With the curves, the variable wing and the crackle of the engines, to me, one one the most organically beautiful aircraft ever built. Almost a living thing.
We were on a detachment to Anderson AFB in Guam. I got to see one take off close up and when the afterburners lit, it really rattled the bones in my body!!! Impressive bird!
You can't imagine the brutal sound of an afterburner until you heard it. Someone once said to me that it's like the air get's torn apart. When I experienced it close up years later I knew exactly what he ment! 😮😂
Yeah one took off at Hickam and we all stopped our conversation and were in aww and I'm an aircraft mechanic. After it lifted off you could hear about a dozen car alarms going off.
The day after an airshow in Long Beach CA, I was getting on the freeway to go into LA for business. Even though my windows were up (cool morning) and the radio was up (waking up), and I heard this roar- it was a B-1B taxiing out at the airport. That's Military!!
I was stationed at McConnell AFB Kansas before the B1s your sent to Dyess and Ellsworth. I used to love taking the access road to the south end of the taxiway. You would within 150ft from these things when they took off. They would turn onto the runway, the nozzles would open up and it would get REALLY loud. It was awesome.
Notice the missing "turkey feathers". I believe the exhaust covers were removed for ease of maintenance, despite a little drag penalty. The same with the F-15Es.
Spent a little over 10 years working on those engines, doing the heavy shop maintenance. Generally a good solid engine, sufficiently good to modify into the F110 and F118 for the F-16, U-2, and B-2. But the B-1's day is almost gone. Only 100 B-1Bs were built, and 30 were parked to use for spare parts years and years ago. Had a few lost to accidents, but .ore recently the Air Force parked the 17 worst airframes. The plan is to replace them one-for-one with the B-21 Raiders as they start entering USAF service. But who knows? Maybe they'll find a new role, maritime patrol/attack, maybe . . .
The readiness rate for B-1 airframes regularly drops below 25%. Abysmal. There have actually been periods where among the 60 or so aircraft in the inventory, less than 10 were available for missions.
If we were on a wartime footing, like with another country that I want name here, I guarantee they would almost all be up and running. It's about cost and current readiness needs.
Well, the generation at university now are mostly doing Politics, Sociology or Gender Studies, so this kind of stuff will all be too hard for them. On the upside, MacDonalds will have a good chunk of the graduate crop to select from, once the big corporations have creamed off the top performers for their HR departments that is.
@@nickmiller76I think it’s the opposite these days. All of the business engineering and med schools are extremely competitive and getting into liberal arts college is super easy.
