Thor’s Flight Route Mod

During my Navy fly­ing career I flew through my fair share of thun­der­storms (and not because I wanted to). In fact, in my six­teen years in the tac­ti­cal jet busi­ness, three of the Tomcats I was rid­ing around in were hit by light­ning, most mem­o­rably while climb­ing out of Wright-​​Patterson Air Force Base in sec­tion where the bolt jumped from our jet to the wingman’s. While both jets con­tin­ued to work nor­mally and we pushed on for NAS Oceana, the strike def­i­nitely got the atten­tion of all four of us. When we got on the ground our main­tain­ers pointed out where the bolt had exited our jet, evinced by a charred quarter-​​sized hole in the trail­ing edge of the left hor­i­zon­tal stab.

This cool shot was just for­warded to us show­ing an All Nippon 747 hit while launch­ing out of Osaka. What I can gather from surf­ing around the Internet is the jet came back around and landed safely.

And here’s a quick video of the same strike.

(Gouge: FG)

– Ward

October 29th, 2007 | Civilian Apps | 26261 Comment »http://defensetech.org/2007/10/29/thors-flight-route-mod/Thor%27s+Flight+Route+Mod2007-10-29+15%3A09%3A59paisley You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.