070314-N-3659B-155 PACIFIC OCEAN (March 14, 2007) - Members of Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 14 and other flight deck personnel participate in a manual "push back" of an F/A-18E Super Hornet, assigned to the "Eagles" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 115, aboard Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Push backs are necessary to move many aircraft backward because they don't have a way to reverse independently. Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 14 are underway in support of operations in the western Pacific. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joseph M. Buliavac (RELEASED)
Raid On The Sun
Looks like an interesting book. Judging by all the people trying to look at the book cover as I was walking by them, there must be a great deal of interest in the topic.
The back cover has that photo of the pilots and something catches my eye about the one who has his face turned completely sideways, as though he is looking at someone to his right. There's another guy with his face turned sideways, but not as much as the unsmiling one in the second row from the front.
On the cover photo, the first two F-16s do not have Sidewinders on the wingtips and it appears they only have the 84s although I can't remember what any of that would actually look like.
What is it about 1720? Is that a time? Did something happen at 1720? There must be a reason I was making myself remember that number in my symbolic memory.
Wasn't that guy at Microsoft named 'Ariel'? Was his last name 'Netz'? And I think his brother who worked there also was named 'Amir.'
Corbis has the credit for several images in this book. David Rubinger is the name associated with Corbis. Corbis has partial credit for Ramon, as well as the Osirak site. I met someone from Corbis one time, wasn't it when I volunteered for Danskin? She was also a volunteer. But there was also someone I was riding bicycles with one time who worked at Corbis. Let's see......I met her in a new group of cyclists......it was Kate that invited me. Kate was a woman, from England I believe, who worked at Microsoft and I met her at Suzanne Morgans house. I think it was the time Suzanne invited me over for a Christmas party. I liked Kate, she had red hair and there was something else I can't remember that attracted me. She was also a very strong cyclist. That was probably around 2000. I was still riding with Grace Stahre then, as Kate was riding around Mercer Island with Grace and I. I don't remember riding with Grace after the STP of 2000. I did it the next year by myself.
I wrote about this a few years ago. I have a memory of standing in the chow line on the Wainwright and reading the bulletin board on the bulkhead. The XO had put up some clipping from, I think, Jane's about a ship our group had sunk. In the article, the ship was described as "French-built." Someone wrote next to that with an ink pen: "American sunk." As I'm reading through this book about Osirak being "French-built" I think about that every time I see it.
The book indicates that the strike F-16s had two AIM-9s so I'm not sure why the cover doesn't show them. Maybe they had to shoot them. Or it is as happens sometimes when a cover photo includes different details than the story.
Aha....the one-in-four shot. I fired four rounds at that nine-point hitting it with one. In the book, Claire describes that they expected 25%, or one-in-four, or two of us, to be lost on the raid.
There is also that part at the beginning where he describing the gun camera footage as looking like we were in the middle of a Fourth Of July fireworks display. That must be symbolized in my memory as that time in 1988 when we were almost home. And DAMN, that must have been one hell of a ride, because in my memory, there were thousands of rounds fired, tracers all over the place. The thundering jolt of the 5-inch going off. There were all the flares, there was something I wrote a couple years ago where I looked at the flag and saw the "unexpected shadows." I have wondered about that several times, why did I write that?
What could the nine-point represent? Nine pilots? Was I the ninth pilot?
Interesting connection to Saddam and me, as I'm reading, specifically about his attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister of Iraq. He was 21 I think. The author describes them as "hit men." That's what Jayne Donovan called me in 1999.
There is a ninth person, unnamed, in that group photo. I am also wondering if there is a symmetrical element to it, in that there is another person off to the other side and that is the person Haiga is looking at. But if that's not it, that unnamed person could represent me. I wonder what my order was in the strike. They may have made it conditional that they could get the F-16s but only if I flew with them. The U.S. needed that kind of experience too, that is obvious as I'm reading the book.
I started wondering yesterday whether that Letter of Commendation from Captain Chandler actually refers to this event. I have been thinking of that part "displaying exception skill and resourcefulness, Petty Officer Burgess' attention to detail, devotion to duty and continued support were vital to ensuring near perfect operability of the MK152 GMFC computers" or words to that effect.
Who all was in Missile Plot that day in 1988? There was Russell, Claude Cutler, Jim Shea, Larry Johnson, Mark Mogge, me, and 2 or 3 electicians manning the gyro compass. There was that Master Chief too, can't remember his name. He was the only MCPO we had on the ship and he was down there in Missile Plot because the MK152 had once been his speciality. He mainly just sit off in a corner out of the way for most of the time he was down there before he disappeared after a while. Probably went into the Chief's Mess which was directly above Missile Plot.
I've had this memory come up several times lately. It is about me sitting in an office with a woman I worked with. Her husband was from a country in the Middle East. He worked for the utility department. I want to say he maintained equipment that was underground. The part that stands out is when she told me "you were seen." She was talking about that time I was walking home and had to go through a bad neighborhood. Someone saw me going through that neighborhood.
This was probably something relevant to the times, something on a lot of people's minds.
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/1982/Air_Force/DF-ST-82-08836.JPG
A cadet parachutes during training.
Date Shot: 22 May 1981
Thanks George, glad to know you got my back.
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/1986/Navy/DN-ST-86-02950.JPG
Vice President George Bush addresses the 1981 graduating class at the U.S. Naval ACADEMY.
Date Shot: 1 Jun 1981
I know why those ZSU 23's show up in a lot of movies. Other than of course, they are some nasty mo-fo's.
I guess this is the same one. Need to think more about symbolic references in my memory about this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZSU-23-4
The ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" is a lightly armoured, self-propelled, radar guided anti-aircraft weapon system (SPAAG). ZSU stands for Zenitnaya Samokhodnaya Ustanovka, "anti-aircraft self-propelled system". It is named after the Russian Shilka River. Its NATO reporting name is "Awl" (probably because of confusion or association with the Russian word Shilo for "awl").
More likely, it was for "Aw Shit!
This reference to the Ku band stands out in my memory:
The "Gun Dish" radar operates in the Ku band,
The SA-6's are more than I thought too, I was thinking they were comparable to Stingers, but they actually look more like Standard missiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA-6_Gainful
The fairly large missiles have an effective range of 3-24 km (2-15 miles) and an effective altitude of 50-12000m (164-39,370 ft). The missile weighs 599 kg (1321 lb) and the warhead weighs 56 kg (123 lb). Top missile speed is approx. Mach 2.8.
At some point last night, either as I was about to go to sleep or while I was asleep, a message popped into my head that I was the only one to have an air-to-air kill on this strike.
I'm wondering if I was awarded the Navy Cross for my participation in this preemptive strike.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Cross
The Navy Cross may be awarded to any person who, while serving with the Navy, Marine Corps or (in time of war) Coast Guard, distinguishes himself in action by extraordinary heroism not justifying an award of the Medal of Honor. The action must take place under one of three circumstances: while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States; while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or, while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict in which the United States is not a belligerent party. To earn a Navy Cross the act to be commended must be performed in the presence of great danger or at great personal risk and must be performed in such a manner as to render the individual highly conspicuous among others of equal grade, rate, experience, or position of responsibility.
According to the book, those were the -4s. That's freakin' incredible, or so it seems to me for some unexplained reason other than the obvious. And they had 60 of the SAM-6s parked there too. It's incredible no one was knocked down.
I was on that flight to preemptively strike Osirak. Saddamn would have most certainly used any weapons produced from that facility. I didn't care who he used them against, he was a terrorist and needed to be stopped. I was in on the strike because I was being developed into someone that countered his tyrannical leadership.
"The leader Raz held the speed steady at 360 knots"
In my symbolic memory, this what I did in boot camp when we marched in formation. I was at the very front and to the very right. Somebody complained one day why were we traveling so fast and someone else suggested they asked me.
