>be drop tank
>be designed to be dropped when not needed
>it's a huge fricking deal if you drop them and can ruin your career
why are air forces like this?
>be drop tank. >be designed to be dropped when not needed
>be drop tank
>be designed to be dropped when not needed
>it's a huge fricking deal if you drop them and can ruin your career
why are air forces like this?
If you dont need to drop it, and drop it, you should be punished.
>be crumple zone
>be designed to be crumpled in a crash
>people call you an Asian/female driver if you crumple them
I am having an intense sense of deja-vu
They don't call them drop tanks because you can drop them
>ruin your career
Huh?
If you drop it in a situation where you shouldn't have, you can and will likely be fricked career-wise unless you know someone or have some other connections. Pretty sure those drop tanks cost more than the pilot's salary in a year.
It's still an expensive piece of equipment, if you drop it without good reason (next to none during peacetime/outside of combat) it's money wasted.
And it'll be a bigger deal if you don't drop them when your motor quits on launch
Why do Americans use drop tanks to carry dogs?
There aren't too many other options. Strapping a dachshund to a missile launch rail looks funny and gets attention, but the dog gets REALLY unhappy above 300 knots.
Because drilling doggos for bomb lugs is bloody and PETA objects.
>give you ejector seat
>give you parachute
>teach you how to ditch the plane
>get really upset when you ditch the plane and ask why you did it
it's basically a dumb bomb at that point
can you just drop low grade bombs whenever you want because you think it's cool?
>drop shit in toilet
>nobody care
>drop shit on head of person walking past my window
>everybody mad
Wow, so shitting is illegal? I thought this was a free country.
>use my external fuel tank to extend my range
>drop it since it’s empty, that’s what you do
>fly home
>ground crew big mad when they see the conformal tanks are gone
WOOOOWWWWWW WAY TO JUMP ON MY NUTS GUYS
>be ejection seat
>be designed to eject
>it's a huge deal if you eject
No one is going to give a frick if you dropped the tanks to defend from an incoming missile.
No one is going to give a frick if you ejected after getting hit.
If you do either without a good reason people are going to question your decision making skills.
When napalm was dropped (e.g. Vietnam) it's usually a thing like this. Was that by design (mix the gel/fuel while it tumbles unaerodynamically), or simply because they modified drop tanks?
The tumble on some napalm canisters was more so the napalm would get spread over a large area once the canister was broken, and to make sure the canisters don't continue in an arc in the direction of travel like a normal bomb would.
It's also both helps the dropping aircraft get away from the fireball at low altitude, and helps make sure they separate from the aircraft in a reliable way.
IIRC there were also some incendiary bombs/canisters that could be used either way depending on what nosecone and tail assembly was attached, either dropped from low altitude in a tumbling state or from higher altitude using a bombsight.
Nape cans were specific to the task and later had side doors added and spun aluminum nose cones to make them into travel pods at which duty they outlived the Phantoms of their production era.
I dug out the last two green new old stock nape cans from the Shaw stash in the 1990s. Sheet Metal fabs the doors and spins the cones. There's a T.O. for it somewhere.
Picrel shows door details.
Frick
Everything has it's place, but roof of a car during is not one of them.
Literally, unironically, not my problem.
deserved
>toyota, citroen and fiat
and nothing of value was lost
Dropping them on the ground during maintenance means whoever managed to do that was a negligent dumbfrick and the rest of the tank hanging team weren't watching. Alternate option, failure to strap to tank dolly then towing until it falls. Consequences were not horrible but LOR for sure.
They are not called "drop tanks" in current military aviation. That's a WWII/Korean era term for truly disposable externals intended to be dropped because of excess drag and leakage.
Modern external tanks last as long as the aircraft unless tossed for extremely rare combat missions. My squadron (33 FS) only jettisoned four in Desert Storm where the lead (a Viet Nam vet) kept his but the two green Lts flying with him dumped theirs. Fricker was half Cherokee and wore warpaint on the first combat sortie. If he'd smiled any harder when he came back his head would have split.
>war Cherokee war paint on his first combat sortie
Based
WWII drop tanks were literally made out of waxed cardboard.
>Fricker was half Cherokee and wore warpaint on the first combat sortie.
Unbelievably based.