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Every time the question of a bigger rifle or smaller rifle (for any game) springs up, someone’s bound to say it: Karamojo Bell killed a thousand elephants with an .256. No, wait, with a .275. No, wait, he killed 1011 elephants, but only a few with the .256. No, but he was sniping out undisturbed elephants from long distance. Exploits of W.D.M. Bell, Esq., nicknamed “Karamojo” because of being the first European to penetrate the territory of the Karamojo people, became legendary and controversial. Any scientific argument must begin with a study of the sources, so let’s turn to the book that made W. D. M. Bell famous: “The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter”, published in 1923. Our comments will follow.
Chapter II. The Brain Shot at Elephant (extract).
In hunting elephant, as in other things, what will suit one man may not suit another. Every hunter has different methods and uses different rifles. Some believe in the big bores, holding that the bigger the bore therefore the greater the shock. Others hold that the difference between the shock from a bullet of, say, 250 grs. and that from a bullet of, say, 500 grs. is so slight that, when exercised upon an animal of such bulk as an elephant, it amounts to nothing at all. And there is no end to the arguments and contentions brought forward by either side ; therefore it should be borne in mind when reading the following instructions that they are merely the result of one individual’s personal experience and not the hard and fast rules of an exact science.
As regards rifles, I will simply state that I have tried the following: .416, .450/.400, .360, .350, .318, .275 and .256. At the time I possessed the double .400 I also had a .275. Sometimes I used one and sometimes the other, and it began to dawn on me that when an elephant was hit in the right place with the .275 it died just as quickly as when hit with the .400, and, vice versa, when the bullet from either rifle was wrongly placed death did not ensue. In pursuance of this train of thought I wired both triggers of the double .450/.400 together, so that when I pulled the rear one both barrels went off simultaneously. By doing this I obtained the equivalent of 800 grs. of lead propelled by 120 grs. of cordite. The net result was still the same. If wrongly placed, the 800 grs. from the .400 had no more effect than the 200 grs. from the 275. For years after that I continued to use the .275 and the .256 in all kinds of country and for all kinds of game. Each hunter should use the weapon he has most confidence in.
Again, the smallest bore rifles with cartridges of a modern military description, such as the .256, .275, .303 or .318, are quite sufficiently powerful for the brain shot. The advantages of these I need hardly enumerate, such as their cheap ness, reliability, handiness, lightness, freedom from recoil, etc. For the brain shot only bullets with an unbroken metal envelope (i.e., solids) should be employed; and those showing good weight, moderate velocity, with a blunt or round-nosed point, are much better than the more modern high velocity sharp-pointed variety. They keep a truer course, and are not so liable to turn over as the latter.
Chapter X. Rifles
The question of which rifles to use for big-game hunting is for each individual to settle for himself. If the novice starts off with, say, three rifles : one heavy, say a double -577 ; one medium, say a .318 or a .350 ; and one light, say a .256 or a .240 or a .276, then he cannot fail to develop a preference for one or other of them.
\For the style of killing which appeals to me most the light calibres are undoubtedly superior to the heavy. In this style you keep perfectly cool and are never in a hurry. You never fire unless you can clearly see your way to place the bullet in a vital spot. That done the calibre of the bullet makes no difference. But to some men of different temperament this style is not suited. They cannot or will not control the desire to shoot almost on sight if close to the game. For these the largest bores are none too big. If I belonged to this school I would have had built a much more powerful weapon than the .600 bores.
Speaking personally, my greatest successes have been obtained with the 7 mm. Rigby-Mauser or .276, with the old round-nosed solid, weighing, I believe, 200 grs. It seemed to show a remarkable aptitude for finding the brain of an elephant. This holding of a true course I think is due to the moderate velocity, 2,300 ft., and to the fact that the proportion of diameter to length of bullet seems to be the ideal combination. For when you come below .276 to .256 or 6-5 mm., I found a bending of the bullet took place when fired into heavy bones.
