Hurricane Test Track

This one's gonna be a biggie as it's gone by many names over the years. It started as the Hurricane Supersonic Research Site, then as the Supersonic Military Air Research Track, and is now called Hurricane Mesa Test Facility.  Information gleaned from both the Wikipedia entry and Paul Freeman's Abandoned & Little Known Airfields site (who's info was partially sourced from a writing called “Chronology of Hurricane Mesa Test Facility” by Jack Reed, but I was unable to find a copy). All pictures are sourced from Paul Freeman's site as well, with credits attributed where possible.

A map of the facility that is displayed in the St.George airport. Pic taken by Tim Tyler in 2012.

The story starts not long after WWII with the higher proliferation of jet aircraft and the need to have more sophisticated escape equipment (ie. ejection seats), as the USAF was (and still is) buying British ejection seats, as US companies producing them at the time were lagging behind their UK counterparts. So, come 1953, the Coleman Engineering Company of Torrance, CA was awarded a 2 million dollar contract to build a test track at a spot of land selected (and owned) by the USAF, and construction started subsequently in '54. 

Photo of the rails taken May 10th 1959 by Norvin Alcorn. Note the cool car in the shot there.

The site was selected due to it's relatively mild weather conditions, and a constant supply of braking water provided by the nearby Virgin river (and the remoteness likely helped security). The facility is on property owned by the USAF, and initially it was administered by the Indian Springs AFB (now called Creech AFB) in Nevada. The facility had a test track, and several support buildings/facilities. The track itself comprised of 12,000 feet of continuously welded rails that was the longest rocket research track in the US at the time. Once the facility was finished, operations were contracted to the Coleman company and tests began in 1955. 

B-52 forward fuselage mounted on the sled sometime around 1955-1961. Note the Coleman logo near the nose (photo provided by Tim Tyler on A&LKA site)

During their operations, Coleman engineers achieved a world land speed record using a 9,400-pound rocket sled on the track at 1,800 miles per hour (Mach 2.36). More regular or typical speeds run at the track would be around 1,050 mph (Mach 1.3) with a dummy filled with instrumentation called "Hurricane Sam", but the team reportedly also used apes for selected tests as well. The track was also reportedly used for the boosting of rockets launched from the site, but I couldn't confirm this, nor the types of rockets that may have been launched.  

Another picture taken by Norvin Alcorn on the same day, with an F-102 Delta Dart fuselage mounted on the rocket sled. 

Coleman and the Air Force continued operations for 6 years, conducting 334 tests, until December 1961. These helped the Air Force to standardize its ejection systems and perfect a new ejection seat to make emergency escapes much safer for American pilots. 

Subsequently, the facility has been listed as a Formerly Used Defense Site, which is government (Defense Department) owned land, and was leased to multiple companies over the years for continued use. Some of which are: Stanley Aviation Corporation, Bell Aircraft, Stencel Aero Engineering, Collins Aerospace (a division of Raytheon), Universal Propulsion Company, and BF Goodrich Aerospace.

Tim Tyler took this pic of the main gate in March of 2010.

These companies helped develop multiple systems at the site that were implemented on multiple aircraft such as the B-47 Stratojet, B-52 Stratofortress, B-66 Destroyer, F-104 Delta Dart, FJ-2 Fury, F-106A Delta Dagger, F4H Demon, P6M Seamaster, B-58 Hustler, A-1 Skyraider, T-28 Trojan, T-6 Texan II, A-3B Skywarrior & B-66 Destroyer, EA-6B Prowler, F-15 Eagle, T-38, A-4 Skyhawk, F-16 Falcon, and the OV-1 Mohawk. That's a big list!

Stanley Aviation in particular are the ones who later built the adjacent gravel airfield at the site sometime around 1962-1965, to better facilitate personnel to transit to and from their company headquarters in Colorado without having to commute from St.George or Hurricane. They later paved the runway in 1975, but did not construct any hangars or other support buildings. The runway itself has been in a state of disrepair/out of service for some time, since before 1996 (more than 25 years). 

