TBT…

Posted on by November 5, 2014

An ‘interesting’ document if you want to get a feel for how the USSR planned to kill the US, Brit and French carriers…

Suffice to say Kamikaze plans were alive and well…

Document link is HERE.

As one of the commenters said last week, John Q. Public has absolutely no idea how close things came a few times…

And Putin is putting all those ‘players’ back in motion today. Probing, flying ‘training’ missions in the Baltic, pushing a Russian surface group back into the Med, etc.

Today, we don’t have access to a lot of the bases we needed then and may need again. The Brits no longer have an ASW aircraft in their Fleet, neither do the Dutch.  The French and Germans are still flying Atlantiques, and the Spanish are still flying P-3s…

Playing ‘tag’ with the Bears was always a challenge, and while there was ‘some’ camaraderie (hey, we’re all airdales regardless of country), they’d still do their damnest to knock us out of the air if we screwed up.  We’d show them Playboys and they’d shoot us the bird, or we’d show them beer and they’d show us vodka…

Bear and P3

From Wikipedia (HERE)

A Soviet Tu-142M aircraft (NATO code “Bear F Mod 3”) being escorted by a U.S. Navy Lockheed P-3C-155-LO Orion (BuNo 159319) of patrol squadron VP-45 Pelicans, on 6 March 1986.

Not my squadron, not my airplane in this case… 🙂 But the time period is right…

h/t Stretch

Comments

TBT… — 15 Comments

  1. It would be interesting to see how Putin might behave differently if Reagan were president. Sadly, that ship has sailed into the sunset and we’re stuck with the pathetic little metrosexual freak.

  4. Nice pic. I’ve seen LOTS of photos of Bears being intercepted by various fighter types, but never one of a P-3 and a Bear.

  5. Downsizing always comes back to bite us … and the Dimocrits never fail to ignore their own history.

  7. It never pays to underestimate the adversary — and the Bear is a very impressive airplane, even if it is Russian.

  8. For what ever reason, as a kid, I saw an episode of “Wings of the Red Star” on the Discovery Channel that was about the Tu-95. And I just knew that those Red Bastards were going to sink all our carriers. And then I read “Red Storm Rising”, which certainly didn’t help.

  9. Huh, when I was a kid I caught an episode of “Wings of the Red Star” and was petrified of the Tu-95. And then I read “Red Storm Rising” and had nightmares about Backfire bombers with Flanker escorts.

    I thought we won the Cold War????

  10. That is a cool pic. I have played hell explaining to our little ones that a cold war is not where one side freezes the other side to death *sigh*

  12. Ian- That it is… sigh…

    SPE- Well, we ‘did’… The first time… Now in Cold War ver 2.0 and it’s NOT a sure thing…

    JUGM- Sorry… 🙂

    Rick- Agreed!

  13. Historical Side Note: An analysis of the impact of the Walker Spy Ring lead to the depressing conclusion that the Soviets could have inflicted 50%+ sink rate on the US Fleet and resupply/reinforcement of Europe would have been impossible. Soviet air and fleet losses would have been staggering. But the Red Army would have overrun Western Europe and Scandinavia (Finland would be an interesting chapter). This, of course, assumeed it remained a nuke free engagement. Big assumption.

  14. I think Putin’s decided he wants Ukraine back.
    If he applies enough pressure across the board, he knows our half-wit kowtowing president will fold.

    Don’t I remember our president saying something about “tell Vlad to wait until after the election.”??