F14 shoot down of an Air Force F4

[Malo83]

Too real training.

The Bizarre Story Of How A Navy F-14 Shot Down An Air Force F-4

In 1987, an F-14 flying from the USS Saratoga shot down an Air Force RF-4C from within visual range during training in Europe.

www.yahoo.com

 

[BusyLittleShop]

Mercy!!! he had the F4 in gun range...

 

[ka9mnx]

Carrying live ammo during an exercise? That's a new one on me.

 

[Tikka]

RAF Did same thing in 1982. Luckily, the Pilot was not killed. Phantom shot down a Jaguar with a Sidewinder whilst doing a practice intercept.

There is a video about it on YouTube. I can't get it to link for some reason. Phantom vs Jaguar Germany 1982.

 

[Astro14]

Carrying live ammo during an exercise? That's a new one on me.

We often flew with live weapons. We had dummy sidewinders to use in air - air practice. Locking the IR seeker on target was an essential skill. But we flew with live ones during exercises, too. Ordnancemen needed practice in loading, servicing, and arming/dearming the weapons.

So, yeah, live weapons.

We were extraordinarily careful with live weapons on the airplane. Master arm (an airplane safety) stayed in the off position. Weapons would be selected, but no trigger squeeze took place. We had both “firebreaks” in place. By removing two requirements for weapon release, we were operating safely even though the weapons were live.

This pilot selected the weapon (OK), went master arm ON (not OK) and squeezed the trigger (really, really not OK).

He suffered from a cognitive delusion that the F-4 had somehow “gone rogue” and was an actual, not simulated/exercise, threat to the carrier.

There’s even more to the story, but I’m not sure it’s yet public, so I will decline to elaborate, but there was one more step beyond the normal master arm, selection, lock, and trigger squeeze, that he had to take to shoot the F-4, so even though the Good Lord himself intervened to prevent this, LT Dorsey rammed through that firebreak and divine hint that this was a mistake and fired the missile.

Thus completing his delusional “mission”.

It took a real idiot to make this mistake. 30+ years later, it still makes no sense to me.

None at all.

 

[ka9mnx]

I guess flying with live ammo during training was a Navy thing? However, we did fly with "dummy" bombs that were about fifteen inches long, and painted blue, that had a huge shot gun looking shell that set off a very small explosion and small smoke trail when conducting bombing runs. There were areas, Travis AFB, and out West, where we did use live ammo for shooting down drones.

 

[Astro14]

I guess flying with live ammo during training was a Navy thing? However, we did fly with "dummy" bombs that were about fifteen inches long, and painted blue, that had a huge shot gun looking shell that set off a very small explosion and small smoke trail when conducting bombing runs. There were areas, Travis AFB, and out West, where we did use live ammo for shooting down drones.

No. It's a fighter aircraft thing. We dropped inert bombs. We dropped live bombs. We carried dummy missiles. We carried live missiles.

We needed to carry the real thing for pilot training, ordnance personnel training, and weapon system checks. So did USAF.

 

[RedSpider]

My friend was a good 10+ years into his flying career before he ever fired a live missile, and he was downright giddy talking about it. I was surprised (or ignorant, or naive) and figured it was fairly common, but he said "If you knew how much they cost, you wouldnt be so surprised." Then I was assigned to a project for my company producing engineering reports at a plant that produces timers, sensors, and fuses for air defense and then it all made sense.

Apparently, they arent cheap....

 

[Astro14]

My friend was a good 10+ years into his flying career before he ever fired a live missile, and he was downright giddy talking about it. I was surprised (or ignorant, or naive) and figured it was fairly common, but he said "If you knew how much they cost, you wouldnt be so surprised." Then I was assigned to a project for my company producing engineering reports at a plant that produces timers, sensors, and fuses for air defense and then it all made sense.

Apparently, they arent cheap....

Nope. Not cheap at all. The AIM-54 that I shot in training was $980,000.

Call it a million bucks.

For one trigger squeeze.

But we got some great data on the performance of the missile since it carried a telemetry package in lieu of the warhead, and we shot it in a very challenging scenario.

The AIM-120 costs about 1.2 million these days.

Again, you have to load the live weapon, to connect the missile to the aircraft to ensure that the missile and aircraft communicate correctly. The missile itself is more sophisticated that people realize. It’s not an artillery round. The airplane and missile communicate.

In the case of the AIM-9, the seeker itself is connected to the airplane weapon system, and interfaces with the helmet mounted cueing system. There are audible signals, and tracking data, that are presented to the pilot via those interfaces.

Only way to check that stuff is to load the live weapon and make sure it works.