Currently, the test site is owned/operated by Alliant Techsystems (ATK Aerospace), which is now a subsidiary of Northrop/Grumman, and tests are still regularly conducted there. Again, most of this info was obtained from the Abandoned & Little Known Airfields page for southern Utah, and I still recommend you visit it for the full story, as he has much more info than I could provide here in my summary. 

October 2012 photo by Tim Tyler of one the sign with support building and and test articles. I don't doubt this is the original signage from the 50s.

Another fun little aside on the facility, is that it was the focus/climactic setting of a little known techo-thriller novel written by local author Timothy Burton Anderson called, "The Reign of The Stavka". It was a book I remember enjoying as a young adult, and I still have a copy to this day. I remember meeting the author in passing one day, and I commented to him how much I liked it. Mr. Anderson was appreciative, but gave me the impression he was quite disappointed with the final product not being edited well enough, as it seems he thought it contained an excessive amount of mistakes by a new (at the time) author. In any case, if you like stuff like Tom Clancy, I'd still give it a recommendation, as it's a fun read. 

More random funnies to calm the nerves

Just to break things up and lighten the mood, here's some random stuff from a variety of sources that made me laugh recently:

First, the Winter Olympics are metal:

Next, this is exactly what my school experience was like:

This was me the first time I played the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games:

My social life as a teenager:

And a picture of a Navy SEAL resting after training:

Little Mountain Test Annex

The best picture I could find of the facility, from a Boeing newsletter.

This was something that was a little bit of a local mystery to me, but it was really only a mystery to me, as I didn't take the time to really look up info on it, and info was somewhat hard to come by several years back. So, sitting on the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake, west of Ogden, in a fenced-off, guarded facility, near the rail-line causeway, is Little Mountain Test Annex.

It appears that this facility is key to maintaining and testing nearly all aspects of the Minuteman III ICBMs, with work primarily being contracted out to Boeing, despite the site being still owned by the state of Utah, and the facility being managed by the USAF via Hill AFB. 

The best write up I could find on the facility was here by Boeing on their site in 2017. In their own article, they state that "Boeing annually tests the hardness integrity of missile subsections to ensure there is no degradation from aging, maintenance, repair or continuous operation. During radiation testing, employees monitor computer screens and call out instructions. They collect data that will be analyzed". Pretty fascinating all in all for such a small facility that is relatively so close to civilization, and I would highly encourage you to read the full article.

A picture of crew working at the facility from the article I mentioned earlier. 

One of the most intriguing blurbs I found about the site is that the Minuteman III system was only meant to last 10 years, but has been the mainstay of the ICBM fleet for more than 50, and most of the work at this facility has been to help increase the longevity and resilience of the system for being in service for so long. According to Boeing, the USAF has a program called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which is meant to produce a more long-lived replacement for the aging Minuteman IIIs in the near future. 

It also goes into a little bit of the history of the facility, stating that is was first established in 1957 to test the Bomarc missile system that was mentioned here before. Later, in 1974 the site was then converted into the Minuteman testing facility it is today, and has remained doing so ever since. They have since worked on all versions of the minuteman system. 

Another, fairly old image of the facility from the CLUI site.

Another fascinating factoid from the 2017 article states that they have not had a single workplace accident of any kind for more than 15 years. Just makes me wonder what was the last kind they DID have in 2002 (or earlier)...but I doubt I'll find out. 

I think the quote of the day from that article I mentioned, is from one of the employees there, Jim Cyr, an 11 year veteran of working at the facility, “I didn’t know how much Little Mountain was doing for us until I started working here -- it’s pretty incredible. Once you dig into it, it boggles your mind. It lets you sleep at night.” Sure is true, Jim. 

Picture of a test firing of the final product. Hopefully, we never have to live-fire it.

Ukraine: the crap-storm that keeps on giving

Even when you don't want it to and the drama-llama rears it's ugly head again.

