F/A-18 dragging banner?

[Nose]

I'm pretty sure this is the banner that moms hang in their window when their son goes to war.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if we strafe all the military moms, won't we get into some sort of trouble?

 

[A4sForever]

I know we used to use painted bullets and then lay the banner out next to the hangar post-flight...and count the hits by color..... I've been in the tractor...and watching a guy get real sucked and seeing smoke from the gun always made me cringe.

Same-o, same-o .... except we counted T-2 .50 cal hits instead of 20mm ..... We didn't shoot live ammo in the A-4 as it was a "strafing" gun and had a slight designed barrel "whip" built into it -- potentially hazardous for the Tractor.

The hard thing in the T-2 was getting hits as your gunsight was frequently "down" (you were lucky to get a good gunsight in VT-4) ... i.e., the gyro was tits-up and you had to use Kentucky windage to get hits with what was basically an iron sight ---your lead pursuit curve made the Tractor Driver's eyes get big at times ... "DON'T PRESS THE BANNER" was usually the radio call !!!! (You had to do that to get hits with a non-lead computing gunsight). What he really meant was: "DON'T POINT YOUR .50 CAL'S AT ME"!!! It was a conundrum: press the banner and get hits (and perhaps a down ... ) .... or don't and perhaps get no hits.

The concept of sucked and acute in the gun runs was always one of the hardest for the STUDs to comprehend in a 3-dimensional gun pattern plane when briefed and drawn on a 2-dimensional chalk board in the briefing room.

Good times, good flyin' ... the first times we really "max performed" the birds....

 

[A4sForever]

Back in the day, ......There was an F-8 driver that shot up two different tractor A-4's in the gunnery pattern.....there was bad blood against him for years after that by the A-4 drivers.

Those Attack pukes just have no sense of humor ....

 

[Squid]

Squid, you're in VMFAT-101, have you done guns yet?

I made my way out of there and into the fleet. We did guns, just A/G strafe with real BB's.

 

[Nacho]

The fleet still uses the banner for A/A guns. The pattern's in the tac man (not the squirrel cage).