Then, again, the ballistics of the 275 cartridge, as loaded in Germany at any rate, are such as to make for the very greatest reliability. In spite of the pressures being high, the cartridge construction is so excellent that trouble from blowbacks and split cases and loose caps in the mechanism are entirely obviated. Why the caps should be so reliable in this particular cartridge I have never understood. But the fact remains that, although I have used almost every kind of rifle, the only one which never let me down was a .276 with German (D.W.M.) ammunition. I never had one single hangfire even. Nor a stuck case, nor a split one, nor a blowback, nor a miss-fire. All of these I had with other rifles.
I often had the opportunity of testing this extraordinary little weapon on other animals than elephant. Once, to relate one of the less bloody of its killings, I met at close range, in high grass, three bull buffalo. Having at the moment a large native following more or less on the verge of starvation, as the country was rather gameless, I had no hesitation about getting all three. One stood with head up about 10 yds. away and facing me, while the others appeared as rustles in the grass behind him. Instantly ready as I always was, carrying my own rifle, I placed a .276 solid in his chest. He fell away in a forward lurch, disclosing another immediately behind him and in a similar posture. He also received a .276, falling on his nose and knees. The third now became visible through the commotion, affording a chance at his neck as he barged across my front. A bullet between neck and shoulder laid him flat. All three died without further trouble, and the whole affair lasted perhaps four or five seconds.
Another point in favour of the .276 is the shortness of the motions required to reload. This is most important in thick stuff. If one develops the habit by constant practice of pushing the rifle forward with the left hand while the right hand pulls back the bolt and then vice versa draws the rifle towards one while closing it, the rapidity of fire becomes quite extraordinary. With a long cartridge, necessitating long bolt movements, there is a danger that on occasions requiring great speed the bolt may not be drawn back quite sufficiently far to reject the fired case, and it may become re-entered into the chamber. This once happened to me with a .350 Mauser at very close quarters with a rhino.
I did not want any rhino, but the villagers had complained about this particular one upsetting their women while gathering firewood. We tracked him back into high grass. I had foolishly allowed a number of the villagers to come with me. When it was obvious that we were close to our game these villagers began their African whispering, about as loud, in the still bush, as a full-throated bass voice in a gramophone song.
Almost immediately the vicious old beast could be heard tearing through the grass straight towards us. I meant to fire my first shot into the movement as soon as it became visible, and to kill with my second as he swerved. At a very few paces’ distance the grass showed where he was and I fired into it, reloading almost instantaneously. At the shot he swerved across, almost within kicking range, showing a wonderful chance at his neck. I fired, but there was only a click. I opened the bolt and there was my empty case.
I once lost a magnificent bull elephant through a .256 Mannlicher going wrong. I got up to him and pulled trigger on him, but click ! a miss-fire. He paid no attention and I softly opened the bolt. Out came the case, spilling the flake powder into the mechanism and leaving the bullet securely fast in the barrel lead. I tried to ram another cartridge in, but could not do so.
Here was a fix. How to get that bullet out. Calibre .256 is very small when you come to try poking sticks down it. Finally I got the bullet out, but then the barrel was full of short lengths of sticks which could not be cleared out, as no stick could be found sufficiently long, yet small enough. So I decided to chance it and fire the whole lot into the old elephant, who, meanwhile, was feeding steadily along. I did so from sufficiently close range, but what happened I cannot say. Certainly that elephant got nothing of the charge except perhaps a few bits of stick. That something had touched him up was evident from his anxiety to get far away, for he never stopped during the hours I followed him.
At one time I used a double .450/.400. It was a beautiful weapon, but heavy. Its drawbacks I found were : it was slow for the third and succeeding shots ; it was noisy ; the cartridges weighed too much ; the strikers broke if a shade too hard or flattened and cut the cap if a shade too soft ; the caps of the cartridges were quite unreliable ; and finally, if any sand, grit or vegetation happened to fall on to the breech faces as you tore along you were done ; you could not close it. Grit especially was liable to do this when following an elephant which had had a mud bath, leaving the vegetation covered with it as he passed along. This would soon dry and tumble off at the least touch.
