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Aster shootdown over Sydney in 1955
- ortusdux 2y agoIt doesn't take all that much wind to cause modern light aircraft to take off on their own. The gusts in this video were 55 knots, but I've heard that some STOLs are susceptible to 20 knot winds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI
- bombcar 2y agoAh there are pilots in those planes, I was wondering how they were doing so well. The other plane with all the guys lying on the wing is amusing.
- _yb2s 2y agoThat is crazy, thanks for sharing. I wouldn't call a Piper Cub modern though.
- NikkiA 2y agoThe cessna 172 is still manufactured today, its factory condition stall speed is 40 knots.
- ryanmccullagh 2y ago[flagged]
- _yb2s 2y agoThere's a time and place for language like that, and inside a traffic control tower when planes are literally taking off by themselves is exactly it.
- Zircom 2y agoLiterally all they're saying is 'fuck' and 'holy shit', it's not like they're dropping racial slurs or anything. If you're that sensitive to this mild of profanity you probably shouldn't be on the fucking internet in the first place my friend.
- dageshi 2y agoI'm assuming you're a troll because I don't believe an adult would actually post this comment.
- delecti 2y agoThere's a regional airport near me, which I drive past often, and the smaller planes are all tethered to their "parking spaces" (taut cables between the tips of the wings and mounting points on the ground). It always seemed a bit silly and I've had the thought "what, like they're going to run away?". It doesn't seem so silly anymore.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe landing is the hard part.
- Frenchgeek 2y agoOh, no: It's really easy. Doing it twice is the hard part.
- smegger001 2y ago"If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing." Chuck Yeager
- labster 2y agoOne year later, the USAF fared an even worse against a runaway drone. It took two days to put out all of the fires caused by the rockets that missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale
- appplication 2y agoWow, 208 rockets fired and all of them missed. That is way more than I would have thought. Also, I hope those pilots got some training, or maybe they quickly reevaluated the battle worthiness of those rockets. I imagine there are much harder targets to hit than an unmanned drone.
- yencabulator 2y ago> The Mighty Mouse was to prove a poor aerial weapon. Although it was powerful enough to destroy a bomber with a single hit, its accuracy was abysmal. The rockets dispersed widely on launch: a volley of 24 rockets would cover an area the size of a football field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding-Fin_Aerial_Rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding-Fin_Aerial_Rocket
- hn_go_brrrrr 2y agoAlso they had no functional targeting computer or gun sights.
- russfink 2y agoAnd they were not skilled in the ways of the Force.
- actionfromafar 2y agoThey should have used the nuclear Genie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie
- russdill 2y ago
- dctoedt 2y agoOne of the funniest things I've read in awhile — not least, that it took two young pilots from the British Royal Navy, on temporary duty with the Aussie navy under an exchange program, to shoot down the errant aircraft after failures to do so by Aussie navy and air force. I'm sure the RN didn't gloat about that one at all; oh, no, that'd never happen .... (Their attitude would likely have been a dismissive, "Of course — what'd you expect?")
- cbanek 2y agoThis is a good one, but I think the most impressive is the cornfield bomber. The pilot ejected due to a flat spin (just like what happened in Top Gun, RIP Goose). Now a flat spin is a kind of spin and stall that tends to happen when the center of mass and center of lift are in the same place. This can make planes very unstable. So the pilot can't recover and ejects. But this changes the center of mass on the plane, and the plane recovers on its own, and eventually lands itself in a corn field. The plane was eventually returned to service after repairs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
- tristramb 2y agoSurely it should have been called the 'cornfield interceptor'?
- cbanek 2y agoThis makes perfect sense to me. The plane was an interceptor intercepting the ground, there's no bombers at all involved!
- Spooky23 2y agoI imagine that this pilot was heavily trolled after this incident!
- Terr_ 2y agoMaybe, but perhaps they could counter that their piloting skills are so good they don't even have to be in a plane to land it.
- ssl-3 2y ago"It was a great landing," he said at the time. "We even got to use the plane again."
- bombcar 2y agoApparently he was told over the radio to “get back in” while still on parachute.
- mattmaroon 2y agoI was surprised when I first took a flight lesson how easy it is to takeoff and go. You push the throttle all the way in and it takes off on its own. I believe there have been incidents of them flying themselves for hours after a pilot died or was incapacitated. They are built to fly, so they do unless something interferes.
- jffry 2y agoThe ones I could find sounded like autopilot was engaged: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_cras... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King_Air_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Baltic_Sea_Cessna_Citation_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Baltic_Sea_Cessna_Citatio...
