- Some Prowler action for you from Desert Storm
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Cold War revisited
- Thread starter HeyJoe
- Start date
Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
Divorced first. Then married again and again divorced. In between, am running the logistics business across CIS and... reading AW!
Saw an interesting claim a while back that they fuselage width was the same as the B-29 to help ease the transition from making Tu-4's to Tu-95s, haven't been able to find anything since to back that up but according to the internets they are both about 9 feet and 5 or 6 inches wide.
Many of their's are brand new though.
Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
BTW this is the only Soviet ship that ever had a live missile solution on USN aircraft carrier. It was 1973 in Med against USS Independens or USS Roosevelt, sources vary. 4K44 missiles from those ugly launchers were ready to go. But... During this time a crowd of A-4 Skyhawks, though written off USN service, was transiting Med enroute to Israel just to restore IAF inventory after Yom Kippur war losses to Egyptian SAM batteries. A-4s with some KA-3 tankers were flying from Azores to Israeli bases with intermediate stop on Roosevelt. Not knowing that, the 5th (Med) Soviet Squadron staff became afraid that there is another carrier (or two, given the number of the Skyhawks) in vicinity they are not aware of, nor being able to find her (or them). That is how the A-4s saved the carriers and world. Again
Then there was the first time that we tried messing with the Soviet snoopers and tattletales as part of NATO exercise Northern Wedding in 1982. Rear Admiral Tuttle was a leading strategy/tactics innovator and he had USS America in constant high speed mode dodging here and there not only in the GIUK gap but the English Channel as well. The Bears had their work cut out for them since we left the AGI in our dust along with the lurking subs. One day, a squadron mate got vectored on this snooper near the English Channel but could not get an ID. He kept calling it a Badger, but the E-2C apparently knew it was something else. My skipper was airborne and knew I was on an adjacent CAP station. He called me on our tactical net and “Get over there and figure out what that is!” I had my camera ready and captured this image of this relatively rare beast. How’s everyone’s recce skills? Any guesses??
Fortunately that very picture is used on Wiki for the Bison. Very cool. Ok maybe not the exact same picture. It’s in the “operational history” section.
Myasishchev M-4 - Wikipedia
Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
That is another one of my pictures taken during same encounter. Only time I ever saw one was that day when Soviets launched everything but the kitchen sink to find USS America. The closer a carrier battle group got to the motherland, the more reaction was elicited and if they did not visually confirm the carrier daily, more and more assets began searching.Fortunately that very picture is used on Wiki for the Bison. Very cool. Ok maybe not the exact same picture. It’s in the “operational history” section.
Myasishchev M-4 - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
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Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
As a father of TACAMO he probably supposed this is something similar. But our TACAMO platform is a version of Bear F, namely Tu-142MR or Bear J. The only Navy airplane with communication WSO aboard, who has to be previously qualified submariner with specialization in Naval communication means
Max, we need more Russian/Soviet sea stories and pictures. Very cool.
I'm well aware..and the threat they pose. Looks like the Badger is loaded for action.
While we were operating deep inside the vast Vestfjord, NATO was tasked to attack us on a regular basis since we couldn’t exactly schedule the Soviet 392 ODRAP Regiment (even though they showed up daily). This B-52 came looking for us one overcast day. So we intercepted it over the North Sea. Just happened to pick up a VS-32 S-3 A Viking along the way.
I always admired the disinformation coup that the Russians pulled off at the 1955 May Day airshow with the multiple M-4 flybys. The surprise bomber fleet was a little too good to be true but Western intel fell for the ruse. We really freaked out over it and that event was what kicked off a shit ton of spending on air defense over the next few decades.
Reagan did something sort of similar with SDI/"Star Wars" in the 1980s. SDI was a little too good to be true but the Russkies believed it enough to spend a lot of rubles on ICBMs (more than they could afford once the price of oil dropped).
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Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
That was never easy to find a carrier if TACAN is off. That is why the tattletales were of great value: once found, carrier shouldn't been lost.