I have never heard any explanation of the undoubted fact that our British ammunition manufacturers cannot even yet produce a reliable rifle cartridge head, anvil and cap, other than that of the service .303. On my last shoot in Africa two years ago, when W and I went up the Bahr Aouck, the very first time he fired at an elephant he had a miss-fire and I had identically the same thing. We were using .318’s with English made cartridges. Then on the same shoot I nearly had my head blown off and my thumb severely bruised by an English loaded .256. There was no miss-fire there.
The cartridge appeared to me almost to detonate. More vapour came from the breech end than from the other. I have since been told by a great authority that it was probably due to a burst case, due to weak head. On my return I complained about this and was supplied with a new batch, said to be all right. But whenever I fire four or five rounds I have a jam, and on investigating invariably find a cap blown out and lodging in the slots cut for the lugs of the bolt head. Luckily these cartridges are wanting in force; at one time they used fairly to blast me with gas from the wrong end. The fact that these faults are not conspicuously apparent in this country may be traced to the small number of rounds fired from sporting rifles, or, more probably, to the pressures increasing in a tropical temperature.
I have never been able to appreciate “shock” as applied to killing big game. It seems to me that you cannot hope to kill an elephant weighing six tons by ” shock ” unless you hit him with a field gun. And yet nearly all writers advocate the use of large bores as they “shock” the animal so much more than the small bores. They undoubtedly “shock” the firer more, but I fail to see the difference they are going to make to the recipient of the bullet. If you expect to produce upon him by the use of big bores the effect a handful of shot had upon the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, you will be disappointed. Wounded non-vitally he will go just as far and be just as savage with 500 grains of lead as with 200. And 100 grains in the right place are as good as ten million.
The thing that did most for my rifle shooting was, I believe, the fact that I always carried my own rifle. It weighed about 7 lb., and I constantly aligned it at anything and everything. I was always playing with it. Constant handling, constant aiming, constant Swedish drill with it, and then when it was required there it was ready and pointing true.
Comments
A lot of controversy about Karamojo Bell comes from Mr. Bell himself. “The Wonderings of an Elephant Hunter” was written when the trails were still hot, memories fresh, and from the “here’s what worked for me, under my specific circumstances” position. Later in life, however, his views became more radical.
In an article titled “Big Bores vs. Small Bores”, for example, published posthumously by “The American Rifleman” in 1954, he urged everyone to dump the big bores and hunt all animals with rifles of the .308 Win. class (he praised the cartridge, even though he had no personal experience with it). All dependent on bullet placement, he wrote, “a .600 caliber 900-grain bullet in the right place will kill as dead as a 100-grain bullet”. A few paragraphs later, he called the .318 Westley Richards “the deadliest” of his foursome of favorites, that also included the 6.5 mm. Mannlicher, the 7 mm. Mauser, and the .303 British. So, he could see the difference in killing power between .318 and 7 mm, but not between .22 Swift and .600 NE. Er… seriously?
Was it rhetorical vigor, or was W.D.M. Bell simply pulling the readers’ collective leg? These British “old chaps” loved a good prank – oh, pardon me, practical joke! What most people tend to learn over their lifetimes is that a radical view on anything is usually wrong. That includes Karamojo Bell and his small-bore rifles.
