Surplus F-15

Before you buy one you might want to know what they cost to operate.




operating an F-22 costs $50,800 an hour, compared to $31,800 for a F-15


The Last Gunslinger | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine

June 1st, 2010.

The better is always the enemy of the good. We have learned again and again, sometimes the newest technology doesn't always work as well as what it replaced.... An F-4 was a heck of a fighter, but it couldn't do what an AD1 Spad could do in Vietnam...loiter and kill.... The A10 Warhog is an aircraft I would rather go to war in then some of the space age toys the USAF is enamored of, just because it's low, slow and can take a beating. There was a move to convert F15's to ground attack aircraft, just image what a misplaced AK 47 round will do for that plane's career....

Just wanting to be provocative.....

I love the A-10.

You gotta love any plane that was designed around a gun.

I used to watch the Warthogs work out at Kilo Impact Area at Fort Benning......if you are in a tank the last thing you want to see coming at you in a dive is the A-10...if you do it is probably the last thing you are ever going to see.

I have seen those 30 Mike Mikes burn through an AMTRACK so fast it was unbelieveable.

Nothing inside could have lived through that.

On the downside the pilots called them the "Widow Maker" because if you made one mistake it would roll in and hit the ground before they could recover.

The Titanium tub the pilot sat in saved a lot of them from small arms fire.

There is a Air Force museum in Fla that has a display of the 30 MM cannons that is awesome.

saddamsnightmare said:

June 1st, 2010.

The better is always the enemy of the good. We have learned again and again, sometimes the newest technology doesn't always work as well as what it replaced.... An F-4 was a heck of a fighter, but it couldn't do what an AD1 Spad could do in Vietnam...loiter and kill.... The A10 Warhog is an aircraft I would rather go to war in then some of the space age toys the USAF is enamored of, just because it's low, slow and can take a beating. There was a move to convert F15's to ground attack aircraft, just image what a misplaced AK 47 round will do for that plane's career....

Just wanting to be provocative.....

Click to expand...

What if that ak47 round hit the right spot on the a10?

Same effect.

The A-10 was tougher than woodpecker lips......it was designed to take hits and keep flying.

I saw some Combat Photography pictures of A-10 battle damage....some of them came back full of holes.

It was built of thicker metal and the systems were hardened to protect them.

It was ugly, slow and required a lot of skill to fly. But that 30 MM would eat your lunch.

Ask the Iraqi soldiers that met up with one.....oh wait...you can't do that......they're all dead.

wreckerman893 said:

The A-10 was tougher than woodpecker lips......it was designed to take hits and keep flying.

Click to expand...

Well said.

I always thought it was interesting to hear people talk abou tthe skill and guts it takes a fighter jet and pilot to engage and/or win a dig fight, when most modern air-to-air combat aircraft could just punch the throttle with AB's and be gone before anybody ever knows the difference.

But, you really need to have guts and be crazy as a fox. Especially to climb into a low flying, semi-bulletproof plane, that goes the speed of a turtle on Starbucks at best. Just to face down your enemy target in a dive maneuver. One that you hope to god you remember how to recover from if something doesn't go quite as planned.

i love a-10's my buddy in germany got to see a lot of them fuel up and take off and said they are loud!

Out of Battle Creek Michigan the A10's use to fly north into the area they used as their "box".

From US131 headed east at the Howard City exit intersection was the bottom right of the box - my farm was inside the box and my barn had been destroyed many times I bet on their runs - probably along with several other barns used as practice targets. The landscape provided perfect approach and there was a lot of silver objects out there on the 80 acres.

SPECATULAR and hair rasing to watch them - hardly any words could describe their precision in this box - the engine is unmistakeable along with their shape in the sky.

Once you heard them you knew they were going to be there for a few minutes - haul out a chair and watch them work - once in a great while you would get a fighter to bust over the top of the trees - but by theh time ya heard it - it was history.

Had a friend who was RT Lt CL - and got the invitation with the family to see the special appearance on the base of the Thunderbirds - still have the video of up front and close - another spectacular display.

kcimb said:

What if that ak47 round hit the right spot on the a10?

Same effect.

Click to expand...

Good luck finding that "right spot". Your best bet would be if they were inverted and you put a round through the canopy into the pilot. I believe almost everything was built with redundancy and survivability in mind.

I can't believe they were considering retiring them a few years ago.

It's like a Deuce, tough, reliable and built to take a licking and keep on ticking. I remember watching a video from Fairchild in 1975 standing in the Navy Exchange in Subic Bay, The PI. Awesome then and better with age.

steve

June 2nd, 2010.

I do seem to remember seeing photos of the remains of an A-10 that was buried in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia during the first or early second Gulf War, the plane had been sieved pretty good, like some of the B-17's of WWII, but it got it's pilot home in one piece. There wasn't very much salvageable on the plane, so it was decommissioned and buried. The A10's were designed for ground support and anti tank roles from day one, hence the hardening and armoring, also the reason the engines are mounted in the pods above the fuselage, to protect them as much as possible, and yet make a changeout an relatively easy maneuver.
From what I heard about the A10 in the first Gulf War, that was just about the only American plane of any class the caused complete fear in the average Iraqi.

Enemy ground fire: 10% effective
Enemy Anti Aircraft Weapons: 30% effective
Enemy Hillside: 100% effective

That is the only downside to low and slow. The Ground.