On Friday, Ian McCollum from Forgotten Weapons posted an announcement on his youtube channel that he and his publisher, Headstamp Publishing was going to make a full English translation of the Swedish book "The Foreigner Group - Our War in Ukraine 2014-2015" by some douchebag named Carolus Löfroos. The book being about a first-person account of the war and in the announcement video, the touted a crowd finding campaign needed to get it off the ground and published. 

Immediately a classic internet shit-storm ensued, with reddit and the like freaking out that Ian and his publisher would be helping to finance a self identified and unrepentant neo-nazi and his memoirs about serving in a neo-nazi affiliated, foreign legion-type unit. As a result, Ian posted an apology video later that same day to say they will no longer be making the book, and that they made an oversight by not looking more closely into the author. He also immediately removed the original announcement video, with both videos now being unavailable to view at the moment of writing. 

This is one of those things where I'm actually more than a bit torn between sides here. On the one hand, Ian and his publisher totally made the right PR move, and if his reasoning is to be believed, it was simply a bone headed mistake he and his publisher made. Cancelling the book is the right move to make sure they weren't directly financing a nazi dick-hole, nor glorifying/condoning a controversial Ukrainian unit with confirmed war-crimes and self avowed neo-nazi members. I for one, really don't want my money helping to finance that crap. 

Uh huh. Suuure they deny being neo-nazi. Gross.

On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating for a few reasons. One is that the situation in Ukraine is extremely complex (if not freaking bizarre), and despite the unashamed nazi paraphernalia of the Azov unit, it's really odd to note that they have members who are Jewish (even prominent ones), and they say that Israel is a model country they want to become like, as well as the fact Israel is one of the largest arms suppliers to Ukraine. 

Secondly, is that (as Ian stated) this is a great manuscript with a REALLY unique point of view on a very modern conflict and with extreme levels of detail. That doesn't excuse the author at all, but it's funny how people are raising a big fuss about this neo-nazi author, when many other ACTUAL card-carrying nazis have written and published books on their memoirs and combat experiences, with no one batting a freaking eye (see here, here, and here).

Lastly, there's the suspicion I have that Ian was being a purely neutral academic about the situation, and may have known all along about the author's personal history. I suspect he was thinking it wouldn't matter to those who know that they are buying the book not for politics, but for the first hand account of what happened on the ground and it's affect on the world in it's current state. 

History is ugly, it's often ugly and it will always be that way to us and to future generations.We cannot change the past, but we should still be learning from it's ugliness to make the future better. Sad to see a bunch of whiny brats jyped everyone out of a very interesting look at the Ukrainian conflict, even for those wanting to look at it in an academic sense. Pity we can't just cheat the nazi out of the money in the end.  

I honestly doubt Ian has a single speck of neo-nazi sympathy in his body, and just wanted to make an interesting book to read about modern combat.

King of the Monsters

Because it's just too good not to. 

Godzilla rap beat remix

Also, just for kicks and giggles, for those up to speed with the news, my wife sent me this the other day and I nearly peed in my pants laughing:

 

UMs: Murder/Unexplained Death part 1

Due to the popularity of the last post I did on the r/UnresolvedMysteries subreddit, I figure I'll do a reoccurring post on Saturdays for the next few months on similar topics. I'll likely post on about a half-dozen or less cases grouped by topic until I run out of all of the ones that I find interesting, with some being sourced from Wikipedia as well. 

Speaking of which, this week's topic will be unsolved murders/unexplained deaths, which is the topic I generally find the least interesting, but because of all the true crime nuts out there, this one will probably reoccur the most out of sheer numbers of cases available. So, here's a selection of some of the ones I found actually intriguing to read. Again, you'll have to put on the rockin version of the UM theme tune, put it on repeat, and get to reading 'em:

The Hinterkaifeck murders. If you know about it, you're already getting chills. If not, well, read on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/mjr6o0/on_this_day_99_years_ago_one_of_the_most_horrific/

The Box Lady of Benton County. Supposedly dropped from a helicopter no less. Pinochet was unavailable for comment. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/mp4ae9/on_a_fall_day_in_1976_a_farmer_harvesting_corn_in/

A random redditor claims to have killed a childhood friend, and another redditor finds evidence to support it might be true.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/8al6hz/redditor_confesses_to_killing_childhood_pal_other/

Kent State is well known, but was it really the result of the FBI effing up and instigating (yet again)?

