F-15 loss, F18s. Up in the air.
When “strafing” really hurts
“saw ships, sank same” – As a bit of military alliteration, Donald Mason’s that is a good one. According to Brian Garfield, who penned a good history of the Aleutian Islands WWII campaign called “The Thousand Mile War”, Mason’s quote was actually eclipsed by a pilot name of Smith who strafed and sank a boat and then sent “Saw steamer, strafed same, sank same, some sight, signed smith” (probably should have said “then radioed” but I couldn’t resist adding another s-word.)
As Not a Lawyer and ChipNSA mentioned, three F-15s were shot down by the Kuwaitis while attempting to land. Supposedly one of those ‘oopsie’ moments – you would think coming in for landing their IFF would have been on. Maybe it was, the Kuwaitis aren’t saying. Their statement:
Kuwait’s defense ministry said earlier on social media that several U.S. warplanes had crashed in Kuwait. A ministry spokesperson said authorities launched search and rescue operations and evacuated the crews to hospitals, adding that they were in stable condition. CBS News
Crashed? Like “after we shot them down” crashed? Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. My bet is that some royally connected grandson or son was given command of an AA unit and screwed the pooch.
And from the same generation – the last F/A-18 fuselage has rolled off the assembly line. There are still upgrades and refits planned for the series, but new planes? Gone.
“Northrop Grumman is a subcontractor to Boeing, producing the F/A-18’s aft/center fuselage section and vertical tails and integrating all associated subsystems,” a Boeing spokesperson told TWZ. “NG has now completed the final aft/center fuselage section for the final new-build F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter aircraft.”
The Navy first began flying Super Hornets and Growlers in 1999 and 2009, respectively. It remains, by far, the largest operator of both types worldwide. As of April 9, 2025, the service had 325 single-seat F/A-18Es, 250 two-seat F/A-18Fs, and 160 EA-18Gs in inventory, according to official budget documents. TWZ
This mean we are going to see F-35 Blue Angels one of these days?
Not sure the old ways are better…two folks in a hot air balloon managed to get themselves hooked on cell tower near Longview, TX Sunday. 920 feet up.
The Longview Fire Department responded to the incident at 8:15 this morning, and it took over an hour to climb to the height of the hot air balloon to rescue the two occupants.
“Climbing operations began around 8:50 AM using multiple rope systems due to the extreme height and complexity of the incident,” the fire department posted on Facebook.
Rescuers made contact with the two occupants of the hot air balloon at approximately 10 a.m. NBC News
They made it down OK, but it took several hours. That’s a long way up for something like that.
I’ve served a tour in Kuwait and never saw any of their Military that impressed me, they seemed to have the attitude that we were there to serve them, and had forgotten whose military got them out from under Hussein.
I don’t know if the IFF was squawking or they even gave the codes to the Kuwaitis. I do know that in every friendly fire incident in the two the previous wars that I am familiar with (GW, Iraq2) the IFF on board wasn’t squawking. There are a lot of reasons why this was but relying on IFF is like relying on a gun safety. Lack of IFF doesn’t mean “shoot it down”. There are a lot of other things that determine why and how an air breather is engaged.
WE will likely never know why this happened but I will point out several things: