Oh, wow

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Oh c'mon. A commander asking his pilots to fly a $30M aircraft and equally expensive pilot to kill a few ragheads in a truck. Don't believe it for one second.
 
Well, if Britain herself was brought to desperate straits.......bombarded on all sides, being invaded, is it possible they would consider doing it? If there was few options left?

The Japanese did it, the Germans were seriously thinking about it, and I bet some really patriotic American pilot could do it too.

But I would rather pilots played for kills, not killing themselves of course.
 
Maybe I didn't read the article close enough. But the scenario was a hypothetical without no real constraints. Just a "Hey, if there were a truckload of badguys and I asked you to kill yourself by crashing into them, would you do it?" type scenario. Well hell no!!

Besides, you don't train for "There's a raghead with an atomic bomb in a suitcase in downtown London. Your the only GR.7 left alive, you have no ordnance nor ammo. I ask you to make the ultimate sacrifice for God, Queen and Country. Would you do it?"

Right. I would love to see that powere point presentation in the MoD war doctrine. And now for something completely different. The Larch. The Larch.
 
It was just a passing comment at an exercise, the idea existed in the Cold War - What if you were the only interceptor left, would you crash into the Soviet bomber carrying a nuclear bomb to London?

The fact is, the newspapers just wanted a story.
 
plan_D said:
It was just a passing comment at an exercise, the idea existed in the Cold War - What if you were the only interceptor left, would you crash into the Soviet bomber carrying a nuclear bomb to London?

The fact is, the newspapers just wanted a story.
Click to expand...

No!!! Really!!! :lol:
 
Well, we did train the U.S how to do 'em ... no wonder there's so many pictures of crashed Hellcats on decks. :)
 
I can see it as an exercise to make higher ups consider the possibility they are going to order their men on a mission that was going to result in their deaths. Kind of a Post Graduate Course for Flag Rank. Ok, I'm fine with that.

But if General (or Admiral) so and so comes up to me and says, "Lt. Shatz, I want you to take your jet up and crash it into the enemy, probably killing yourself in the process." My response would be, "And what is plan B?". Seriously, I don't mind the long odds or getting cornered. I do mind being told to die is the only option from the start.

In short, if General So and So is so eager to get himself killed, fine, there's the airplane, have at it.
 
Bottomline is you don't train for that kind of stuff in peacetime. That's armchair planning done by "never seen a war" geeks confined to bunker assignment popping amphetamines on day 6 of the tweaking binger.

Either that or a passing comment over beers at the officer's club.
 
It certainly starts to seem like a questioning on the abilities of the new aircraft if the RAF is starting to think about suicide attacks. It also raises the question of whether that is playing right into their hands by allowing them in future to say that the RAF does it, and we do our suicide attacks. Also as said how would you identify the target in the first place? If it is a static target then there is really no need for a suicide raid, and if it is a moving target, then there is an ultra large margin for error... Besides really, how often is it going to happen that an RAF pilot in this day and age would use up all their ammunition, considering the firing engagement rules that these pilots abide by? Very rarely I would assume. Bad idea all round. What do people think about my ideas?
 
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