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/gdcmk9/50_years_ago_today_members_of_the_ohio_national/

North Korean purges. Need I say more? Sadly, the hermit kingdom is full of these stories and we may never know even after the country eventually dissolves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/ft588g/in_1995_the_entire_sixth_army_corps_in_north/

High altitude suicides. A well known fact that it is true, but scientists still don't know why.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cxx1w4/the_chilling_mystery_of_highaltitude_suicides_us/

Tax time

 It's my least favorite time of year. No just because doing taxes sucks, but income tax is blatant federal theft. Not only is it unconstitutional, but the amount it actually contributes to the national budget(deficit), is so miniscule that I'm sure the fed is paying far more in IRS agents to collect/regulate it than they ever get in return. Might as well abolish the federal income tax. Write your local congress-critter today!

As for stuff closer to reality that doesn't suck, is the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett.  I thought they would be playing their cards a little closer to their chests, but man, the last couple episodes were pretty awesome. I can't get into too many details without spoiling it if you haven't seen it, so watch it already, we gotta talk about it!

 

Would you like a side of monarchy with that?

I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said the famous line, "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language." Well, if you live in Layton, Utah, that doesn't have to be the case at all. Time for a shout out/tip 'o the hat to another fantastic small business I like in my state. This time we are taking a walk across the bridge to A Little Taste of Britain. The place is really nice and is part restaurant, part groceries, part novelty store. 

pic shamelessly taken from their facebook page.

If you're in the mood for some British cuisine, they have classic European style fish and chips or sausage rolls (my favorite). If you need items for your kitchen/pantry like blackcurrant cordial, or some Jaffa cakes, you can get the from their groceries section. Or, you can try out some chilled soft drinks like Irn-Bru or Orange Tango (another of my favorites). Then you can round it all up by nabbing the typical tourist knick-knack like a little effigy of Big Ben. Any of your across the pond needs will be met...that is, anything other than dumping their tea in the lake. Go to their official site to check their menu and other offerings (they do grocery and restaurant pickup, too).

Avast, ye atom lovers!

With all my talk about nuclear weapons and power the other week, here's a really neat video on an early effort for a peacetime use of atomic power by one of my favorite youtubers, Mustard.  Unfortunately, he's only posting about once every month or two as he's moved off to the greener pastures of CuriosityStream and Nebula.  I'm too poor to afford that at the moment, so I have to just wait for his leftovers to be posted to YouTube. Regardless, all of his videos are very informative, entertaining, and are always about a subject I would be interested in.

Your A-10 video sucks and I can prove it mathematically

Buckle up people, this will be long and boring. So, as I said earlier, I would fight LazerPig on his A-10 videos (and I'd love to fight him on the F-35 as well). I am rather a big fan of LazerPig and I like a lot of his videos, as they are usually well researched and sourced. So, I although I do this to malign his video, it's not to malign him, but point out his inaccuracies, bad/lazy research, along with dumb/incorrect info, and biases that affected this video. I would still highly recommend you watch his videos on it (if you can spare an hour and a half), with part one here and part two here. 

That being said, I'm also not the world's biggest A-10 fan. It's certainly far from my favorite aircraft, but I can respect that it's NOT a crap plane. That out of the way, I think I should start by pointing out some things he has gotten very right in his video, and he has accurately sourced a lot of good info:

Yes, he is completely wrong on almost all things military/war. Might as well call him Walter Peck.

- Yes, Pierre Sprey and James Burton had nothing to do with the A-10 airframe design, and were also total hacks that were full of all sorts of crap opinions, false claims, and terrible thoughts about modern warfare in general. Anyone who thinks they were directly involved in the A-10 or any other production aircraft are also full of crap, and have not done their homework. You REALLY didn't have to spend an entire 30 min on this freaking subject (at least if it's supposed to be about the A-10). Should have just made part 1 about Spey and Burton as a separate subject entirely. 