AND, in boot camp, there were two elements to the formation we marched in. We forget the term for those two units, I want to say 'platoon' but that's not right as we didn't use that term. As a group, we were refered to as a 'company.' Generally, the second unit marched along with the main group, but sometimes they split off. The person to my left and I had counterparts in the front of that second unit. That started making me think about my right elbow again, there is a tenderness to it, and I remember something like bone chips under the surface. I am wondering if I didn't tuck it in well enough when I had to eject from an aircraft at some point. I don't think that happened during this event, but I'm not sure. I have been wondering again today if a memory I have of running out of gas in my red Ford relates here. I was on my way to supervising construction of the Senior-class float for the school parade. It's hard to know if these thoughts that come up are the result of memories coming back or they are just imagination. I am wondering again about that thought of me having an air-to-air kill during this operation and I ran out of gas because I engaged another fighter.
"He was not due to break radio silence and check in with Command until the 38-degree-longitude point, about one-quarter the distance to Baghdad, another twenty minutes. Then he would break silence only long enough to utter the code word 'Moscow,' indicating "so far, so good."
I am eager to finish this book. But I am having a lot of trouble concentrating.
I read about one sentence and then my mind drifts off for about 2 minutes. Now it'll be 3 minutes as I know people will start watching me reading.
That was the Junior float actually. I was supervising because I was the class president. Jennifer Jones thought I was too uptight. It had been pouring rain earlier and I was wearing my hunting jacket, which was waterproof. Mark Miller thought that was funny for some reason and asked me if I was going hunting. Years later, there was a style of men's jacket that was popular and I would think about how similar it was to that hunting jacket I wore. They called them "Barn jackets."
ZEEV RAZ
YRRE Y
Z E E V
26 5 5 22
Y R R E
25 18 18 5
T H O M
20 8 15 13
26+5+5+22=58
25+18+18+5=66
20+8+15+13=56
6/7/1981
6 7 1 9 8 1
F G A I H A
HAGAI F
F = Feline? = Katz?
I wonder if I am actually ambidextrous but have been trained to not be able to use my right hand well when writing.
"As Raz had struggled to modify his approach, he saw Yadlin cut in beneath him. Not a bad move, he thought. He pulled all the way back on the stick, angling the F-16 backward and, finally, all the way over, executing a maneuver pilots called an "overturn," an incredible, circuslike loop-de-loop in which his F-16 turned full circle like a Ferris wheel. Raz came swooping down on the dome at a perfect angle."
...
"Nothing was said about Raz missing the navigation. Neither Raz nor Yadlin mentioned that Yadlin had cut in beneath Raz, or the fact that the first two bombs had been dropped by the number two flier. Unmentioned also was Raz's astounding 360-degree backflip over the target, under enemy fire, and then dropping both two-thousand-pounders with 100 percent accuracy."
DAMN damn damn. This explains those recurring dreams I was having a while back. I can't remember when I was having them, seems like it has been during this period of captivity while I was homeless. The recurring element in those dreams was that I was in a pickup, one time in a Jeep, and the vehicle was going backwards. I couldn't get it to start moving forward again. A very disturbing dream. Seems like I wrote in my sleep journal about the last one. Something about me in my red Ford spinning my wheels as I approached a cliff.
The move this book describes that Raz makes over Osirak reminds me of something from a Space: Above And Beyond episode. The character McQueen does something that seems similar in the final sequence when he finally hits the enemy flyer. The episode is title "The Angriest Angel." He had to have some kind of medical implant removed before he could fly again.
What is it also about something Marty Drake, Weapons Officer in Wainwright, said once about "Tail Gunner Charlie"? That is consistent with Ramon being number 8 in the bombing order, but then why do they say that he is the youngest pilot? He would be 5 years older than I.
Maybe this explains a lot. A while back I realized that a place I went to regularly was not charging me sales tax on my purchases. I looked back to some old receipts and noticed they were not charging me tax any time I went in there. One person did one time, but he was new. The other people regularly checked me out and I felt they knew who I was, whoever that is.
