From: Bill Lucy 

Out of darkness, Robert Comer says...
> > Flying close my ar*e. just about every photo of a TU95 or even Backfire
> had
> > an F14 or F4 or similar "in the shot" & pretty darn close.
>
> The Bear was a bomber, not an unarmed surveillance plane -- (isn't a TU95
> also a bomber and the backfire definitely was a bomber.)  And that was all
> during the cold war.

ROTFL!

Both the Bear and the Badger (perhaps the Backfire, but I doubt it) have been used
as spy planes since they've been operational. I've seen more than one Tu95 in my
life, courtesy of my experiences in the US Navy. It was a running joke that
a weekly Tu16 flight from Kamchatka past Japanese coastal radar
installations was called "Tokyo Express".

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