Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
Bifff15 -
"If you pick only the last 3-5 years then yes, there has been a lot of action in the Middle East and the bomb droppers have been tasked heavily. If you want to roll back all the way back to pre-Desert Storm 1 then just pull up the flying hours of ALL the fighter aircraft (I'm keeping this narrow folks) involved and look at which fleet has the most hours for it's age. I don't remember seeing the bomb droppers in the CAP between the hours of sunset plus two to sunrise plus 2 for the majority of my rotations. My biggest fear was falling asleep going North and not having enough fuel to make it home once I woke up."
This was meant for the AF folks on the forum right? Because I'm pretty sure that the USN F-14s and USN/USMC Hornets have been doing quite a bit of the same job on those sweet little cruises around the med and the gulf quite a bit themselves.
USMCFLYR
PS. I can imagine that being an ALO is tough and you're right - at least we are with our own kind - though sometimes it is hard to imagine when you're sleeping in the cave for a month and remembering how warm/cool your cockpit was the last time you were in it
USMCFLYR,
I can only speak to what I've seen. As for the majority of times I was in the Middle East the fleet was only doing one small package a day, max two. I'm assuming trap times drive sortie length, which in turn limits time over Iraq. The time I spent in the container with USN / USMC assets was a fraction of USAF equipment (no this is not an us versus them flame - I'm reporting what I saw during multiple rotations in theater).
Biff