{"id":180106,"date":"2026-03-03T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=180106"},"modified":"2026-03-02T15:14:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T20:14:43","slug":"f-15-loss-f18s-up-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=180106","title":{"rendered":"F-15 loss, F18s. Up in the air."},"content":{"rendered":"
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When “strafing” really hurts<\/p><\/div>\n

“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.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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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:<\/p>\n

Kuwait’s defense ministry\u00a0said 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.\u00a0\u00a0CBS News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crashed? Like “after we shot them down” crashed?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthrop Grumman is a subcontractor to Boeing, producing the F\/A-18\u2019s aft\/center fuselage section and vertical tails and integrating all associated subsystems,\u201d a Boeing spokesperson told TWZ<\/em>. \u201cNG has now completed the final aft\/center fuselage section for the final new-build F\/A-18 Super Hornet fighter aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This mean we are going to see F-35 Blue Angels one of these days?<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimbing operations began around 8:50 AM using multiple rope systems due to the extreme height and complexity of the incident,\u201d the fire department posted on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Rescuers made contact with the two occupants of the hot air balloon at approximately 10 a.m.\u00a0NBC News<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They made it down OK, but it took several hours. That’s a long way up for something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-KQW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}