On the one hand, Bell certainly didn’t kill over a thousand elephants with a 6.5 mm rifle. .As we already know, he used rifles for at least eight different rounds. For the trip into the Karamojo country, he had a battery of three rifles, two already mentioned and a.303 British. For three of his trips – to Liberia, up the River Bahr Aouk, and into the Buba Gida Potentiate and the Lakka country, he carried only one big-game rifle: a .318 Westley Richards. This is a medium bore (.330, or 8.4 mm) round that came loaded with a 250-grain (16 gram) bullet at 2,400 ft/s (730 m/s), or a 180-grain (12 gram) at 2,700 ft/s (820 m/s). He is credited with killing over 1011 elephants in his career, but the .256 accounted for the minority of kills, due to various ammunition problems.
On the other hand, critics tend to downplay Bell’s experience, saying he was mostly shooting undisturbed elephants at long distance in an open country. In fact, Bell killed all kinds of elephants in all kinds of terrain. That included the 12-foot grass in the Lado Enclave, where he had to shoot from an improvised elevation.
If Bell couldn’t see the difference between bigger and smaller cartridges, why would he use the .318 WR on so many trips, and why did he order one .416 Rigby after another (as Rigby’s record books testify)? On the other hand, when African national parks carried out large-scale elephant culls – the nearest thing to Bell’s ivory hunting in modern world – the weapon of choice, to our knowledge, were semi-automatic military rifles and the 7.62 mm NATO (the military version of the .308 Win.). Karamojo would’ve approved. The bottom line is, precisely as Karamojo himself claimed in his earliest prose, the 7 mm Mauser was what worked for a specific person under specific circumstances. It’s not a magic bullet for everyone everywhere.
In any case, Bell’s books make a wonderful read, whether you agree with his views or not. He was one of the people who had a unique experience, intelligent enough to know their experience were unique, and talented enough to preserve it for later generations in high-quality prose and imagery. And, as long as you don’t take Bell’s tips literally, his advice on knowing your weapon, the killing spots of your quarry, and being able to put every bullet where it belongs, still makes a lot of sense.
The days of Karamojo Bell are long gone. Modern elephant hunting in Africa is totally sustainable and works towards the preservation of the species. And there are many other opportunities to discover hunting in Africa.
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10 Dark But Forgotten Parts of World War I
John Wayne’s departure for a three week
tour in Vietnam in the Spring of 1966 was just
what you’d expect from old Duke’s modest
sense of deprecatory humor, when he told
reporters, “I can’t sing or dance, but I can
sure shake a lot of hands and share a bunch
of cold beers with our boys there.”
He did just that, then stayed another four
weeks on his own dime and time. Therein is
the real story of John Wayne in Vietnam.
Hollywood lore is the stuff of legend, especially when it involves iconic actor John Wayne, best known for
playing macho soldiers or western characters in more than 250 films
before his death in 1979. However, his real-life military involvement is
what had people talking in 1966 during the height of the Vietnam War.
Thanks to the USO’s tireless efforts, celebrities have visited and
cheered American soldiers since 1941. However, Wayne’s visit was
different. The U.S. Department of Defense contracted Wayne for the
three-week tour of Vietnam. According to Wayne, he would be “going
around the hinterlands to give the boys some personal support.”
John Wayne’s Vietnam tour had three missions.
One was his good
will visit to cheer American combat troops and their wounded, plus
some serious fact-finding for a movie he had in mind. Also, he
believed in the political necessity of the war.
Wayne said, “It is important that we keep our word on treaties to
protect our allies, a universally unpopular view in peace-loving, pink
Hollywood.”
He felt so strongly about this that he said it was his duty to make a film
that showed why the war was needed. He said that his planned film,
The Green Berets, was “anti-Communist, pro-Saigon and prompted
by the American Left’s anti-war sentiment.”
It was the only major Hollywood film to support the war effort.
Wayne’s son, Patrick, told me of his father’s Vietnam experiences,
“To make a truly realistic, authentic film, My father said he needed
to go to Vietnam personally and meet with the real combat soldiers
who were literally sometimes face to face with the enemy on their
turf….and gain their first-hand experiences. He wanted this film
to feature the Army’s Special Forces guys, the early Marines in
Vietnam and their role in the war…and he wanted to get it right.”
