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F-15E Tank Plinker


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I have a very thick skin.  At work a couple of the senior managers have short tempers and are notorious for going off on one at the most minor provocation.  I have seen them reduce women (and a couple of men) to tears with their temper tantrums. They sometimes sail a little too close to the wind and both have had numerous grievances brought against them.

 

I get yelled at regularly by both of these "gentlemen".  Some of my colleagues are astonished that I can just laugh off their temper tantrums, which only seems to make these gentlemen more angry.  

 

There's a good reason why their temper tantrums don't bother me.  I've been yelled at by General Norman Schwarzkopf.   When Gen Schwarzkopf yells at you, you know you've been yelled at.   I survived that. Anything else is a walk in the park.

 

Sadly General Schwarzkopf isn't around anymore.  If he was, he might yell at me for the title of this thread.  He did not like the term "tank plinking".

 

The term was coined by coalition aircrews who found that they could use precision guided munitions to take out large numbers of Iraqi tanks.  The Iraqi Republican Guard buried their tanks in dug-in positions so they couldn't be seen from the ground or recce overflights.  However, the tanks' engines were still hot.  If they were attacked shortly after dusk, their IR signature gave them away very easily and they could be engaged with GBU-12 500lb LGBs guided by LANTIRN pods.  F-15Es could carry large numbers of these.  Given the lack of Iraqi air defences at the commencement of the ground war, the attacking aircraft were in very little danger at 5000ft.

 

Crews used the term "tank plinking" for these missions which was picked up by the media.  Gen Schwarzkopf strongly discouraged the use of this term as he was of the opinion that it trivialised a nasty but necessary tactic,

 

My next build for this GB will be an F-15E used in this role, carrying 8 GBU-12s. 

 

I will be using the GWH kit.

 

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11 hours ago, CliffB said:

Are you going to tell us what you did to upset the General? :winkgrin:

 

 

At Dhahran, I was delivering weapons from the prep shed to the Tornado line.  This was later in the war when we had moved away from JP233 and 1000lb loads to pure Paveway loads.  I was driving a JCB with four S-type trolleys carrying three Paveways each.  That's a lot of bombs but half of what a Tornado strike package would deliver.

 

General Schwarzkopf was walking across the pan as I drove past.  He was surrounded by for blokes drersed like Men In Black - presumably his bodyguard.  I wondered why he needed a bodyguard. He was taller and beefier than every one of them and looked far more intimidating than all four put together.  

 

He took exception to the speed I was driving and called to me to stop.  Consider that this is an active pan with aircraft taxying and I'm sat in the cab of a noisy JCB.  I could still hear him!!!    He proceeded to give me the best yelling at I have ever had in my life - and believe me, I've been on the receiving end of numerous good yellings at! :D 

 

Was he right?  Well, I wasn't actually speeding but I was going at the top end of the safe speed range.  But hey, he's the General and if he wants me to slow down, then I slow down!   After gaining my assurance that I would moderate my speed in future, he shook my hand and thanked me for my service.  That's the sort of thing that shows leadership.

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1 hour ago, modelling minion said:

Should be an interesting build Enzo, I imagine the 1/72 kit is as good as their 1/48 one.

 

Haven't seen the 1/48 one but this is definitely a nice kit.  It can only be used for an F-15E or K because the CFTs are moulded in with the fuselage.  Not an issue however. I don't believe that F-15Es ever fly without the CFTs.

 

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The last two photos show parts for the afterburners.  F-15Es carry the later type without "turkey feathers".  I have never made a satisfactory job of these before.  The Academy kit has parts which are well-nigh impossible to build so I have always replaced them with resin parts.  Even so, the multitude of rods are difficult to attach neatly and convincingly.  This kit has a novel way of presenting them which looks to be a lot easier to build.  If it all turns to worms, however, I have some nice 3D printed parts that I can use.     The sprues also provide the old-fashing afterburners as used on the F-15A.  These are provided so that the kit can also be boxed as an F-15K.

