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Posted by southpaw
on November 6, 2009, 12:16 pm, in reply to "OT: The house just got buzzed by a pair of A-10 Warthogs! AWESOME!!!"
F-16s and A-10s there, as well as the largest electronic weapons range in the eastern USA with Poinsette Electronic Weapons Range. The 16s and 10s would use dummy bombs with "small" charges in them to practice their dive bombing and targets to practice their gun runs.
There were two towers where officer would triangulate their bomb hits to see how close they came to the targets (old tanks, trucks, APCs, etc.). There were microphones behind the bulls eyes to tell how many shells passed through the targets and a number would show up in the main tower. They actually had bleachers in between the bomb range and gunnery range for you to watch . . . pre 9/11. I actually was invited up into the main tower a couple of times when the range officer was apparently bored. NEAT!
It was great fun to watch a bunch of 16s set up a pattern of bombing, but the biggest hit was the Warthog on a gun run. You could really feel the reverb in your chest from the 30mm firing. Compared to the 30, the 16s 20mm seemed like a BB gun.
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