[8]3|Moody
26th February 2008, 19:28
Cool quote from an interesting article, the rest can be found at the bottom of the page.
After weeks of sorties and dropping no bombs in Afghanistan:
"A typical mission (26 hours from get up to go to bed) went like this: take off, fly a few hours north and take on 20,000 gallons from a tanker. Fly another couple of hours to Afghanistan. Bore holes in the sky for several hours waiting for a tasking. Turn south and carry all the weapons back to the island. Hours flown: around 17. Distance covered: about 8,000 miles. Weapons dropped: 0. Difference made: unknown.
Our long flights seemed to result in little more than bone-tired crews and hours of maintenance work for our crew chiefs. This went on for six weeks.
At the end of February, we got the first indication that we were indeed making a difference. We received an e-mail message from a group of British special forces soldiers.
They had encountered a force of Taliban and began to negotiate the enemy's surrender. Soon both sides realized the Brits were outnumbered and outgunned. The negotiations began to go badly. Then one of the Brits noticed the contrail of a B-52 overhead. He reminded the Taliban negotiator of the Buff's presence. The negotiations then proceeded smoothly and the Taliban surrendered."
From:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/11/mil-021114-usaf01.htm
After weeks of sorties and dropping no bombs in Afghanistan:
"A typical mission (26 hours from get up to go to bed) went like this: take off, fly a few hours north and take on 20,000 gallons from a tanker. Fly another couple of hours to Afghanistan. Bore holes in the sky for several hours waiting for a tasking. Turn south and carry all the weapons back to the island. Hours flown: around 17. Distance covered: about 8,000 miles. Weapons dropped: 0. Difference made: unknown.
Our long flights seemed to result in little more than bone-tired crews and hours of maintenance work for our crew chiefs. This went on for six weeks.
At the end of February, we got the first indication that we were indeed making a difference. We received an e-mail message from a group of British special forces soldiers.
They had encountered a force of Taliban and began to negotiate the enemy's surrender. Soon both sides realized the Brits were outnumbered and outgunned. The negotiations began to go badly. Then one of the Brits noticed the contrail of a B-52 overhead. He reminded the Taliban negotiator of the Buff's presence. The negotiations then proceeded smoothly and the Taliban surrendered."
From:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/11/mil-021114-usaf01.htm