Okay, guess how I got the ordinance off this one...

[Heck 496]

 

Moments before this shot was taken, this 143 F-4 still had 4 Sparrows, 2 more Sidewinders, and 6 Mk-82's still hung on it. Hint: I didn't press the bomb release......

 

God! This sim is fun!

[Caesar 305]

Well, I'll take a shot.

 

It looks as if your plane got hit by something. Noting the holes in the starboard intake, and it looks like your wing may have been damaged also, I'll guess that you had a near-miss with either a SAM or AAM, which damaged, though did not destroy your plane. In the process, a lot of the ordinance was lost.

 

That's my guess.

[Heck 496]

Answer:

I scraped them off. No lie.

 

Here's the sequence of what happened in the sim.

 

Asp 11 (me) was leading a strike on the Dragon's Jaw Bridge in single mission. When two passes didn't drop the damn thing, Asp 11 decided on a very low pull out on his third pass. Too low. Knew I'd just miss the pull out. Got the explosion screen that I've gotten before when I've banged the ground. Expecting the "Guess what, you're dead screen," where you get to watch your wingmen valiantly try to avenge your death. Instead, after a moments pause, I was back in the cockpit. "Shades of USAF!" I thought, thinking somehow I was now Asp 12. But when I checked the call sign, it was me. Dumbfounded, I went to outside view, despite my wingmen's screams of "Sam launch!" and "Sam inbound!" and zoomed in to see what had happened to the bird, which was flying "One Wing Low" to the left. Disbelieving myself, I zoomed in and snapped the screenshot. Yes folks, I scraped them off. I don't know how, but I scraped off 4 Sparrows, 2 Sidewinders, a gun pod, two drop tanks, and a collection of more than six Mk-82's

 

Warning! The technique of scrape bombing is not authorized, or condoned by the virtual USN! The demonstration posted here was performed by a professional virtual F-4 pilot on a closed course, and should not be attempted at home!

[Caesar 305]

Ah, haha, that is pretty amazing, and congratulations on surviving it!

 

Scraping off the stores was going to be my second guess, because believe it or not, I too have scraped off the stores; though never in such a way as you have, I've done it once out of necessity, once out of ignorance. Looking at your altitude, though, I had assumed you weren't low enough to have done that (or rather, you hadn't been moments ago.)

 

The first scrapeoff I had was preformed in my main profile (Caesar), which I use exclusively for the Tomcat. I once knocked off my port AIM-7 when preforming a one-and-a-third-wing, one-engine, two-of-three-gear landing. During a mission, a MiG-23 hit me with an AA-8. I actually shot him down after the fact, but the port wing was blown off 1/3 of the way down (i.e. I lost 2/3 of the wing), I lost the left engine, the left gear, the airbreaks, the tailhook and fuel in the left wing. With a lot of rudder and smart flying, I brought the plane back to an airstrip, where I jettisoned the external stores, fired both AIM-9's just to get them off the plane, but couldn't do anything about the -7, so I just prayed it wouldn't go off. I landed the plane, and the -7 scraped off without exploding and the plane screeched to a halt. This mission was a success, and I survived the landing, so I was a pretty happy camper!

 

The second time, under my USAF profile, I began a strike with a B-58 Hustler. Pulling back way too hard on the stick for the bomber, the massive fuel tank scraped the ground and got knocked off...that put a real wrench in the mission!

 

Among other quirks, I've backflipped an F-102 (I've got three or so screens of this one) when I had a low-altitude stall and in a desperate attempt to survive deployed the landing gear, went full burner and tried to get the nose up as quickly as possible. The main gear hit first, the aft gear hit second, but as the aft gear hit, the nose of the -102 was well on its way up and the other gear "finished it off." The plane backflipped all the way over itself, and landed nose-first in the ground, and that was the end of that, as they say.

 

Again, an amazing feat! I'd say you showed that bridge who's boss.

[Heck 496]

Wow, Caeser! Seems like my little Dragon's Jaw misadventure is mild compared to some of yours. :) And sorry about the "moments before" line, which made my story unclear. I spent some time (don't know how long) climbing from 0 to 4100 feet in full burner trying to figure out how I survived, and which way was least likely to have the heavy AAA.

ps, we never did knock down the bridge. Triple A and SAMS got number 3&4, and 2 and I went limping home with our Pukin tails between our legs. Needless to say, I imagine my virtual crew chief wasn't too happy to see me land. I'm certain in real life they would have pushed that old Four over the side...

[Caesar 305]

Well, your Phantom near-death-experience would still rank very high amongst anything I had done, actually. A lot of my close-calls or misadventures usually involve me landing a beat-to-hell Tomcat or using a plane to which I am not accustomed to. Sometimes it's just a matter of trying a manouver you're used to being able to pull in another plane.

 

The F-102 backflip, for example was brought on by me putting the F-102 into a hard, sustained turn. I had not noticed how quickly the F-102 bled speed; I thought it would hold at least 150kts for a while, but I went from about 600kts to 50kts very quickly. The plane went nosedown and I couldn't pull the plane out of it. That's when I selected full burner and deployed the gear. This, as we now know, was the wrong decision, as I should have punched out...but it's a lot funnier that I rode it and flipped over myself and got some good shots in it too.

 

That's the moment before impact. Going M1+ at 500 feet or less on a runway strike will also usually end in a good story...though the odds of surviving it are low. Your bridge incident is just the first of many that will happen eventually.

Edited April 23, 2006 by Caesar