- buildsjets 2y ago"In a million-to-one chance the brake failed to hold and although pilot Thrower grabbed a wing strut to check the plane he was quickly forced to jump clear, just avoiding the tail" Parking brakes in light training aircraft of that vintage, if they were even equipped with one, were typically a hole drilled through a metal plate, that was placed on the actuator rod for the brake master cylinder, so that the metal plate would jam on the actuator rod and hold the brakes down when you pulled on a piece of string that was tied to the metal plate. They worked similar to the tab of metal to hold open the damper of a crappy old aluminum-framed screen door. Parking brake failure in aircraft of that era is not a million-to-one scenario, it is the default operating condition. Go down to your local general aviation airfield and peek in the window at the parking brake knob on every Cessna 150 you see, I guarantee that many of them will be placarded INOP, and many of the un-placarded ones are also actually be INOP if you tried to use them. Here's one for sale on eBay. $300 for that bit of junk! No wonder people leave them INOP. https://www.ebay.com/itm/134695710339 https://www.ebay.com/itm/134695710339
- dclowd9901 2y agoJeez, I reckon cars have a more substantial parking brake than that. Though I guess they probably weigh more, and deal with more direct torque…
- quercusa 2y agothe engine failed 10 feet from the ground. Landing the plane in the middle of the strip he climbed out, swung the propellor by hand (there was no self-starter) and the engine immediately roared into life. Early software developer?
- lmpdev 2y agoFor those unfamiliar Punchbowl to coast is well over 10km At the time this would have been a city-wide event
- BoppreH 2y ago> The incident did not quickly subside here. Embarrassing questions were directed in Federal Parliament to. the Government of the day by both Mr C Chambers (Member for Adelaide) and Mr F Daly (Grayndler) during the Budget debate the following month. They asked why was so much money being spent on defence to an Air Force and Navy that took over two hours to shoot down an unarmed light aircraft? ... > The harsh criticism against the Services was unfounded though and despite some initial bad luck the Navy and Air Force had performed creditably on a difficult and elusive “ENEMY”. That was a suspiciously unconvincing conclusion. It made me check check the domain, and sure enough, "navyhistory.au". I wonder if it was even written by the same author.
- rob74 2y agoEr... I mean, what were they supposed to do?! They couldn't just shoot it down and let it crash in an inhabited area, then they could have just as well done nothing and let it crash when it eventually ran out of fuel (less risk of fire). So they had to wait until it was in an area where it could crash without causing too much damage (over the sea) and shoot it down there.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoThe real question is, whatever happened to the Gatwick Airport Drone?
- susam 2y agoIn case you missed it, at the bottom of the article, there is a link to a 10 minute documentary about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k The documentary is quite interesting too!
- oakmad 2y agoFly Navy!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 2y agoNo mention on how expensive that rental was for Thrower. Did he take out insurance on the plane, or was he personally responsible for covering the loss? Did any of the planes that came in for the assist send a bill for their time as well? Everyone seems to be focused on the plane itself, but I want to know about Thrower! That's the part missing to make this a good movie
- mrandish 2y ago> was he personally responsible for covering the loss? Did any of the planes that came in for the assist send a bill for their time as well? I doubt it. People in 1955 had a different (and, IMHO, more balanced) outlook on things like this. Sometimes weird flukes happen. I imagine their default mindset was "Thank goodness no one was hurt" and not "who can we place the blame on and hold legally liable." The plane rental company probably had insurance which covered the loss of the plane and everyone moved on.
- gumby 2y agoWhat happened to Mr Anthony Thrower
- fnord77 2y ago> In a million-to-one chance the brake failed to hold Much more likely: the pilot forgot to engage the brake
- perilunar 2y agoOnce it was over the ocean there was no need to shoot it down. It had already been in the air for 3 hours and probably only had ~4 hours endurance. And it was heading further away from the city. It would have run out of fuel and ended up in the water soon anyway.
- askvictor 2y agoUnless a sea breeze pushes it back over land. Weather forecasting wasn't as detailed back then as it is now
- Sakos 2y agoMan, I would've loved to see a video of something that wild. If it happened today, it would be all over social media.
- emmelaich 2y ago*Auster not Aster
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y agoDeformation professionelle probably but what this makes me think of is how easy it is for a vehicle to enter Accidental Full Self Driving mode, without having any specialised equipment. For cars, just put a brick on the gas pedal and point the car in the right direction, and in some situations the car will "drive itself" for a while; even a long while. For planes or boats it's probably easier to find circumstances where this can go on until they run out of fuel. Once, in another life time, I owned an ancient Horex Regina II 400 cc., a 1953 model and it came with Full Self Driving. To activate it, I simply had to take my hands off the wheel and rest them on the tank. It would keep going straight on its own, without intervention. If the road turned, all I had to do was turn my hips a bit and it would follow along.