As for the ambidextrous theory, I started thinking again about this scar I have on the side of my right wrist. I have been wondering if that is actually a bullet wound and not the burning apple pie I remember while in a day care center. I wonder if that wound caused some nerve damage that affects my dexterity. I am also wondering if that is one of five bullet wounds. There are two right next to each other that I wonder if are separate wounds or if they are entry and exit scars.
Now I understand why Bill Latimer was talking one day at Microsoft about the nature of how an orbiting space craft reenters the atmosphere. He pointed out to someone that I knew what he was talking about. The craft, with the engine pointing in the direction of travel executes a burn which slows the craft down which in turn causes the Earth's gravity to capture it.
I wonder if my salary at Microsoft was encoded to mean something also? I've lost those earning statements along with my other personal items as a result of this imprisonment by Microsoft. There actually is a consistency. The two paychecks I received each months, direct deposits actually, were just over 2000 dollars. That is consistent with their stock option manipulation. Goddamned bastards.
Something nags at my mind about the sequence of events of the actual strike as described in the book. I am wondering if the reality is also detailed in the movie Flight Of The Intruder. I wonder if I realized I would miss the target so I flew over it, gave the other aircraft time to make their approach, which really would have been just a few seconds of delay, then I did the backflip, and dropped my bombs after Ramon made his pass.
THE WORLD
Israeli General Recounts Risky '81 Raid on Iraq Nuclear Reactor
Mideast: Planners overcame many political and technical challenges, commander says. Even esteemed spy chiefs were opposed to the attack.
NORMAN KEMPSTER; Los Angeles Times; May 30, 2001; A.4;
Iraqi press agency reported there were 9 aircraft
New York Times June 9, 1981 page A-1
At 1837 a formation of nine planes raided the nuclear installation
New York Times June 9, 1981 page A-8 Iraqi press statement
This is that a description of one of those dreams that makes me think of that move Raz performed over Osirak:
Sleep journal 2/13/06
In this latest dream, there is a recurring theme, lately it always seems to involve sand. Today I was driving a pickup along a road on a sandy hill. I was trying to stop to talk to someone that was walking along. But then I was traveling backwards, down the hill I think. I put on the brakes but I still keep traveling down the hill and away from the person I wanted to talk to. Then I put the transmission in Drive and pressed the accelerator, but all the wheels did was spin and I kept moving fast backwards, I felt frustrated. I eventually stopped and the person I wanted to talk to caught up with me but I don't remember anything after that. There was some other stuff going on, possibly it was dream manipulation to respond to my metaphor about being in an H-bomb experiment. But the recurring theme has something to do with traveling backwards and not being able to stop where I want to. It actually reminds me of controlling a ship, in that it takes time and space to stop one.
Even more weird, is what do the dreams represent where I need to fire a gun but cannot pull the trigger? Was there some situation where I had to make a quickdraw against a hostile? Are those recurring dreams the result of lingering anxiety about how I survived and my opponent did not because I beat him to the draw? I used to have a damn lot of those dreams, so that probably means something.
I saw this photo of Reagan riding on a horse next to an article that I think was about this raid. Or it might have been something I was looking up on Bekaa Valley, but I'm pretty sure it was this strike.
A while back, I was writing about that time I got my red Ford stuck in the mud while out hunting on that underground pipeline. Could that situation symbolically connect to this strike? The place I got stuck wasn't far from where I hit that 9-point deer, but I am pretty certain represents the Osirak strike, but I'm not sure which event happened first for Kerry, the 9-point or the stuck Ford. That corridor the pipeline passed through, carved out of the trees, reminds of what I was reading in this book, where the stike group went through some kind of radar corridor. There is also a corridor aspect to the travel through Jordan. Assuming I did get shot down or ran out of gas on the way back, I had to walk my way out through the very dark terrain until I found someone that could help. Kerry Burgess found someone that went to the same church to drive him back and pull his truck out. Not sure what happened in reality, assuming that I really was on the ground evading capture. It may represent a local giving me a ride back to friendly terrain. There was also that aspect of everyone back home out searching for me, but I told them I was going hunting in a different place so I was miles away from where they were actually looking for me.
