USMC be like “hold my box of crayons…”
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Harharharhaaarrr…
How do you think the USMC picks it’s aviators. If there are no teeth marks then Hornets, some teeth marks but not big bites, harriers. If they ate the dang thing, attack helos. I kid, I kid, but a buddy of mine was a Cobra pilot and it seems accurate…
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My Marine Aviator Sea Story:
We were in the Med on the mighty ship USS GUAM. I was doing my intel thing and it looked like a “contact of interest”(COI) merchant ship (MERSHIP),might be in our area. CIC had a couple of radar contacts and one of them could have been our COI. I had tried to get a look from the signal bridge but it was too far away. I was able to tell that it was a tanker - no cranes, king posts, or “uprights”, just a black hull and a white superstructure - which meant it could have been the COI. I needed its name.
We had a couple of CH-46s up and about, so I went over to Helicopter Direction Control (HDC) and had them contact one of the USMC helos to check out the name. HDC called one of the helos and vectored them over to the MERSHIP.
All MERSHIPs over a certain size are required to have their name on each bow and on the stern. They are also required to have two “Bridge Boards”–wooden boards with the ship’s name, affixed on each bridge wing (affixed so that if the ship sinks, the board comes unattached and floats to the surface…so you can see what ship sank). So all-in-all, five places for this aircrew to read the ship’s name.
The aircrew gladly complied with the request, flew over towards the possible COI and in a few minutes radioed in “The ship’s name is ‘No Smoking’.”
Yeah…perfect…just about every merchant tanker in the world has the words “NO SMOKING” painted in large red letter on their forward superstructure…
…no, I didn’t ask them to try again.
Re strafing: The guns in A2A fighters like the F-14 and F-15 are slanted a few degrees upward from the aircraft centerline to better shoot at air targets. This means that when strafing, the jet must dive down a few degrees more to properly aim the gun. The A-7’s gun was meant for strafing and reportedly was angled a few degrees down.
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I’ve killed one or two Warthogs with 30 mike mike, it’s modelled.