If you fly through Missouri Whiteman AFB has A-10s and Apaches. We got the B-2s also but you can't see them!

These planes were IFR, although sounds like in VMC, and were in contact with center without any traffic advisory or warning except for their onboard TCAS. I got to admit that it would get my attention and check the patency of my coronaries.

Error

58Skylane wrote:On one of my road trips down south, I had stopped at Grasmere (U91) (inside the Jarbidge MOA) and took a little break. I heard some fighter jets in the area and looked up and saw 3 fighter jets dog fighting each other. I thought that was the coolest thing to watch for about 5 minutes.

Well, almost a year later. I stopped by this same area today during my road trip from SoCal to Idaho. And I was not disappointed once again!!

I turned down a dirt road off of Highway 52 in southwest Idaho. I'm driving along and see a couple of jet flying around nearby. It looked like they were practicing dive and bomb maneuvers.

There were two jets flying a big circular pattern at about 1000-2000 feet AGL.

Now, the bummer part??? I almost was going to turn down the road about 2-3 miles south of this point. If I did, I would have been almost right under the area where the jets were dive bombing (not armed of course).






The jet is hard to see in this picture (above). He's there about the upper middle of the picture.





I did go back down to the road in the area these jets were dive bombing. But by the time I got there, the jets were long gone. I hung out for about a half hour and heard some jets, but didn't see any except one in the distance haulin butt no...rth bound very low to the ground. Very cool!!

Next time I got some time off, I'm coming back out here!!

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do jets 'dive bomb'?

I had a friend that had some jets buzz them, very low and very fast. Very cool!

L-19 wrote:Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do jets 'dive bomb'?

Well...... with my observation, these jets were flying a large circular pattern and descending steeply at a high rate of speed (as if they are going down to a target). Then pulling up very sharply and climbing very steep.

58Skylane wrote:

L-19 wrote:Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do jets 'dive bomb'?

Well...... with my observation, these jets were flying a large circular pattern and descending steeply at a high rate of speed (as if they are going down to a target). Then pulling up very sharply and climbing very steep.

Ok just curious, I was thinking with GPS guidance, laser designation & smart bombs that they didn't do that much after WWII. Not the old near verticle method anyway. That must have been great to sit & watch.

L-19 wrote:Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do jets 'dive bomb'?

They surely do though with the advent of precision guided munitions (PGMs, like laser & GPS guidance) and targeting pods opportunities to do are so less frequent. Not called dive bombing but rather dive deliveries. In the Harrier the standard profiles were 45, 30, and 10 degrees for a variety of bomb bodies. Some other platforms use up to a 60 degree profile which has to be a rush. The 45 degree pattern we used started at 17k' AGL (@~360kts) and weapon release happened at 8k' AGL @500kts, followed by a 4-6G pull to get your ass climbing out of the threat envelope and back to sanctuary. That profile allowed for about 10 seconds of tracking time to get your symbology on tgt.

These days lower angle dive profiles around 10-20 degrees are commonly used for gun runs and rockets. Those look like 15's (probably out of Mtn Home?) in the pics, if they were down ~2-3k' they were probably practicing strafing profiles.

I've dive bombed at wheat truck or two...does that count?

Before my wife's retired in 06' we were stationed at NAS Fallon. Living in base housing, it was normal to see the F/A-18, F-16, EA-6B and the
F-14's before they were decommissioned, all do their carrier breaks over the field and start the down wind over the house. Jet noise...the sound of freedom!

When Debbie was the tower chief she would, just for fun and conditions permiting, tell the returning flights, "You have the overhead!"
She knew that was just the hint the fighter jocs needed to completely ignore the 500' agl. and 250 kt. limits. What a sight to see from the cat walk over the tower when they did that.

My buddy Jon (another controller) and I got word one day that a B-1 bomber was going to do some work in the range (Bravo 17) and drop some live ordinance. Man, the word must have spread cause and by the time we got there the road looked like the Wal-Mart parking lot on Christmas eve. We got situated, listened in on the frequency. Oh yeah, I forgot to say we were in a 'Official Use Only' vehicle, and proceded to watch a perfect low level run from the south.

Bay doors open... Little, dark objects falling and trailing back, then..... Big ass exploding fire balls and expanding, black mushroom clouds from each impact.

From the young sailors in attendance were comments like, "Awsome" and "Cool". But once the sound of the 500 lb high explosives hit a few seconds later it was suddenly, "Holy shit!"

Damn I miss those days.