John Wayne’s in-country education began in the spring of 1966,
at age 59, with a visit to the 3rd Battalion 7th Marines at Chu Lai,
where he shook a lot of hands, passed out a lot of good will, cold
beer and also came away with a lot of good Marine field craft.
For the rest of his tour, though, Wayne visited the Army’s Special Forces (SF) camps, especially the ones out in the boonies, far away from REMF Central.
Former SF SSG John E Padgett recalled, “When an SF camp began
construction, the first priority was a strong defensive perimeter. The
very next priority was a heavily fortified team house/club from which
planning and missions originated, often accompanied by copious
supplies of Carlings Black Label and Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. This
was also the guest house for our few welcomed visitors.”
Retired SFC Ken Richter recalled Wayne’s time at the 5th Special
Forces Group, Detachment A-219, Mike Force, Pleiku, saying, “I
remember him in the C-2 bar one evening saying he hoped he could
witness us SF guys kicking Charlie’s ass. He got his wish.”
After his discharge, SFC Richter worked for Wayne as dive master on
his boat, working on a charitable discovery and salvage assignment
for Stanford University. He adds, “John Wayne was a true patriot and
his boat was full of memorabilia from various military units.”
Wayne’s boat, a World War II minesweeper he bought and converted into his private yacht, was named The Wild Goose.
It was
added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
Speaking of WWII, there has always been a persistent myth that John
Wayne dodged the wartime draft, which he did not do. He was classified as 3A (head of family) in 1942. In 1943, he requested a change to 1A, which was turned down, through backdoor politics by Republic Pictures.
He persisted and in May of 1944, was re-classified as l-A. Republic Pictures intervened openly against Wayne’s wishes and got his classification changed to 2-A (support of national
interest) in August of 1944.
Some insiders, including family, said that
he always felt guilty about not serving in
WWII and that is what drove him to be so
personally up front about Vietnam.
Thus, John Wayne made stops at Nui
Ba Den to visit the men of A-324 B and
Detachment C-3 at Bien Ha. His stated
goal to his Saigon minders was to spend
time with most of the A and B teams in the
III Corps, soaking up SF background and
accuracy for his film and hoping to boost
the morale of these warriors.
By June 1966, already past his scheduled
departure time, Wayne made layovers at
Throng Toi and An Lang, where he gathered real and hard experience from the
warriors of A-425. Officers, NCOs and EM
debriefed him on their mission, operational
area and the enemy situation. He was also
shown how the new camp was set up,
including its defenses.
“This was not an easy visit for us,” recalled
former SGT John McGovern, who was one
of Wayne’s guides there. McGovern, a Psy
Ops NCO, recalls, “He wanted to go where
the action was, far away from the flagpole
and the safer sites. Our S-2 knew that the
other side knew he was there and we knew
what a coup it would be if the Cong could
kill the great John Wayne.”
One of Wayne’s guides was SGT Leroy Scott, who told how Wayne’s
helicopter was headed into a Special Forces camp near Pleiku in
the middle of some heavy incoming action, and were warned to
abort landing when two rounds smacked the Huey. SGT Scott adds,
“An immediate 180 occurred.”
This was a larger problem, too, as there was documented intel
that the Republic of North Vietnam’s Soviet mentors, the GRU and
Spetnetz, had already planted the propaganda benefits of Wayne’s
chopper being shot down, his jeep blown up or for a sniper to pick
him off.