I'd rather be in an F-15 any day. There is a video of a guy landing one after a midair with another plane. The f-15 had one wing sheared off and still landed. He had to land at 280 knots, but the pilot waled away. No other aircraft could do that in my opinion.

I lived in Germany when the A-10 was first deployed (the only reason they were built was to counter the soviet tank masses that were always thought to roll through the fulda gap.) The A-10 was really a maverick/bomber delivery system with a BFG. Like the Apache is really a Hellfire system with a cool gun.

Living in W. Germany in the early 80s as a kid was great. REFORGER, and all the newest toys were *always* deployed. I remember when the M1 first came out AFRTS had a commercial about them with pink floyd music.

Man I could list the new toys that first came to Germany Bradley, Blackhawk, M1, A-10, F-15, F-16, HMMVWs alongside the veterans.. M60s, M113s, UH-1s, CH-47s.

I flew out of Coleman AAF.... was a student in a Cessna 150 third in line to land behind 2 Cobras and a CH-47 Not bad for a 16yo.

rwbrown72 said:

I'd rather be in an F-15 any day. There is a video of a guy landing one after a midair with another plane. The f-15 had one wing sheared off and still landed. He had to land at 280 knots, but the pilot waled away. No other aircraft could do that in my opinion.

Click to expand...

I remember that... the wing root was supply just enough lift to keep it level and the pilot landed with rudders. I recall it was caused by a collision... not enemy fire. Other F-15 driver punched out.

Thats ONE F-15... there were probably more A-10 landing damaged than F-15s.

As one of my instructors who happened to be a preacher told me years ago:

"Keep thy airspeed up, lest the ground come up and smite thee."

As pointed out above, rising terrain is just about the only sure fire killer of A-10's.

I worked on them in my Air Force days a AK round isnt going to take it down you better bring a missle!!

http://tailslide.firelight.dynip.com/f15wing.asp


F15 Wingless Landing

On May 1st. 1983, a dogfight training took place between two F-15D's and fourA-4N Skyhawks overthe skies of the Negev desert in Israel.
The F-15D (#957, nicknamed 'Markia Shchakim', 5 killmarks) was used for the training of a new pilot in the squadron. Here is the description of the event as described in "Pressure Suit": "
At some point I collided with one of the Skyhawks, at first I didn't realize it. I felt a big strike, and I thought we passed through the jet stream of one of the other aircraft. Before I could react, I saw the big fire ball created by the explosion of the Skyhawk.
The radio started to deliver calls saying that the Skyhawk pilot has ejected, and I understood that the fire ball was the Skyhawk, that exploded, and the pilot was ejected automatically. There was a tremendous fuel stream going out of the wing, and I understood it was badly damaged.
The aircraft flew without control in a strange spiral. I re-connected the electric control to the control surfaces, and slowly gained control of the aircraft until I was straight and level again. It was clear to me that I should eject. When I gained control I said :
"Hey, wait, don't eject yet!". No warning light was on and the navigation computer worked as usual; I just needed a warning light in my panel to indicate that I missed a wing..." The instructor ordered me to eject.
The wing is a fuel tank, and the fuel indicator showed 0.000 so I assumed that the jet stream sucked all the fuel out of the other tanks. However, I remembered that the valves operate only in one direction, so that I might have enough fuel to get to the nearest airfield and land. I worked like a machine, wasn't scared and didn't worry. All I knew was: as long as the sucker flies, I'm gonna stay inside. I started to decrease the airspeed, but at that point one wing was not enough.
So I went into a spin down and to the right. A second before I decided to eject, I pushed the throttle and lit the afterburner. I gained speed and thus got control of the aircraft again. Next thing I did was lowering the arresting hook.
A few seconds later I touched the runway at 260 knots, about twice the recommended speed, and called the tower to erect the emergency recovery net. The hook was torn away from the fuselage because of the high speed, but I managed to stop 10 meters before the net. I turned back to shake the hand of my instructor, who urged me to eject, and then I saw it for the first time - no wing



The IAF (Israeli Air Force) contacted McDonnell Douglas and asked for information about the possibility to land an F-15 with one wing . MD replied that this is aero-dynamically impossible, as confirmed by computer simulations... Then they received the photo.... After two months the same F-15 got a new wing and returned to action. This is what "Flight international, 8 June 1985" wrote about the incident:
"The most outstanding Eagle save was by a pilot from a foreign air force. During air combat training his two seater F-15 was involved in a mid-air collision with an A-4 Skyhawk. The A-4 crashed, and the Eagle lost its right wing from about 2ft. outboard. After some confusion between the instructor who said eject, and the student who outranked his instructor and said no, the F-15 was landed at its desert base. Touching down at 290 kt, the hook was dropped for an approach and engagement. This slowed the F-15 to 100 kt, when the hook weak link sheared, and the aircraft was then braked conventionally.
It is said that the student was later demoted for disobeying his instructor, then promoted for saving the aircraft. McDonnell Douglas attributes the saving of this aircraft to the amount of lift generated by the engine intake/body and "a **** of a good pilot".

My favorite F-15 story is the 14 Feb scud cap in nw iraq when they
used a 2,000 lb LGB (gbu 10) on a mi-24.
Anything to protect our SF guy’s.