And when I write about that pipeline, if I call it a "buried pipeline" I feel compelled to change that to "underground pipeline." There must be a reason for that.
All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you'd understand?
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/coldplay/speedofsound.html
?????? other sources have a different date, but this one....
X&Y
Coldplay
7. Speed Of Sound
Product Details
Audio CD (June 7, 2005)
Original Release Date: June 7, 2005
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Capitol
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006L16N8/103-8030903-3663036?v=glance&n=5174
Actually, there does seem to be some consistency with the dates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%26Y
X&Y is the third album by British rock band Coldplay, first released in various countries in early June 2005
United States 7 June 2005 Capitol
X & Y
Cross - X
X Y Z - Raz - Ray
Cross and Y cross an' die?
Yesterday I was wondering again why they had me working at Microsoft those last few months with a guy named Abdullah. I was also wondering yesterday what was the name of the King of Jordan, the one who passed away a while back. Today I looked it up and Abdullah is the first name of the current King of Jordan, who took over after his father passed away in 1999.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_II
As I was scanning through these images of this exercise titled "Volant Rodeo," I started thinking about that Simpson's episode where they take a road trip with a cover story of going to a "grammar rodeo."
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/1982/Air_Force/DF-ST-82-07282.JPG
A Royal Canadian Air Force member checks his target for accuracy at the firing range during the Volant Rodeo 1981 competition.
Date Shot: 7 Jun 1981
I wonder why that entry for City of Wilton is listed as 517.58. I wonder if that was the actual distance. Maybe it was the straight line distance. I could figure it out in a couple minutes if I still had the same tools I had before I became homeless. And that's another reason I've been imprisoned in this homeless shelter for so long, so the terrorists can buy more time.
There is also something I was thinking about last night. I remembered that our telephone number on Hicks Road was 6183. Then I remembered this one time I was driving somewhere, traveling between assignments in the Navy, and the odometer on my pickup displayed that number when I looked at it once. I decided to pull off the interstate and call home. Mom said she told one of her friends about it. I was driving that red 1986.5 Nissan XP pickup that was my first brand new vehicle. It was destroyed when Hurricane Hugo hit the Charleston Navy base. I have been looking for 86.5% to show up somewhere, but all I've found so far is 87.5%.
Reading about them riding in that small transport plane for debriefing reminds me of something similar in my memory, I'm pretty sure I wrote about this a couple years ago. I was leaving the Wainwright to return to the States for the end of my enlistment. We were anchored off Monaco and I had to ride in to port in the Captain's gig. Our Senior Chief, who later became Master Chief, met me on the quarterdeck to shake my hand and send me off. I can't remember his name now, but I remember someone on the Wainwright forum mentioned running into him in Florida a while back. I was traveling to Toulon to catch a MAC flight back to Philadelphia I think it was and from there to Charleston. I think it was about a two hour trip from Monaco to Toulon and I had to travel all the way there in the back of the mail truck, sitting cramped up on a bunch of boxes.
http://www.pakistanidefenceforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t55996.html
'For my grandfather'
Zeev Raz's role in the mission remained secret for nearly a decade. Then, in 1991, when Iraqi Scud missiles were hitting Israel during the Gulf War, he was persuaded by the government to go public in a morale-boosting exercise.
Pilot B once relived the mission in a dream, a couple of years afterwards, but the mission had "no special effect" on his career.
Pilot C says life for him after Osirak was very much "business as usual with other missions that were more exciting, including several dogfights".
"I had my first engagement in '82, when I shot a MiG," recalls Pilot A. "With the clashes in Lebanon, it was such a hectic time. Osirak only became interesting again after the 1991 war with Iraq when the issue of weapons of mass destruction came back."
