Navagational Error

andyrew
Posts: 54
Joined: Fri 09 Jan, 2004 17.29

Farnborough International airshow is on this week, and I live about 10/15 miles from Farnborough (not far enough really). As you can imagine, aeroplanes flying quite low and at 600 knots, 15 miles isn't very far, and as some of the planes stack up for their display they buzz around over my town.

So yesterday afternoon, with various planes flying past I tuned into "Farnborough International Radio" to listen to the display commentary, and see how many of those planes flew over my house (I must of been bored). I do like big ones.... Anyway, as you will see from the shit pics (I didn't have my camera ready, my excuse and it was travelling fast) that a USDoD B52H Stratofortress was scheduled for a flypast. It wasn't landing, just coming from a base, flying past and going home.

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So two minutes after it flew over my house, the commentators said something like: next up is the B52, blah, blah, blah. "where is it?" said one voice. The other commentator replied. "look, it's right over there, about four miles north of here. OMG, it's doing a flypast of Blackbushe airfield." The other commentator replied: "that'll be bit of a surprise for them".

So you can imagine the scene. Little airfield with light aircraft buzzing around. All of a sudden the sky goes dark and with a huge roar an American B52 nuclear bomber hurtles past just feet above you. Lucky there wasn't an accident. I'd love to have seen the pilots face when he realised there were no crowds of spectators to see his manoeuvre. I suspect a few choice words may have been said. And I bet Farnborough ATC were a bit confused to: "ready to flypast....." ATC: "where?"

However, to end this long post, the worry is how did such a sophisticated piece of military hardware with supposedly highly trained crew get it so wrong? If they can't find a sodding airport in the UK, how the hell can they hit targets. So much for precision weapons.
rts
Posts: 1637
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 14.09

Key word. American.
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MrTomServo
Posts: 161
Joined: Mon 11 Aug, 2003 14.15
Location: California

That's all thanks to America's bottom 10 percent dedicated to defending the world.

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