- Yes, the F-111 and F-117 were/are unfairly maligned by reformers in the military, it's industrial complex, and by enthusiasts. They were both retired before their prime (or at least for the F-111, was never properly replaced). Note that the F-111 still has much better range and payload capacity than the F-15E that replaced it (as well as better top speed when internally laden). Also, the F-117 is still flying after being officially retired as it is an excellent training aid for ground sensors, weapon crews, and other aircraft in helping to detect/engage stealth aircraft.  

- Another point of contention I will completely agree with him on, is that the capabilities of the GAU-8 cannon are vastly overrated/exaggerated, and I think the USAF likes it that way. In reality, the USAF even acknowledges that it is no more effective than a 20mm Vulcan in anything other than it's effective range. As an added note, I think the A-10 would be better served by the 25mm Equalizer cannon, to vastly reduce vibrations/reverse thrust that cause the inaccuracies of the A-10, while improving ammunition capacity, or increasing space for much needed ECM and ECCM equipment (a lack of which, I admit will greatly contribute to potentially poor survivability going forward).

Now, on to LazerPig's unfortunate bullcrap, which is sadly plentiful, as he constantly contradicts himself in the 2nd video. It's also funny to hear him admit he's not an aviation expert, but puts out this long form, two-part video explaining why he says it's a crap plane, while saying there are a lack of "facts" in favor of the aircraft. 

- As he himself stated in the video, one goal of the design program was to be a lower tech vehicle with very low maintenance hours and cost, that can be operated from dirt strips and poorly prepared runways. Specifically, it was envisioned to replace the A-1 Skyraider in the "sandy" role. I would suggest this means the A-10 is massively successful from a design perspective as it has fantastically better range, payload capacity, armor, loiter time, more powerful gun, and can carry more sophisticated weapons than the 'ol A-1.

- Also, he stated the A-10 has never been confirmed to survive a SAM hit. A literal ten second google search proves him wrong.  This is also funny, because he uses another picture of this exact missile hit to the above Warthog in his video seconds after stating there is no evidence for it. All you needed was to read the caption for the pic you used, moron! Read all about it here. Another example of one being hit by a SAM and surviving is here.

- Also, he criticizes the armor and gun on the Warthog and says the fact that the armor only protects up to 23mm is lacking. Excuse me, did you not say that war always changes? They didn't have the effing 2K22 Tunguska around when the A-10 was designed or put into service. The Tunguska was only accepted by the Russian military in 1982, and they don't like admitting when they had enough units that were trained for it to reach Initial Operational Capability after that time. The A-10's primary threat was the ZSU-23-4 Shilka, which uses, guess what? 23mm cannons! Shilka's are also used by a plethora of countries in the world which is a lot more than the whopping eight that use the Tunguska. The key here being that the armor can withstand hits from it and the GAU-8 gatling cannon out-ranges the 23mm cannons. Not to mention there are still plenty of old Russian aircraft and AAA pieces in many a country's inventory (including Russia's) who are equipped with 23mm cannons.

- In the video he states the A-10C model has many upgrades that rectify many of the problems he talks about, but then says those upgrades make it so that it can't operate from dirt strips and roads, which you'll find is complete bullshit, if you do a basic google search for it (see also here). Also, even if the A-10C's more sophisticated systems break without being able to be repaired immediately, it still retains the combat effectiveness of the A-10A, as it still has the same engines, gun, payload capability, and more basic avionics systems to use. 

- He also says this "C" model makes the plane much more expensive, which defeats the purpose of the plane being simple and cheap. Well, I did some number crunching, and the basic F-16C (considered to be one of the cheapest planes in the USAF inventory) WITHOUT later block upgrades in today's money costs roughly 32 million a piece (adjusted for inflation from 18.8 million 1998 USD). The A-10C with it's C model upgrade cost INCLUDED and adjusted for inflation comes to roughly 17 million USD in today's dollar value. Seems pretty freaking cost effective to me, you dolt (you can do the math yourself here).

