Swimmer Michael Phelps, the human submarine.
28 Olympic medals, including 23 golds. He has more gold medals than many entire countries.
The 917 was a very small race car!
The M1064 Grömitz is a Type 332 Frankenthal-class minehunter of the German Navy, commissioned on August 1994.
On February 21, 2007, the Grömitz struck a reef in Norway's Floro Fjord and remained spectacularly stranded until it was rescued and subsequently repaired and returned to service.
What are some astonishing little known facts about the United States aircraft carriers?
After a few months of deployment, the non-skid coating on heavily-trafficked areas of the flight deck will wear out. The area near the arresting gear cables (and further down the landing area) are where most of the wear occurs. Additionally, various leaking fluids (fuel, hydraulic fluid, oil, etc) will build up a slippery film over time. The rubber bumpers next to each arresting cable are pretty slick as well.
The result? Aircraft skidding at alarming angles during taxi. The yellow-shirt will give a taxiing aircraft the “Stop” command, the pilot will dutifully apply the brakes . . . and the aircraft will skid 5–10 feet before stopping.
On a calm day with the carrier traveling straight ahead, it will skid in a straight line.
On a high-sea state day, or if the ship is in an aggressive turn (common after the last aircraft lands and the carrier needs to turn back downwind quickly), the skid direction and aircraft orientation can get quite . . . interesting.
Normally the pilots and yellow-shirt aircraft directors know where these spots are. Pilots will taxi extra-slowly in in these areas, and yellow-shirts will (presumably) allow for some extra stopping distance.
It’s pretty alarming for a new pilot the first time this happens, but you quickly get used to it.
I had the opportunity to take an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot for a ride off the carrier in my super-sexy S-3B Viking about half-way through a deployment. I’m sure he thought the catapult shot and arrested landing were pretty cool as expected. He was probably bored during the actual flight. After we landed, I was concentrating on the normal busy carrier ground ops, but noticed him fidgeting a lot out of the corner of my eye. He kept shifting in his seat and grabbing random (non-critical) parts of the cockpit. I was so used to taxiing on the flight deck that I forgot how terrifying it could be for someone unaccustomed - especially an Air Force pilot used to a regular air base. There are several reasons for this:
-Every inch of flight deck space counts. We taxi ALL THE WAY up to the edge of the flight deck, turn sharply, taxi even closer, turn again, and repeat until the entire back end of the aircraft is over the water. From the pilot’s perspective, it looks like you are about to taxi right into the ocean, which is all you can see in your field of view looking forward. The sea is rushing in one direction or another, always different from the direction your aircraft is traveling, which is a strange - and quite disorienting - sensation.
-You park RIGHT NEXT to other aircraft. I’m talking a couple of inches in some cases. There has to be a serious amount of trust between the taxi director and pilot. I’ve never seen an equivalent on land. It would have been shockingly close from an Air Force perspective.
-As the carrier turns, it heels quite a bit. It’s sort of like taxiing on the side of a pitched roof sometimes. The horizon can be moving all over the place as you try to pay attention to the taxi director. Another new aspect for an Air Force guy.
-A 45,000 lb aircraft skidding instead of stopping, sometimes turning as it does so (you are skidding one direction, but your nose slowly drifts 30° away during the slide). This probably REALLY got the F-15 pilot’s attention.
On April 6, 1893, the longest boxing fight in history took place, which lasted 110 rounds, i.e. 7:19 a.m. between Andy Bowen and Jack Burke, it ended in a draw