Interesting that the angle of attack, if that is a real phrase, was 35 degrees. That makes me think of that 35-caliber rifle I wrote about a while back that I used to hit that 9-point buck. I also wonder if there were things that happened to me specifically that aren't being reported because my involvement is still classified. And I could have lived the rest of my life with no one knowing that I was involved. That's probably why I was talking back at Microsoft something about not caring about getting credit for something or other. The problem here is that Microsoft decided my life was worth less than Bill Gates wealth and that they are trying to cover up that they triggered several terrorism events such as 9/11. I'm thinking Bill Gates has been stalking me for a lot longer than I realize, probably back to the 80s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5020778.stm
How Osirak was bombed
I don't know where Etzion Air Force base is located, but I assume it is near Elat:
Straight Line Flight Distance Calculator
Starting Point Coordinates
Latitude 29.56 N
Longitude 34.96 E
Destination Point Coordinates
Latitude 33.208 N
Longitude 44.525 E
Calculated Results
Distance Nautical Miles 537.18
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4774733.stm
A secret no more
Col Raz recalls relief, happiness and "some hugs" back on the ground but the celebrations had to wait until the pilots got back to their home base in Israel.
"Even then we didn't have much time to celebrate because we were flown on a small cargo plane to Tel Aviv to debrief with the generals," he says.
Opera
When was that first strike planned, the one that was cancelled? Was it in April?
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/60881a.htm
June 8, 1981
In a world filled with neighbors who resort to violence, neighbors who've lost sight of the shared values and mutual interests, the good will between Mexico and the United States is a blossom whose beauty we meet here to cherish and protect.
God made Mexico and the United States neighbors, but it is our duty and the duty of generations yet to come to make sure that we remain friends. I welcome you today with the pledge that this administration will sincerely and diligently strive to maintain a relationship of mutual respect and cooperation between our two nations and that decisions which affect both sides of our border will be made only after the closest consultation between our governments. Our very proximity is an opportunity to demonstrate to the world how two nations, talking together as equals, as partners, as friends, can solve their problems and deepen their mutual respect.
Now this just brings all kinds of feelings to my mind, it feels as though there are a lot of important key words to this:
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/60881b.htm
Nomination of Thomas Morgan Roberts To Be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
June 8, 1981
Was I missing in action at this point ?????
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/61281b.htm
Remarks on Signing a Resolution and a Proclamation Declaring National P.O.W.-M.I.A. Recognition Day, 1981
June 12, 1981
Or maybe this represents that I had been found or that I had returned.
It looks to me from this video that the aircraft turned completely over. Maybe this was the backflip Claire wrote of. It also looks like a missile or maybe a tracer round went down the port side of the aircraft about 8 seconds into the video.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da680045638/nb/09012da68004568b_16x9_nb.asx
I wonder if that is why they gave me the memories of the Wainwright. But I'm not sure if that means the missile went down the side of me personally while flying in with an F-16 or if it represents that my group overall had a near-miss. I feel as though it is the former, that I, and maybe others, had a near-miss in my aircraft. I suspect there are still more detail that have not been revealed.
I must have met Colonel Raz when they were training in Utah in 1980. I may have been working with them because I had been in Iran earlier that year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/audio/9012da680045250/nb/09012da680045531_au_nb.asx
I need to study that video more but it is hard to concentrate on it. My impression is that the aircraft did the so-called backflip, then rolled upright, then turned to starboard to reacquire the target. That seems to be consistent with what I was writing about that 9-point buck coming in from my right and then stopping in front of me. There are also those background noises. I think most of it is some kind of threat receiver from weapons radar including missiles perhaps. I am thinking there is also some kind of stall alarm going off too.