- Yes, the A-10A has been the subject of bad blue-on-blue incidents because it lacks sophisticated sensors, communications, and data link devices as he mentioned, but this illustrates another problem. The plane was not designed with those in mind, because of the mission set it was to perform. It was not meant to be roaming a countryside looking for targets of opportunity; it was meant to operate with other FAC aircraft and/or ground based FACs (as he mentions in the video!) to ensure target discrimination. So the problem comes about with Air force brass using it incorrectly and giving units reckless rules of engagement, making it the Air Force that is crappy, not the A-10.

- Also, as for his comparison of the F-111 with A-10 kills and the unverified nature of the A-10 tank kills, he glosses over the fact that, the F-111 generally did not fly CAS missions int he exact same flight profile as the A-10, and ignores the fact that most tank-busting was done with strike missions and not CAS missions. On a related note, just because a tank is not completely destroyed, doesn't mean it doesn't count as a kill. In military parlance, there is such a thing called a "mission kill", meaning that if the equipment is either inoperable or abandoned because damage from an attack, or threat of attack, it can count as a kill, as long as it will remain out of action.

- Now, come closer...closer still...flying low to avoid ground based radar still works in hilly/mountainous terrain and other disruptive terrain (like over water) and those mountains are the area the A-10 was designed to operate, as you stated yourself in the video, and is still a very viable thing to do in modern air combat if in that terrain. So again, it's a case of the plane not being employed in it's designed for theater of operations, while (as I mentioned earlier) not having sufficient ECM equipment to counter modern threats.

- He also neglects to mention that in the air force's own tests/flyoff between the F-35 and the A-10, despite not being fully declassified, they admitted themselves that the A-10 can't be replaced by the F-35, and that they "need to work together in the future". Some even say the test is rigged in the F-35's favor (also here), and considering the USAF history on those kind of things (also see the KC-46), I can believe it. The F-35 was a massive overreach in scope and is a compromised design, that would have been better served by a separate, dedicated design for each of the services (sounding familiar? *cough*  the F-111! *cough*).

-Another thing he neglects to mention is that the design and performance of the A-10 allow for it to loiter and provide additional fire support for the forces it provides CAS to for a lot longer than many other assets, and allows it to continue to attack new threats as they emerge. 

So, to summarize, it seems like the A-10 not only isn't crap, it's actually pretty great, as it is affordable, effective, and survivable. It has it's share of problems and issues, but any other fighter/attack plane has it's own problems, required upgrades, or has faced changes in mission sets. Heck, your fabled F-111 had plenty of those happen, and it's still an excellent aircraft. 

But, just to address a couple of other issues he brings up in the 2nd video:

- Also, if he had done his homework, he would have known the 0 loss record of the F-15 Eagle is possibly also likely a fudged number, for the sake of national prestige and propaganda (whether Israeli or US, or both), as LazerPig himself pointed out, it has been done by the USAF before. Granted, the source for the losses is via a War Is Boring author, but it's two part article is still worth considering the circumstances of the unconfirmed kills. That, and he says no other plane has come close to it's kill/loss record, but the F-14 he talks about has a much higher kill record with only 4 confirmed A2A losses, which compare VERY favorably to the kill/loss record of the F-15. 

- In his video he states that with the advent of (reliable) long range missiles, dogfights are now a thing of the past. Yes, they have been far less common, but far from eliminated. Despite long range missiles, dogfights still occur on a regular basis in aerial combat, the only change being that guns are no longer as often being the weapon to end it. That, and especially with more countries now obtaining/developing their own stealth aircraft and with the advent of more commonly available, more advanced ECM and ECCM in the hands of more counties, it's likely the dogfight will be back in fashion with a vengeance (not to mention when you include things like current decoys on top of that).  

- Also, John McCain is an moron that deserves no respect, as he was both corrupt, evil, and stupid, despite the Vietnam POW status. Also, the B-1B WAS performing CAS missions in Afghanistan in almost the EXACT same manner/mission profile at medium to high altitude (in a majority of cases) that your fabled F-111 would have, ya dolt.