Distressed airframes...

Bill noted a while back my fondness for gigging the aviators around here with pictures of 'distressed' airframes.

Since I'm really busy this week, I've decided to go cheap and run one I've had for a 'rainy day' sort of backup.

Wrecked Mig-29.  Flattened, really.

Somehow, I think this one is beyond the airframe mechanic's skillz. Somehow, I bet Bill has the story behind it, too.

11 Comments

Mechanic: .... *looks at wreckage* .... Dude, there's your problem.
 
This is what happens to Fulcrums when Eagles are hungry...if this is where/what I think it is.
 
I wondered where he term "pancaked" in reference to crashing a plane came from. Now I don't.
 
Dusty - I suspect it is the event of which you type.
 
I think I found it - March 1999 in Serbia?
 
Does this qualify as a 1 point landing? Don't aviator types get a merit badge or something for this? OTOH, if Damian's link is true, then what does this say of Slick Willy's "nope, no combat here in the Balkans, just move along" legacy?
 
Yup, those look like IFOR guys rather than SFOR, and that's a typical Boz farmhouse on a typical Boz hill in the typical Boz municipality of Teočak. Which is untypical because it has vowels in its name. My stomping grounds were about 25km southwest. Only thing missing from the pic is the three-legged livestock to remind you that the place has more landmines than Californy has nutcases...
 
BilT: slightly off topic. I do remember a conversation from the CTCP around Dec 05/Jan 06.... A certain flight is executing area reconnaissance (1 x OH58D, 1 x AH1). The AH-1 calls in. A ‘chip light’ forces him to land. He lands in the nearest open area. The locals were waving furiously at him (oddly enough, locals from two nearby checkpoints were doing this). He landed. Aircraft in question calls for evac. Aircraft in question seyz that locals wouldn’t approach. I checked my purple-marked WWII maps (what's all this German crap on my map?). The Senior Pilot Instructor on board shortly thereafter declared that they were ‘one-time flight capable’ to our FARP. Hmmmm.
 
Teočak has extra vowels because it was part of Ugljevik in the Republika Srpska. The idea of carrying a letter addressed to somebody living at 16 Sklonisti Sjdit Tčk, Ugljevik Republika Srpska, BiH was too much, even for a Balkan mailman. So the Canton donated some vowels that they found in a back alley in Brčko...
 
Blackhawk - 'Way off the original subject, continuing thread on the second. I had an intermittent TRGB chip light in an OH-6 back in '86 or '87. It was only intermittent, so I figured, "Lakehurst is only three miles away -- I'll land there instead of putting it in the cedar swamp directly below me." Shut down, mechanic inspected the mag points on the detector plug. No fuzz. Stuck the plug back in for a ground run and *poof* -- intermittent light. Did that twice more. Figured that the chips were too small to completely bridge the gap between the magnetic points on the detector, so I shut down, held a coffee can under the sight gauge to catch the oil and teeny-weeny gearbox chips and pulled the plug. *clank* *clankclank* Three firken *teeth* from the gearbox landed in the coffee can. They were too big for the chip detector magnet to hold down long enough to make a full connection...
 
Certainly looks like someone did some stomping on that ground Bill.