I remember reading about the design of the F14 Tomcat. In one of the flight tests, the fighter was downed by a missile the pilot had fired himself. The point is shit happens.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think you might be conflating with this story.

The F-14 was testing the missile launch system, and the engineers failed to consider all the factors of the test missile and the system, causing it to not successfully clear the aircraft on launch, damaging the aircraft. Not really shooting itself down, or a failure of the F-14 design.

But to your real point, yeah, shit happens.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you. I’m from before the internet and this story I read in those magazine collections that we would buy and glue them together in books. This one is from around 1990 and either was badly told or my mind imagined something different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I'm almost 50, and this hits hard. So many things from my youth have blended together. Almost nothing from before I was 10 now.

That is one thing I do like about the phone in my pocket. I have a constant stream of photos now, of mine and my family's life. It's not just a random photo of a birthday here or there that survives, but an almost living journal.

Sorry, don't mean to be down, but back to the original story...

I actually didn't remember about the F-14 and the Sparrow missile and thought you were just thinking of the aircraft that ran into its own bullets. I wrote my reply that way and thought, maybe I should actually do some research because maybe I don't have the best memory, lol.

So you helped me remember too.