EH>>> His claim is to have been a weapons mechanic.

 BK>>  His training specialty.

 EH>>> He even claimed to have worked with sidewinder missiles.

 BK>>  Which, as a trainee, he might well have done.

 BA> I'm inclined to think that one works either with guns or
 BA> with missiles, rarely with both - and as a trainee, never.

 If you are working on the aircraft on the flightline I would
 expect you would load or mount whatever weapons were necessary.

 BA> Obviously the gun is on the airplane and the missiles hang
 BA> on the wing, so anybody even near the thing is going to be
 BA> able to see both up close and personal, but that's about
 BA> the extent of it.

 Somebody's gotta hang those missiles on the wing. Oh, and the
 missiles might be in a pod also. I don't know if the sidewinder
 was ever mounted that way or not.

 BA> My flightline experience is limited to EC-47s and driving a
 BA> motor vehicle on it (there are a lot of arcane rules for
 BA> operating motor vehicles around aircraft).  We did have

 We didn't have "arcane" rules all that much, mostly in SAC we
 had rules about how you enter and leave the flight line, and if
 you forgot them you got to talk to the sky-cops.

 BA> Sandys (A1Es) and Stingers (AC119s) (and, briefly,
 BA> Gunfighters (F4Cs) and Spectres (AC130s)) there (Nakhon
 BA> Phanom RTAFB) but they weren't in our area of the line.  I

 Never worked on a fighter. Did work on cargo and bombers, and
 the occassional helicopter. Oh, and FAC spotter planes. The O1A
 and O2A and U10.

 BA> did get to see some of them 'up close and personal,'
 BA> though; durn near ran into the side of a Spectre one
 BA> moonless night in an unlit area on the south end of the
 BA> field (got within about 30 feet of it) - the d*mn thing is
 BA> the closest thing there is to invisible at night.

 Worked on HC-130s, but never AC-130s. Never saw one actually.


BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... ... Dyslexia.  It can warn without striking.
 * Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg]
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5a