John Wayne spent time under fire at the wire plus in the OPs and
LPs. And, of course, he chowed down with the guys. But not every
day in Vietnam was a picnic. Stories abound about the “close calls”
Wayne had. One report mentioned that a Viet Cong sniper’s bullet
narrowly missed him, hitting the ground 50 feet behind him. Wayne
Beer in hand and in his rarely seen reading glasses, The Duke visited the fighting men at SF a Team
323 at Camp Trai Bi in June of ’66. (Jari Salo)
It was a welcoming Jeep delivery of Wayne from the chopper pad at Plei Djerang, with Capt John Kai,
camp CO, at the wheel. Passengers were chopper crew, PIO officer, C-2 officer and The Duke. (Don Briere)
later said to film historian Michael Munn in 1974, “I almost walked
into a sniper’s bullet that had my name on it. I heard the wind of the
bullet whistle past my ear and realized I had had a narrow escape.”
He added later to family members, “Those tough kids of ours over
there have narrow escapes every day, God bless ‘em, ‘cause sometimes they can’t escape getting hit.”
Fortunately, wherever John Wayne would go, for the most part,
good times rode along. From all reports, he had a true and sincere
knack for putting soldiers at ease by signing autographs, taking pictures of them and happily posing for pictures with the guys.
Young Marines called him SGT Stryker, his character’s name in his classic
WWII film, The Sands of Iwo Jima. Men from out of the way firebases threw parties and barbecues in his honor. All agreed that
John Wayne knew how to party and how to work.
4 Sentinel | November 2020
“When he visited us, he brought in both ice
and beer, so we started the day with an
ice chest of cold American beer,” recalled
Retired MAJ John Hyatt, of Wayne’s visit
to A-219. “It was empty when we returned
home at the end of the day.”
Then a first lieutenant with the 281st AHC,
flying support missions for 5th SF units, John
Hyatt recalls John Wayne’s visit to Det C-3,
Bien Hoa, in June. “We had just put A-323 on
the ground at Trai Bi, Tay Ninh, and were taking sporadic fire on the perimeter, and there goes The Duke out to join some of the team
on the line. Helluva man.”
Interestingly, two years later, John Hyatt was at Ft. Rucker flying a camera ship to film some of the scenes for The Green Berets.
Even though Wayne was offered VIP treatment, he visited very remote Special Forces camps, unlike many celebrities, who stayed
comfortable in safer urban zones.
The few others who joined the field troops included
brave USO visitors, the wonderful Donut
Dollies, and the heroic Martha Raye. One of the more amazing “John Wayne in Vietnam” stories centers around the SF A-251 camp at Plei Djereng.
As Wayne made his stop there in June, the camp
allegedly came under attack. Supposedly, everyone was returning fire, including Wayne, who was on an M-60, according to
the tales, which the Internet grew taller than
The Duke himself. Someone was quoted on
at least two blogs saying, “I’m telling ya…
John Wayne was real fuckin’ John Wayne
right with us. He was on top of the TOC
choppin’ Charlie with a 60.” Dramatic, exciting and what you’d expect from The Duke.
But, it’s fiction, not fact.
Special Forces vets
who really were there at the time deny the
story totally, as did Wayne and his family.
Spec4 Donald Briere, who was the camp radio operator then and
who would retire as an SF LTC, said, “There was no raid when Mr
Wayne was there. That nasty raid happened a few days prior to his
arrival. Obviously, the camp was under enemy observation and tension was high. While there, John Wayne did get familiarization with
some of SF’s own special armament.”
As for his dad “chopping Charlie,” son, Patrick, said of the incident,
“Never happened. If it had, he would have told us in grand detail. It
is also a certainty that the military PIO and the Saigon press corps
would have had a field day with it, too.”
For all the stories of fun, heroism and adventure, there are also tales
of sentimentality. Two of these center around bracelets that were
bestowed on Wayne during his time in Vietnam. The first bracelet
was a POW/MIA bracelet that represented the life of CPT Stephen
P. Hanson, USMC. Hanson had sent his wife and son a picture of
himself with the caption “Me as John Wayne.” Sadly, the Marine
was shot down over Laos; he never returned home. Wayne wore his
bracelet to commemorate Hanson. He kept in touch with Hanson’s
wife and son until his own death.
