Category: Well I thought it was neat!
The evolution of American Bombers up to the end of prop jobs. Who out there can identify them?
As preposterous as this story sounds, every word of it is true.
Lawrence Richard “Larry” Walters had always dreamt of becoming a pilot. He tried to enter flight training with the U.S. Air Force but was thwarted by crappy eyesight.
Larry eventually ended up serving as a cook during the Vietnam War. After his discharge, he took a job as a truck driver. Throughout it all, however, Larry Walters still really wanted to fly.
A Dream Fulfilled
At age 33, Larry purchased 45 weather balloons from a local military surplus store. With the able assistance of his girlfriend, Carol Van Deusen, he lashed 42 of these to a lawn chair and filled them with helium. They assembled this improvised flying machine in Carol’s mother’s backyard. Carol’s mom was obviously away on business or some such.
They had thoroughly schemed out the details. Larry packed a CB radio, two liters of Coca-Cola, a camera, sandwiches, a pellet rifle, and a six-pack of beer. His plan, such as it was, involved using the pellet gun to deflate balloons as needed when it was time to descend. On July 2, 1982, Larry donned a parachute and climbed aboard.
They had secured the rig to the bumper of Larry’s Jeep. However, the lashing unexpectedly broke, and the machine rocketed upward like prunes through a toddler. For good or for ill, Larry Walters was now flying.
Breaker, Breaker…
Realizing things were going pear-shaped fast, Larry fired up his CB radio and contacted REACT (Radio Emergency Associated Communication Teams). This was the monitored CB emergency channel 9 set up to assist motorists in extremis. REACT exchanges were recorded.
REACT: What information do you wish me to tell [the airport] at this time as to your location and your difficulty?
Larry: Ah, the difficulty is, ah, this was an unauthorized balloon launch, and, uh, I know I’m in a federal airspace, and, uh, I’m sure my ground crew has alerted the proper authority. But, uh, just call them and tell them I’m okay.
In a shockingly brief period of time, Larry found himself clinging to a lawn chair 16,000 feet above the ground.
16,000 feet is a heck of a long way up. It’s actually tough to breathe at that altitude. Anything above 10,000 feet is also positively-controlled airspace. Larry eventually drifted past LAX and was spotted by two passing airliners. I can only imagine how that Air Traffic Control conversation went.
It’s Time to Do Some of That Pilot Stuff, Mav…
After 45 minutes of this, Larry wisely felt it was time to call it a day. He burst several of the balloons with his pellet gun, taking care not to unbalance things unduly. However, in all the excitement, he also accidentally dropped his pellet rifle. There was just so much he could do to influence his situation with a couple of sandwiches and some beer. Tragically, Larry forgot all about his camera.
Larry’s contraption did eventually descend. He settled across a set of power lines in Long Beach after traversing about 14 miles. His ignominious landing knocked out power to the entire neighborhood for about 20 minutes. Larry, for his part, was miraculously unscathed.
Decisions Have Consequences
The Long Beach Police Department arrested poor Larry as soon as he climbed out of his lawn chair. FAA inspector Neal Savoy stated, “We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot’s license, we’d suspend that, but he doesn’t.”
Larry was fined $4,000 but appealed. His fine was subsequently reduced to $1,500. I wasn’t there, but I strongly suspect that the judge quietly thought Larry was awesome.
Ten days later, Larry Walters appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman.” He quit his job as a truck driver and began touring as a motivational speaker. However, there wasn’t a great deal of money in that.
The Rest of the Story
I wish our tale ended there, but it doesn’t. Larry eventually broke up with Carol and occupied himself doing volunteer work for the U.S. Forest Service.
He made ends meet as a part-time security guard. On October 6, 1993, Larry Walters tragically took his own life. He was 44 years old. I suppose that, after riding a lawn chair suspended underneath a bunch of weather balloons to an altitude of 16,000 feet, the world had very little left to offer him.
Larry Walters was a stud of the highest order. What stones that must have taken. His battered, electrocuted lawn chair now resides in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. I hate to admit it, but that guy is my hero.
Categories
I sure do!!!!!!
