Actually, the late 70s, early 80s?
The Air Force had an Air Work area off the coast of SF and one of our planes was demonstrating a maneuver when he got too low, as he leveled off, he saw a sail boat dead ahead, so he pulled the nose up, pushed the throttles up and blew the sail boat over. Not on purpose. He reported it immediately to Oakland Center. You can't imagine all the stories...Bomber pilot flying a low level route, felt something weird, looked down and saw the tip of a snake as it crawled up his leg. Another B-52 had an engine destroyed. They checked it on the ground and it was a snake. Never a dull moment.
Do any of you remember the sailboat incident? The IP onboard was a civilian shortly thereafter, but I always wondered about the boat. No one was hurt, to our knowledge. Anyone remember that?
One of my old buddies from my KC-135 days called, the subject got around to boating and he
reminded me of that story. Since I ran the budget and training program for tankers and bombers at that time, I was told.
We did a lot of demos back then that are illegal now. They had a B-52 clean out his quad fifty calibers in the Gulf of Mexico, in a restricted area....fishing boat was in the wrong place when his boat was almost shot in two. The Coasties found him.
Any other Aircraft vs boat stories from our area?
The Air Force had an Air Work area off the coast of SF and one of our planes was demonstrating a maneuver when he got too low, as he leveled off, he saw a sail boat dead ahead, so he pulled the nose up, pushed the throttles up and blew the sail boat over. Not on purpose. He reported it immediately to Oakland Center. You can't imagine all the stories...Bomber pilot flying a low level route, felt something weird, looked down and saw the tip of a snake as it crawled up his leg. Another B-52 had an engine destroyed. They checked it on the ground and it was a snake. Never a dull moment.
Do any of you remember the sailboat incident? The IP onboard was a civilian shortly thereafter, but I always wondered about the boat. No one was hurt, to our knowledge. Anyone remember that?
One of my old buddies from my KC-135 days called, the subject got around to boating and he
reminded me of that story. Since I ran the budget and training program for tankers and bombers at that time, I was told.
We did a lot of demos back then that are illegal now. They had a B-52 clean out his quad fifty calibers in the Gulf of Mexico, in a restricted area....fishing boat was in the wrong place when his boat was almost shot in two. The Coasties found him.
Any other Aircraft vs boat stories from our area?