 

There is a lot of ordnance in this kit.  There are enough GBU-12s for my required load, together with AN/AAQ-13 and AN/AAQ-14 LANTIRN pods and a couple of AIM-9 Sidewinders.  Also included is a GBU-15 EO guided bomb, a GBU-24 LGB, an AXQ-14 datalink pod and a couple of AIM-120 AMRAAMs.  These are from the next generation of precision guided munitions.

 

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The decals all represent early 21st century aircraft so I will be using a Desert Storm option from a Hi Decal sheet.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Enzo Matrix said:

After gaining my assurance that I would moderate my speed in future, he shook my hand and thanked me for my service.  That's the sort of thing that shows leadership.

Don't think I would ever wash my hands again 😁

 

Nice story, thanks for sharing! 

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7 hours ago, Enzo Matrix said:

 

 

At Dhahran, I was delivering weapons from the prep shed to the Tornado line.  This was later in the war when we had moved away from JP233 and 1000lb loads to pure Paveway loads.  I was driving a JCB with four S-type trolleys carrying three Paveways each.  That's a lot of bombs but half of what a Tornado strike package would deliver.

 

General Schwarzkopf was walking across the pan as I drove past.  He was surrounded by for blokes drersed like Men In Black - presumably his bodyguard.  I wondered why he needed a bodyguard. He was taller and beefier than every one of them and looked far more intimidating than all four put together.  

 

He took exception to the speed I was driving and called to me to stop.  Consider that this is an active pan with aircraft taxying and I'm sat in the cab of a noisy JCB.  I could still hear him!!!    He proceeded to give me the best yelling at I have ever had in my life - and believe me, I've been on the receiving end of numerous good yellings at! :D 

 

Was he right?  Well, I wasn't actually speeding but I was going at the top end of the safe speed range.  But hey, he's the General and if he wants me to slow down, then I slow down!   After gaining my assurance that I would moderate my speed in future, he shook my hand and thanked me for my service.  That's the sort of thing that shows leadership.

Thanks for sharing the story. :)

 

I believe I read somewhere that Schwarzkopf used Delta for his protective detail?

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12 hours ago, Enzo Matrix said:

 

 

At Dhahran, I was delivering weapons from the prep shed to the Tornado line.  This was later in the war when we had moved away from JP233 and 1000lb loads to pure Paveway loads.  I was driving a JCB with four S-type trolleys carrying three Paveways each.  That's a lot of bombs but half of what a Tornado strike package would deliver.

 

General Schwarzkopf was walking across the pan as I drove past.  He was surrounded by for blokes drersed like Men In Black - presumably his bodyguard.  I wondered why he needed a bodyguard. He was taller and beefier than every one of them and looked far more intimidating than all four put together.  

 

He took exception to the speed I was driving and called to me to stop.  Consider that this is an active pan with aircraft taxying and I'm sat in the cab of a noisy JCB.  I could still hear him!!!    He proceeded to give me the best yelling at I have ever had in my life - and believe me, I've been on the receiving end of numerous good yellings at! :D 

 

Was he right?  Well, I wasn't actually speeding but I was going at the top end of the safe speed range.  But hey, he's the General and if he wants me to slow down, then I slow down!   After gaining my assurance that I would moderate my speed in future, he shook my hand and thanked me for my service.  That's the sort of thing that shows leadership.

Sound like the RSM who took over at RAF Gutersloh when the army moved in and stopped a lorry going down the main drag with his pace stick saying that the driver was going too fast. He then decided to put in big plant pots all the way down the main drag to slow drivers down, but this then incurred the first road accident down that road in all the time that I had been at Gut.

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On 1/13/2021 at 1:56 PM, Enzo Matrix said:

 

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The sprues also provide the old-fashing afterburners as used on the F-15A.  These are provided so that the kit can also be boxed as an F-15K

It appears you got a bonus, as at least some some boxings of the GWH F-15E don't include the "feathered" exhaust cans. Not relevant for this build but a correction to your statement above: these are actually for use on the F-15I variant, as uniquely operated by Israel. The F-15K as operated by Korea used F110 engines in their first batch, with "feathered" nozzles of a different design (the follow-up order of F-15Ks reverted to featherless F100s, same as the USAF).

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