Michael Yon is in Afghanistan with the Warthogs. An excerpt:
Two pilots were gearing up to fly from Kandahar over to neighboring Helmand to support a British unit. The A-10 “Warthogs” are slow—not supersonic—but fantastically agile. The aircraft dart like dragonflies and seem to change direction against the laws of physics. The A-10s can turn so fast that they can break the laws of healthy physiology, and can cause a pilot to pass out and crash his airplane. And so pilots wear G-suits to help counter adverse fluid dynamics.
2 comments:
If I time it right, I get to see an occasional Warthog flying around our plant as we are fairly clsoe to a major Air Force base. They DO fly slow, they DO make a lot of racket...and they DO look mean and capable. Those twin engines in the back end give them a fat bumblebee quality; How can something this unwieldy even fly? They are a marvel. I prefer them much more than the speedy needle-nosed jets that zoom by.
Give me a lumbering "I'll put a hurting on you" Warthog any day. I though I'd read somewhere where the plane was going to be retired soon after the 2nd Iraq War started but they proved so useful that the retirement plan was waylaid.
DarkoV,
They are amazing planes.I've heard the same thing about their retirement. They are too good to lose.
Michael
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