A-5 Vigilante - The Aircraft Carrier Nuclear Bomber
Anon wants to hear moar about this "final sortie" flown out of NAS Key West in 1979. Must have been a photo recon flight? Cuba?
Pretty quiet night. A 62 year old aerial tanker (KC-135) just switched on his ADS-B at Tinker AFB.
E-4B Nightwatch flight history. 73-1676, no activity in the last week. 73-1677, no activity in the last week. 74-0787, call sign GORDO16, landed Offutt AFB 8 hours ago. If you look at his far north Canadian airspace excursion earlier, and have watched other Trans-Atlantic flights drop off ADS-B coverage. Then you might see that Nightwatch flew out to the edge of coverage, and turned around. Seems almost a deliberate effort to stay visible. And would make sense, from a diplomatic standpoint. 75-0125, call sign LOKI82 flew from Patrick AFB to Offutt AFB back on November 30th. No further flights to date.
They flew at 91,000 feet with over a ton of payload. The record stood for 13 years.
If someone wanted to be a troublemaker. Then one could argue that they deliberately flew inferior equipment over the enemy in order to perform a campaign of disinformation upon the enemy. Therefore making any analysis of downed debris an exercise in misdirection?
Call me crazy. But the lines of the Soviet strategic aircraft produced shortly following those years? They seem to imitate.
Caviar?
¡Hatari! Howard Hawks. 1962 / "Baby Elephant Walk" Henry Mancini