question for military fliers
 

Is there a reason to not fly into combat wearing patches on your jumpsuit?

I was watching this show on the Osprey V2 last night, and I noticed that the crew had their company patches velcroed on, and it appeared that they removed them during missions.

What's with that?

Take them off so that if things go bad (you have to eject and fall into enemy hands) that they have less information about the pilot.

Name, rank and serial number. Thats all they need to know. Not the squadron or anything else.

Also when a lot of documentaries are done the patches are removed for the same reason. Less info passed around and its just not needed.

Joe A

most are also flame-amble,

Rika

The markings are all over the aircraft though...and Ospreys dont have ejection seats.

I was gonna type in the same response as Joe, but it didn't make any sense for the above reason, so deferred.

What Joe said. When I was in all our rank, name tags, wings, and patches were sewn on. It changed shortly after I got out, and (just my suspicion) partly a result of debriefing our Vietnam POWs.

Ospreys don't need ejection seats, they have a flawless safety record. Ha.

Please don't even get me started ont he one hundred plus million dollar a piece unarmed cargo/transport aircraft that is the osprey.

How exactly would one eject in the Osprey anyway? Up? Ummm, that's great if you're in cruise, but would be pretty messy if you're in takeoff/landing/hover mode with them big ol' blenders whirling around above you.

I suppose you could eject downward (I believe some of the 60s-era fighters did this) but the human body can take a helluva lot more force transversely than longitudinally, and much more positive Gs (getting shot upwards) than negative (getting shot downwards).

So I think it was a matter of simple practicality. But I still am not a real fan of that program or aircraft. I'd probably fly one, but I don't know if I'd ever feel completely comfortable in it. The "blood price" of the Osprey has been way too high (as has the dollar cost).

Were the guys on the show with the velcro patches test pilots? I thought it was to go from program to program.

B52s the navigator and radar navigator eject down. I wouldn't imagine it is much fun low level.

We don't need no stinking patches in combat.








The patches were for the bar.

Yup...cross country names tags:cool:

[QUOTE=rick-l;4696143]Were the guys on the show with the velcro patches test pilots? I thought it was to go from program to program.

No, they were part of the Fighting Chickens or some such, (and I'm not making that up, it's a Marine thing from back in the day)
they were a command(if that's the right term) of 10 Osprey in Iraq, and what Sniper said is right, the only armament they have is a 50cal in the tail, I don't see why we need to spend that kind of dough on these things.

Same reason you should lot fly into trouble spots with a picture of a loved one, or a letter of a loved one, driver's licence. Other things to do are not have a facebook account...etc.

If I remember correctly they refer to it as 'sanitizing' yourself.

With the growth of the internet bad guys can find out a lot about you and use it against you.

Exactly!

F 104s ejected downward at first. They later changed that since it wasn't a good "option" in many cases.

And what in the world do you think you know about this! :)

Hey, am flying out of Ruidoso this summer. You get down that way at all? Believe that I can get you tickets to the horse track...

Joe A

When we flew into Cambodia we even un patched (covered up) the US ARMY on the Huey

Guess we were not there ....???

LOL...wearing a uniform this week as a matter of fact.

No, I don't get down that way...but it sounds like a good idea my friend! Probably have to bring my wife if there are horses. She loves them...but has never ridden one.
By the way, my daughter just finished her first year of medical school. Thanks for the encouragement when she was trying to get in.

some helicopters have ejection seats, explosive bolts blow off the rotorblades a fraction of a second before the canopy and seats eject.. although i guess it might be an additional complexity, to not have those explosive bolts fire when eject from an Osprey when in horizontal mode, so the props don't cut through the fuselage :D

There are no operational helicopters I know that have such a system. There aren't that many type/model/series attack helicopters in the world (I've flown the Cobra and Apache) and none of them have ejection seats. The last thing any pilot wants is explosives around the big fan that keeps the helo matriculating through the sky.

No utility or transport helicopters have ejection seats either, for all the right reasons: the last thing a crew member or passenger wants to see is the two pilots wave good-bye while airborne. :)

Quick trivia: There are aircraft carrier-based aircraft that don't have ejection seats!