I wonder if this was the Etzion Air base? I read that Egypt owns the territory now that Etzion was on. Perhaps that is why Microsoft positioned Reham around me as she told me she was of Egyptian descent. And she looks similar to someone I think I used to know.
http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=aN.nxz4gjkwxtct_Etzion%253f___
There is that scene in Top Gun where the guy they call Hollywood congratulates Maverick on such a "gutsy" move. I have also been wondering about that part where Viper is talking about Maverick's dad and that he "got it right." The part about the wrong line on a map.
I also am conflicted about feeling that I may not have made it back to Etzion with the other 8. But then how did they get the video. I guess they could have pulled it out of the wreckage. Don't know.
I saw what looked like two AAA bursts too upon further inspection. One was after that maneuver I guess is the overturn. And there is one burst that looks really close, as though fragments probably hit the aircraft.
I suddenly remembered that 17 miles was the distance from Ashdown to Texarkana. I thought of that as I was thinking about that 517 value from City of Wilton.
I've been thinking for several days that my F-16 crashed into the Gulf of Aqaba, just short of the airbase, assuming it is that nearby airport. Maybe I only made it back 517 miles before I had to eject. Maybe I was 17 miles from the base before I ran out of gas. I've been thinking that the luxury yacht described in Claire's book pulled me out of the water. Perhaps that is why I was thinking a few months ago, I think I wrote about it within the past year, about feeling as though I was drifting in the ocean, having completed my mission and hoping someone would find me.
Rodger Claire wrote of that overturn maneuver as a loop-de-loop, as something similar to a Ferris Wheel. That would mean the maneuver covered 360-degrees. That reminds me of that evaluation process I used that time at Microsoft that had something about 360 in its name. I remember how I got 14 of 21 people to complete it within the span of a Friday afternoon. Anyway, it's hard to say what kind of maneuvers happened based on that gun camera video. I got the impression at the end that the camera swiveled around to keep sight of the targt as the aircraft banked to starboard. Not sure if the pilot did that manually or what kind of automatic control the camera uses. Need to look that up. I also started remembering how Cage's character did a loop in that Apache helicopter in Firebirds.
There was also that scene in top Gun where Maverick aborts his landing and Goose says something about not having enough gas to go back for Cougar.
I calculated the flight, or what I guess is the straight distance, from what I think is the old Etzion air base to Osirak as 545 nautical miles. That is also a value in Claire's book that I recall as indicating the low-range estimate as the mission distance. The mission distance would be farther than the straight line distance, from what I gather, but Claire may have deliberately thrown in that detail as the mission distance, or that is what his sources told him.
C4886-10A, President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan greet King Hussein I and Queen Noor of Jordan for the State Dinner at the North Portico of the White House. 11/2/81.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/photographs/large/c4886-10A.jpg
I’ve been thinking for several days about one scene from the movie Red Dawn. It’s that part where the downed Air Force pilot talks about, I think he says this as I haven’t seen that movie in a long time, how it was 4 to 1 and he got three. That is consistent with Claire’s book about the flyers on the preemptive strike to Osirak having at least a 1 in 4 chance of not making it back in their aircraft. In Top Gun, if memory serves, Viper tells Maverick that his father had been wounded, but returned anyway and got 3 before he “bought it.”
I wonder if the raid was originally planned for April 13, 1981. Claire’s book mentions 5/10/81 as the first date. But if that is an “April 16th” date, then the first date would work out to 4/13/81. I wonder if the Iranians dropped those mines to try to hit a U.S. ship on 4/13, but it didn’t happen until the next day.
Operation Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel
The Hebrew version of the name of the city and the tower, Babel, is attributed in Gen. 11:9 to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew.
This must be why Microsoft pulled Dilbert from the company newsletter, because Microsoft triggered 9/11:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Of_Babel_%28Dilbert_episode%29
Tower Of Babel is the eighth episode of the Dilbert animated series to be produced, and the seventh to be aired. It was originally aired on March 22, 1999.
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The new building, a skyscraper, is built like the Tower of Babel. It also includes various buildings and landmarks from around the world, such as the World Trade Center
