardy manhood.
Add in the fact that if you were over that height the ejection seats in a number of the century fighters would happily leave a good portion of your legs in the cockpit while tossing your upper portions into the air.
It’s a no-win situation from a design standpoint. We build aircraft to minimize everything, and everything in it has certain limits of operation. Kind of like making a million pair of shoes for the least costs, we’re going to pump out size 11′s because there are few larger and for those smaller they can stuff a towel in the end or something to still walk around.
It’s funny, in the Navy or Air Force you must fit the aircraft. If you don’t, you’re unqualified. Aircraft cost millions of dollars each.
In sports like Formula 1, NASCAR, NHRA, etc… they fit the car to the driver. The cars costs millions of dollars each.
With a fly-by-wire aircraft and all-electronic cockpit, it is feasable that with a simple change of seat and control placement we might well be able to fit the vehicle to the occupant and only exclude the much larger variety.
Makes ya wonder how many excellent pilots we’ve overlooked because they were too tall or too short, and what advantages that height difference might have given them.
– Max
Height restricted out of F-4s (legs too long) – back of the TA-4 was, well, pushing it, to say the least… Too bad height restrictions didn’t apply when it came time to carrier assignments (ref the permanent scars to my shins courtesy Coral-maru‘s knee knockers)
-SJS
They also didn’t like it when we shut down #4 engine to conserve fuel on station Heh. Just trying to do our part to be green…..
Wonder if it will be in the NATOPS to shut down #2 on the P-8….
Before they coined the term anthromorphic or some such, if’n you were 6′ 6″ or less you could fly in anything you could fit in. A lot of them bigger fellers went into big ol helo/P-3 cockpits mostly by choice. Ex-football linemen with them wide rears seemed in my day to find a home in helos. Real tall dudes seemed to gravitate towards P-3s. Despite all that I’ve seen 6-6 scarecrows flying fighters and big heavy guys flying A-4s…
The only generality I could say fits, is that fighter guys tended to be those short, Napoleonic syndromed, cocky little dudes with big ol’watches who mostly went bald by 30! Mean little pricks in other words! ‘Course there’s always the exceptions- take Lex fer instance!
Fit? I never heard anyone complain…even about the scooter.
Now it’s all science from birth. Pretty soon it’ll be a dead science with all this B.S. about drones…
b2
Oh don’t get me wrong — I loved my Scooter hops, shoehorn and all. In fact, the only flights I really didn’t like were the COD flights sitting in the back with all the rest of the pax and cargo and figuring out who could make it to the ditching hatch first…
- SJS
MaxDamage … are you saying that most WWII military were about 5’7″, or are you confining it to aviators? Here’s my personal experience, for what it’s worth.
I didn’t know any aviators back then. But I knew plenty of service-men. My brother was an artillery-man who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He’s 6′ tall. My fiance, who was a ski-trooper, and died on Mt. Belvedere in Italy, was 5’11″ tall. And my first husband, who was also in the military, was 6’2″ tall. He died of service-connected disability. Granted, these were all considered tall men back in the day. But we did have some. Big guys today are really really big, though. We just didn’t run into guys who were 6’5″ tall very often.
Marianne
That video was HILARIOUS! When the back seat guy would black out and #7 would start singing…priceless! …and the way the LCdr explained so matter of factly about how stocky guys had it easier, I was dying. If I’d have been drinking, the computer would’ve been sprayed for sure.
/BeachBum
Might’ve been the color balance on the video, but Donk/Sleepy looks a little green right before his head pitches over. And over.
Stocky guys who drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of red meat have the advantage? Great, that means that I won’t pass out… I’ll just have the (as Lex put it in one of his posts) meal return bag hooked around my ears the whole time.
Jim C
JTG;
Has to be an old “whuffo” myth. Had a few times in over 28 years we had to come down…and times when we hitched a ride to another DZ, or just to fill an empty seat for fun.
I always preferred being the master of my landing skills, but if the weax or other conditions dictated, then it was once more into the seat belts we went…
Beats the alternative of getting mangled or dead in a bad landing way out somewhere.
On sport jumpers, I tend to side with xformed. However I do remember some years ago a guy who would never load to the rear, and a lot of the other jumpers were always ribing him over how twitchy he was until reaching a couple thou or so. No idea if it was a mind game or not, but I still get a smile out of the memory.
I wonder how old that is. I’m pretty sure Guido hasn’t been flying in at least 10 years. He’s been running Jimmy Love’s downtown for that long.
I have a question about cat shots.
What causes that violent bump at the end of the flight deck on a shot?
The one you feel on the ship, or the one you feel in the plane?
On the ship you feel the catapult piston hitting the water brake. In the plane you’re sensitive to a reduction in the rate of acceleration, and probably getting some of that water brake vibration as well.
Ahh reduction in acceleration, that would explain the pilots head coming forwards.
Thank you good sir for your prompt response.
Marianne, I believe the World War 2 generation was, on average, about 2 inches shorter than we are now. Average, of course, so there’s going to be a lot of outliers. The average figure I found for American males born in 1920 is 68 inches, and for those born in 1960 it’s 70 inches. These stats I’ve not confirmed.
There’s probably an Inspector General’s report out there somewhere listing the average height and weight of the troops. The Quartermaster corps would need that to order the proper size and number of uniforms, etc… It could make for some interesting comparisons.
– Max
In one of his histories, Steven Ambrose wrote that fully one-third of those drafted or otherwise inducted for service in World War II were rejected by Army doctors because of chronic malnutrition.
Fearsome criminal Clyde Barrow of “Bonnie and Clyde” fame was 5′ 7″ and a whopping 125 pounds, according to his wanted poster. His brother Melvin was two inches shorter and tipped the scale at 110 pounds.
They sure didn’t call it the “Great Depression” because of all the good times.
Max, Interesting data. My father was a good 3 inches shorter and a WWII vet and he and all of five brothers served. Every male cousin of mine is taller and heavier than their fathers – on both sides. What kills that hypothesis is that all three of sons are between 1 and 4 inches shorter than me and I am 6’2″. Guess that is what happens when their mom is the runt of 4 generations of women on both sides. Good chow can’t overide genetics would be that answer I suppose.
My father not only missed being eligible for service in WWII by a few months but would have also been rejected at that time because he, too, was malnourished. A family of 6 was hard to feed on the little income my grandfather earned in those years.
By the time Korea rolled around, my father’s family’s situation had improved and he was physically eligible to enlist as well as being old enough.
As an adult, I am only 4 inches shorter than he and only about 30 pounds lighter. And I’m not a big person.