Hours and HOURS of doing this stuff…
Bonus points if you can guess what kind of ship that is…
This was always the ‘fun’ shot… Right over the top and hope to hell they didn’t stuff ‘something’ up your ass as your went over…
And those were ‘roughly’ at 200 feet off the water…
And an ‘unusual’ view of a drop to provide something to a ship at sea…
If the crew was really ‘good’ the boat didn’t even have to put a small boat in the water, they could just use a boathook to pick up the package…
We did one in 1976 for a Tall Ship for some medicine and they wanted it ‘close aboard’…
If I remember correctly, it ended up in the rigging… 🙂
It looks like one of the four Kirov class cruisers. I think that they’ve been re-named and they’re now the Admiral Ushakov class. (Did I win a rifle or maybe a Kimber .45 or something for being right?)
Looks like one of the Kiev class battlecruisers…….Was I right? Was this the one that was armed with the SAM-12(the naval version?)
LL- LOL, you’re right, no you didn’t win anything… I’m a cheep bastid… 🙂
Bob- Kirov… Close though!
I’d accept 10,000 rounds of .22LR as a consolation prize.
I recall some of the P3C pilots talking about buzzing Russian ships in the Aleutians, and joking about how if they’d had a tailhook, they could have dragged ’em into port.
I thought they were kidding, at the time. 🙂
Nah, us Adak-ians never hooked anybody but I seem to recall dropping out of a low overcast a couple of hundred yards behind two frigates, barreling in between them with cameras whirring like mad, and zooming back up into the ‘cast. Not sure they even got a visual on us.
Heh….
And now I am absolutely sure that at some time a P-3 crew “accidentally” dropped something on one of Ivan’s canoes. There is no way in hell there are going to be two generations worth of air crews flying those kind of missions without somebody deciding to deliver a present.
I’d say the likeliest victim would have been one of the “trawlers” that netted more RF than tuna. Something about them being slightly less likely to voice their displeasure in a way that requires a maintenance down check for the bird.
So what was the “bomb load”?
Water balloon?
Paint?
Something more unpleasantly organic?
A box full of gay porn?
Spam?
BGM
While I am, no doubt, a day late and a dollar short, I am rather proud that I, an old broken down USAF MSgt, correctly discerned that said Soviet warship was a Kirov class battle cruiser.
I know, I know, lucky guess.
Looks like fun!
Aw, darn. I was gonna say Kirov.
And that’s some pretty slick flying. Jealous I am. 4-engined large plane at 200 feet = ok, but if a single-engined small Cessna 172 flies any lower than 500 feet AGL, the FAA gets pissy. How is that fair, exactly?
I was going to say Kirov, as well. So it goes.
Aw, that’s easy. It’s not flying Old Glory from the masthead, so obviously it’s a target. 😀
I’m gonna guess Kirov.
Okay, it’s not a guess.
The Kalinin.
Generically speaking, I’d say it was a “good” one ’cause it is floating and moving!Do I win some of that nothing stuff you cheap ole ‘stang?
OBTW the guy in the left seat only gets a 9.8. He missed the CL by about 10′.
I’m thinking that ‘in the rigging’ is about as close aboard as you can get.
LL- THAT is worth more than a gun now… sigh…
Rev- Nope! 🙂
25Zulu- Oh yeah… You just ‘hoped’ the radar alignment was ON!!! 😉
BGM- Lets just say there ‘were’ things dropped… 😀
Old AF- I know the feeling… late is not bad though…
WSF- Yep, we had a mission, and went and did it!
Murph- It’s not! But we were from the Gubbermint, and there to ‘help’… 🙂
CM- Yep!
ipcard- LOL, that too!
Ed- LOL
CS- Kirov, but I don’t know the hull number…
Ev- That you do! 🙂 And yeah, CL was off by a tad, they must not have listened to the FE giving them left and right cues…
MC- True! And if I remember, we got cussed out for it…
Which theater was it?
Atlantic or Pacific?
Really rough WX Newport to Bermuda yacht race. Looking for damaged sailboats. We stay at 300 ft and see a big white coastie c-130 pass by UNDER us. Just showin off I guess but I never bad mouthed them after that. As for dropping stuff on the Ruskies we figured one of our box lunches would be the worst we could do!
So, I take penalty points because I don’t need to guess to ID it as a Kirov?
Seems kind of mean.