Sccccccccrrrrrrreeeeeaaaaammmm!

Feb 2/2019  Weather 74, sunny low 52.  They say rain is coming for Superbowl Sunday.   We are out cruising around our end of Tucson today and we keep driving by the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base which the sound can just about throw you off the Harley if you time it when one of the Warthog's is taking off!  Seriously.   Plus if you stay at the Voyager RV Resort on Kolb Road be prepared to hear these guys most of the day; they do seem to stop at night - yeah!!!   These fighter planes are nasty.   There are two interesting things about the DMAF base;  the first being that the huge scccccrrrreeeettttccchhhing fighter jets we hear coming and going every day is a training squadron and the second is that this base is also the largest boneyard in the world of military airplanes(another posting for that).  Today we can let you know about the A-10 "Warthog".    

The Warthog A-10

People would say the A-10 was a plane designed around a gun—its 30 mm GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon, to be specific.  When the last of more than 700 A-10s was built in 1984, the aircrews and maintainers who worked on this lumbering plane thought it was so ugly they called it the "Warthog." Today, after decades of wear and tear and blood and toil, that nickname carries with it a nickname of affection and respect, five squadrons and over 300 personnel employing 83 A-10C aircraft. 

the Gatling gun

The A-10's cockpit and portions of its flight control system are protected by 1,200 pounds of titanium aircraft armor, called the "bathtub." The bathtub can withstand direct hits from armor-piercing projectiles up 23 mm.  But the design logic dictating its configuration goes well beyond that mean machine gun in its nose. The A-10's large, unswept high-aspect ratio wing and large ailerons give it excellent low-speed, low-altitude maneuverability. The wing also allows short takeoffs and landings. That's handy, because this plane frequently needs to operate from primitive forward airfields near the front lines the Warthog isn't fast—not by a longshot. Pilots say it has three practical throttle settings: full-throttle, 50 percent, and off.   It's  reputation-maker is the gun. The seven-barrel GAU-8 Avenger measures nine feet long and fires 30mm armor-piercing shells housed in six-foot-diameter drum. The Gatling gun hoses shells at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute.

GAU-8

It represents about 16 percent of the aircraft's weight.  When the gun is removed for maintenance, the Warthogs tail must be supported to keep the nose from tipping up!

A-10 Warthog - see the seven barral gun in the nose