My grandmother, my aunt and my (very young) mother came out in the Berlin airlift.
She died in 2017, but in speaking with my grandmother she noted that Russian fighter tactics of the immediate post-war period were similarly agricultural.
She recalled looking out of the window of a C-47 at Russian fighters engaged in some particularly aggressive formation flying. My aunt was too young to understand the detail, but recalls it all being rather exciting.
eurogaguest1980 wrote:
but the boys that I know who are were shocked at the horrible intercept procedure.
Dumping fuel on other aircraft is not exactly normal intercept procedure in any case 
They weren’t intercepting. They were trying to lit the ting on fire, or perhaps shut down the engine? but failed. Same result though
Peter wrote:
I once spoke to a UK pilot, ex F4, who said he flew a Mig, and the lack of backups etc on it was atrocious
“a Mig” is not really very precise, is it. A 21 or 17 are old airplanes which would have to be compared to stuff like the F4 or the Hunter and similar. I don’t recall that the Hunter had a lot of backups either. They were constructed as fighting machines and expendable. If it breaks too badly, eject and go take another one out of the shelf.
I know a guy who used to organize Mig29 and SU27 flights in Russia before all this. He kept telling me that they got quite a lot of “clients” who were far more than simple tourists and most of them came away quite impressed from their flights. Also Germany operated a squadron of ex GDR 29’s initially after the fall of the wall. Both of those fighters are quite capable and very much advanced from the older Mig 17 or 21 models. And all of them are capable of quite a lot more than 4.5 G.
Myself I have limited experience with Russian built airplanes other than the AN2, which I found to be a very well built and extremely sturdy airplane (then again, Antonov is Ukrainian), plus the TU154M which also was built to withstand the not always easy operations over there. I never felt unsafe in either. Not to forget all the aerobatic Suchoi and Yakovlev planes which still make up a large extent of the aerobatic fleets all over.
One of the french “military experts bloggers” quotes that the Su27 made 19 attempts to rince the reaper with kerozen…
I am surprised they did not come up with some sticky chaff/metallic powder that would just cling to the reaper and mess-up all its spy electronics without actually bringing it down. A bit of graffiti on the toy instead of outright breaking it … but then Russkies were never known for subtlety…
What’s perhaps interesting is the mild reaction from US officials. Something to do with the balloon season in the US?
Interesting comments at 11:00 here in relation to the fuel dumping.
Apparently it’s not a built in mechanism for fuel dumping but rather a mechanism for increased thrust which results in lots of unburnt fuel being left behind. So it’s not a fuel dump mechanism but something that resulted in the same thing.
dublinpilot wrote:
Apparently it’s not a built in mechanism for fuel dumping but rather a mechanism for increased thrust which results in lots of unburnt fuel being left behind. So it’s not a fuel dump mechanism but something that resulted in the same thing.
Sounds rather weird IMO.
@dublinpilot: He used word ‘forsage’, i.e. he was talking about afterburners. So, perhaps it was just afterburners, but without extra ignition for afterburning? That makes the most sense to me.
From some telegram channel from Ukrainian military, this was afterburners being used but without igniting the fuel. I am surprised that it didn’t ignite from the exhaust, but perhaps they did some mod to direct it away.