The other memento was a “Yard” bracelet given to him by the Degar
or Montagnard People of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, fighters
against communism. The brass bracelet was a gift from the II CTZ
Mike Force, presented by their Montagnard commander, Ka Doh.
The bracelet is a symbol of friendship and respect. Sentinel editor
Camp Plei Djerang was home to SF Team A-251 during John Wayne’s memorable visit there in 1966. It
is where the reality of then and the internet rumors of today were separated. (Special Forces Association)
Plei Djerang, June 1966, Camp CO Capt John Kai; their guest, John Wayne; SP4 Don Briere; unidentified C-2 officer. (Don Briere)
November 2020 5 | Sentinel
Categories
The Winchester 1894
- F-35 test pilots described how intense it is to fly the aircraft, The Jerusalem Post reported.
- “It’s like an 800-pound gorilla sitting on your chest,” a pilot said in a Lockheed Martin webinar.
- “After some training, pilots come out looking like they are 100 years old,” another test pilot said.
A US test pilot described the challenges of flying one of the world’s most advanced warplanes, the F-35 fighter jet, in a recent discussion in a webinar organized by Lockheed Martin.
Tony “Brick” Wilson, an F-35 test pilot for the American defense company who formerly served in the US Navy, described the “g-forces” — or gravitational force — must deal with when flying the hi-tech US fighter jets.
“It’s like an 800-pound gorilla sitting on your chest,” Wilson said earlier this month, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The F-35 has a top speed of around Mach 1.6 or 1,228 mph.
Aircraft-to-aircraft “dog fighting” is like a full-body workout, and “you are wiped out” by the end, Wilson added.
The hi-tech, fifth-generation aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin is a multirole stealth aircraft that is intended for air superiority and strike missions, Insider previously reported.
Monessa “Siren” Balzhiser, another F-35 test pilot for the company, also addressed “g-forces” in the discussion.
An average roller coaster pulls about three to four “g-forces,” Balzhiser said, who, prior to joining Lockheed, served in the US Air Force.
“For a g-force, think about your weight. So if you were 100 pounds, pulling 9 g’s, you would be pulling 900 pounds of force on a person’s body. Imagine that much pressure on your body. It takes a lot of training and special training,” Balzhiser said.
Following a mission, “pilots come out looking like they are 100 years old,” she added.
Wilson was later asked how far the jets could fly, per The Jerusalem Post, and he described the different fuel levels available in each variant of the jet.
An F-35A carries 18,000 pounds of fuel, the F-35B carries about 13,000 pounds of fuel, and the F-35C carries almost 20,000 pounds of fuel, the test pilot said.
Generally, on missions, pilots fly no more than “500 to 700 nautical miles, execute a mission, and then travel back” to base, Wilson said.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Air Force deployed F-35 fighter jets to NATO’s front line to patrol for Russian missiles that could threaten planes, Insider previously reported.
A multirole stealth aircraft, the F-35 is intended for air superiority and strike missions and is now flown by at least 17 airforces worldwide.
It is equipped with a powerful electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance suite. The capabilities, which allow the F-35 to gather and distribute real-time battlefield information to friendly forces, have earned it the nickname “the quarterback of the skies.”
In the webinar, Balzhiser said what she most valued about the warplanes is “the amount of information and situational awareness that the F-35 gave me in comparison to the F-16.”
The F-16 has three separate screens and displays, with each screen tied to a specific sensor,” she said, per The Jerusalem Post. “The pilots needed to do sensor fusion in their brain to take the information, think about it, and come up with a solution. The F-35’s large graphic display does that, provides that situational awareness faster than what I was able to do in the F-16.”
The weaponry carried by the F-35 varies. In a configuration known as “beast mode,” it carries four 500-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bombs on its wings, two GBU-12 in its internal weapons bay, and an AIM-9 air-to-air heat-seeking missile. That configuration sacrifices stealth for firepower, according to a 2022 Insider report.