FRIDAY FOTO (August 19, 2011)
August 19, 2011 at 10:50 pm 2 comments
The Warthog’s Tusks
U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Renaldo Richardson monitors the loading of ammunition into an A-10C Thunderbolt II on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.
Richardson is a weapons team chief assigned to the 74th Aircraft Maintenance Unit.
The A-10 — known as the Warthog for its unusual silhouette and ground support armaments — has been flying since the 1970s. The heavily-armored single-seat, twin engine jet was originally made by Fairchild Republic on New York’s Long Island. It has a 30 millimeter heavy rotary canon — or Gatling gun — in the nose of the aircraft (in photo foreground). That gun, a Gau 8 Avenger, can fire 4,200 round per minute.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Stephen Schester)
While we’ve had a spate of aviation and paratrooper photos lately, 4GWAR feels its been neglecting the Air Force — especially the ground crews. If you click on the photo to enlarge, you can see the ammo belt feeding into the A-10.
To see a Defense Department slideshow about the efforts to load one of these tank killer aircraft, click here.
Entry filed under: Afghanistan, Counter Insurgency, National Security and Defense, Photos, Skills and Training, Weaponry and Equipment. Tags: A-10 Warthog, aerospace, Afghanistan, Air Force, Air Force ground crew, aviation ammunition, Counter Insurgency, Defense, military aviation.
1.
Braveheart | August 23, 2011 at 12:10 am
The USAF should buy another thousand or two of these beauties, updated of course. They would be far more useful than that silly F-35, which will never see real action (far too expensive to risk).
2.
John M. Doyle | August 23, 2011 at 11:35 am
No argument there. While waiting to take off from Tucson airport a few years back, I watched a half dozen of these
babies (AZ Nat’l Guard) land and cross our runway.