B-1 Bomber for Sale

[Bob Womack]

I found this on another forum and had to repost it here:

B1 Bomber For Sale

A B1 bomber was in here ( Billings , MT ) doing practice approaches and touch and go ' s. On one of the landings the pilot sets his brakes on fire. He taxis in, and the airport parks him on a taxiway and then puts cones around him until parts and mechanics can be brought in from Ellsworth AFB, Rapid City SD, the next day. The next day is a Saturday, which doesn't have much going on, so we get to laughing in the tower that maybe somebody should hang a For Sale sign on the plane. We convince one of our guys who's well known for doing things like this that it would be a good idea.

So he takes off for the hardware store to buy a For Sale sign. On the way back he stops at a car dealer and gets one of those "As is/No Warranty" signs that hang in all used cars. On that sign was written something like low miles, new engines, needs brakes and tires. Those signs were taped together, and off goes our hero.

He climbs over the fence, leaving some skin on the barbed wire, and makes his way the 1000 feet or so to the aircraft. As he's doing that, we see a couple of airport vehicles starting to gather with the recently arrived mechanics as well as the plane's crew. Not looking good for our intrepid airplane salesman. He gets to the nose wheel and tapes the sign to the nose strut.
Then he starts to make his way back from the plane as the vehicles start to head out from the shop on the way to the bomber. Somehow he makes it without being seen
.
The vehicles arrive at the plane, and of course notice the sign right away. The Air Force guys are in stitches, funniest thing they've seen in a long time. Airport guys are not sure what to think. Airport management is livid as they've been tasked with security.

Pretty soon a camera appears and all the Air Force guys are taking pictures of each other by the sign.
Our hero is back in the tower now, and notices the bomber's commander is talking on a cell phone. Our guy gets on the radio to the airport truck and asks for that guy's phone number. As soon as he finishes that call, our guy calls the aircraft commander. When he answers, our guy says "I'm calling about the plane you have for sale." Aircraft commander about falls over from the laughter. It just so happened that the chief photographer for our local newspaper is a pilot and he may have been called prior to the sign being placed.
He was told to get up here with a big lens. Here's one of the pics he got:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3415/...fa96d641_o.jpg

An article showed on the front page of the Sunday paper. When that came out, the Colonel running Ellsworth called the airport director and read him the riot act, wondering what kind of dog and pony show he was running up there. We were later informed by the crew that the sign was framed and is now permanently mounted inside the aircraft. Hard to have that kind of fun anymore.

Har-har-har!

Bob

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

There was a kid in my neighborhood who got a Schwinn spider bike for Christmas one year. Santa put it together with the forks on backwards and not knowing any better he made the mistake of riding it around the neigborhood in front of the other kids and was abused pretty badly. I moved away soon after and never saw him again. Years later I ran into somone we grew up with and found out he was now
a B-1 Bomber pilot. Perhaps this was him.Could be. I will withold his name.

[WarPig1976]

The best jokes are the ones that push the boundaries. Glad he didn't windup with an M4 pointed at him.

[CINDERS]

That is a clanger of a gaff well executed glad the sign grew wings it must be the only B-1 with a current for sale sign on it, wonder what they would want for it!

[Peter Laidler]

Reminds me of an air show at RAF Abingdon here in the late 80's or so. A US Navy propellor driven plane with a round radar thinggy on top made a heavy landing and overshot the runway and the grass at the end, through the perimeter fence and came to a shuddering stop with a collapsed nose wheel onto the road outside the camp. No injuries but..... The local Police were called to close off the road. Next morning, there is a picture of said plane in the local papers, nose down on the road - with a Police Parking Penalty Notice attached to the front windscreen for causing an obstruction!!!!!!!!!

Anyone remind me what sort of plane it was. I think it had 2x props

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Anyone remind me what sort of plane it was. I think it had 2x props

E-2C or E-2D Perhaps?

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adapta...c_hawkeye.HTML

[Bob Womack]

Yeah, there was a story of a 100th bomb group B-17 coming in from an early mission over mainland Europe. They nursed the thing home with hundreds of bullet and cannon holes through it, no radios, one engine running and another dying, flaps out, tires shot out, a missing prop, an entire engine gone, and wounded aboard. They were lucky to make it to the nearest RAF field they found after they crossed the channel and without clearance they put her down in a controlled crash. As they scraped down the runway, one of the main mounts partially collapsed and the fuselage behind the wing buckled but they managed to get the hulk off onto the start of a taxiway before it screeched to a stop.

As the crew crawled out of the wreck, an RAF car rushed down the taxiway and an RAF staff officer burst out at a run. Bristling, he ran up to the pilot and said, "Now see here, you can't just park that bloody thing anywhere you want to! You must take it to a hardstand..." and he trailed off. For the first time he noticed the holes, the broken back, the collapsed gear, the smoking engines, the missing prop, and the injured. He scratched his head for a second then smiled kindly and said, "Oh, I see. You are in a bad way, aren't you?" and proceeded to render aid to the crew.

Bob

[Peter Laidler]

Yep, it was a Hawkeye. I had the word 'tracker' in my mind. Mind you, at the same air show, an RAF Phantom did a loop the loop and only got as far as a loop the....... as it hit the ground on the last bit. The locals here thought that the crashes were part of the show that year

[Seaspriter]

Great story and great fun. Thanks Bob. Just one thing doesn't jibe: How could the Air Force leave a vital plane like that unguarded at night?

A US Navy propellor driven plane with a round radar thinggy on top made a heavy landing and overshot the runway and the grass at the end, through the perimeter fence and came to a shuddering stop with a collapsed nose wheel onto the road outside the camp.

Peter, your story reminds me of my experience in 1968 at Patuxent Naval Air Station in Maryland. As a midshipman I was attached to VP-8, an anti-submarine patrol squadron, which flew propeller driven planes, including the Orion P-3 and the S2F (otherwise known as a "Stoof"). I went aloft in the Stoof for flight training as quasi-co-pilot. After the patrol, we radioed back to base for landing permission, and when it came time in the procedural sequence to lower landing gear, the pilot looked at me and said calmly: "the hydraulics controlling the landing gear are crapped out. We may have to make a belly landing," almost as if this were a normal occurrence. The field was notified; we were instructed to delay our landing until all the firefighting and rescue trucks could be deployed. As I was quite unfamiliar with this plane, I asked the pilot if there was a back-up system for deploying the landing gear. He smiled, saying he was just about ready to instruct me in the mechanical procedures.

On the cockpit floor was a round metal cover plate with several bolt heads that needed to be removed with a small wrench located IIRC in one of the pockets in the cockpit, along with a crank that resembled a starter crank for a Model T Ford. I removed the cover plate, inserted the crank, and started the arduous but necessary task of lowering the landing gear by hand. Fortunately it worked after several minutes of sweating for safety.

We were diverted to a secondary runway where we landed without incident, but I will never forget the line-up of fire trucks, foam trucks, and ambulances on the edge of the runway. It was an adventure that could have had a less fortunate ending.

[Bob Womack]

I had a similar experience in the right seat of a Cessna 310, except we were getting no green light for a deployed nose wheel. We jiggled around a little and tried to get it to lock but never got the light. The pilot asked for a low altitude tower pass and for the controllers to check whether the gear was down and locked. It seemed to be, so we landed with everyone braced but without incident.

Bob