Just a quick show of hands, who here loves paying taxes? That is, of course, a rhetorical question. The only folks who enjoy paying taxes are New York socialists and Bernie Sanders, a man whose only extra-governmental real jobs were as an aide in a psychiatric hospital and a part-time carpenter. The rest of us think taxes pretty much suck.
The federal income tax rate in America ranges from 10 to 37%. State taxes are a wildly mixed bag. Alaska has reverse taxes. They actually pay people to live there. Eight predominantly-red states levy no income tax at all. California is naturally the worst at 13.3%. Every state charging above 9% is a Democratic stronghold. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
So, why all this talk of infernal revenue, might you ask? Because I have finally found something that makes me glad to pay my taxes. The AGM-114R-9X is the coolest weapon since the Roman gladius. Folks in the know call this the Ginsu Missile or the Ninja Bomb. Uncle Sam won’t reveal what these bad boys cost, but they’re worth every penny.
AGM-114 Hellfire Details
The AGM-114 Hellfire was first introduced in 1984. Hellfire stands for Helicopter-Launched, Fire and Forget. The Hellfire missile weighs about 100 pounds and is 64 inches long. Today’s Hellfires are precision guided via a semi-active laser homing system or a millimeter-wave radar. Max effective range is somewhere around 11 kilometers. The Hellfire was originally intended as a dedicated anti-armor weapon to be used on AH64 Apache gunships. However, they’ve gotten way cooler since then.
The problem in the modern era of ubiquitous camera phones is proportionality. The days of leveling a city to undermine a nation’s capacity to wage war or kill one seriously evil dude are over. We need weapons that will whack the bad guys without unduly cluttering up the place.
The basic AGM-114 isn’t bad. The Hellfire employs a top attack profile wherein the round climbs to a high altitude and then plunges down toward a target from above at around Mach 1.3. The intent is to defeat the thinner roof armor of most modern armored vehicles, and the Hellfire is magnificent at that. A single conventional Hellfire missile costs between $99,600 and $150,000 per round dependent upon the particulars. They are otherworldly accurate.
Hellfire warheads weigh about 20 pounds and come in a wide variety of flavors. Current rounds are equipped with a tandem HEAT (High Explosive Antitank) charge designed to defeat explosive reactive armor systems. However, when used against individuals, this shaped charge warhead is still fairly untidy.
The AGM-114R-9X first saw service in 2017. The Hellfire 114R-9X doesn’t have a warhead at all. Instead of explosives, this vicious little monster deploys half a dozen steel blades out of its central chassis immediately before impact. Now imagine a 100-pound swirling steel salad shredder coming at you at 1,000 miles per hour. As this is well above the speed of sound, you won’t even hear it coming.
The Dude
Abdullah Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Rajab Abd al-Rahman was also known as Ahmad Hasan Abu al-Khayr al-Masri. His friends, if ever he had any, would have called him Abu Khayr al-Masri. The general deputy to the notorious al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Khayr al-Masri was a proper psychopath.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but this reprobate guy blew stuff up and murdered people across a couple of continents because his dark god told him to. For this reason and some others, Donald Trump rightfully determined that al-Masri needed to die.
On February 26, 2017, al-Masri was toodling along in a car alongside another unwashed, bloodthirsty terrorist in the Syrian province of Idlib. Orbiting silently overhead was a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone equipped with AGM-114R-9Xs.
There was a loud bang, and al-Masri’s car swerved to a stop amidst a massive shower of sparks. Bystanders rushed up to see what had happened. What they found was pretty tough to unsee.
The Aftermath
Photos of what remained of Abu Khayr al-Masri’s car were fascinating. We hit the vehicle with two of these weapons, leaving a pair of matching star-shaped holes in the roof.
The windshield wipers remained intact. At least one round punched all the way through and left a crater in the ground. The car rolled a short distance past the impact point prior to stopping. Suffice to say, Al-Masri’s gory encounter with the U.S. military didn’t enhance his vehicle’s resale value.
Thanks to the AGM-114R-9X, the United States of Freaking America can puree pretty much any Bad Guy on Planet Earth. Think of the Ginsu Missile as a supersonic Cuisinart that will pulverize the enemies of our great nation most anyplace in the world. I’d gladly pay taxes for that.