Remember the comedian who touted himself as the World’s Leading Expert — but didn’t say on what, and that was the gag? Apparently Donald Trump never saw that guy, or if he did, he didn’t get the joke. Trump considers himself the world’s leading expert on everything, up to and including the design of cutting edge aviation technology. Whut? Oh yes. You can’t make this up.
It all started a few days ago when a bulletin came on that an F-35 pilot had just ejected and the plane’s whereabouts were unknown. Its remains were later found in a field in rural South Carolina.
The Marine Corps announced on Monday it was pausing operations for two days after the fighter jet’s crash – the third costly accident in recent weeks.
Gen Eric Smith, the acting commandant of the Marine Corps, ordered the stand-down while authorities searched near two South Carolina lakes for the missing FB-35B Lightning II aircraft.
It is the third event documented as a “Class-A mishap” over the past six weeks, according to a Marine Corps announcement. Such incidents occur when damages reach $2.5m or more, a Department of Defense aircraft is destroyed, or someone dies or is permanently disabled.
Commanders will spend the stand-down reinforcing safe flying policies, practices and procedures with their marines, according to the Monday release.
The announcement gave no details on the two previous incidents. But in August, three US Marines were killed in the crash of a V-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft during a training exercise in Australia, and a Marine Corps pilot was killed when his combat jet crashed near a San Diego base during a training flight.
This is how experts in the real world are dealing with this issue. Meanwhile, in alt-reality, right-wingnuttia, MAGAdonia, Donald Trump has his two cents to kick in. And yes, it does read like satire, but unless my computer is haunted, which I’ve suspected for quite some time, go over to Twit-X yourself and this is in his account.
“Do you know what would be even better than two engines? Four engines. Wait a minute, I got it. How about eight engines? And not only engines, but the planes should have eight legs, too. Have you ever noticed how fast spiders move? Oh, yes. It’s because they have eight legs. I designed that, too, when I was talking to God and Keith Richards, the only two guys who were here before me, and they said ‘how about six legs for the spiders?’ and I said, ‘No, you idiots, eight. Spiders have to have eight legs,’ and God realized I was right, not for the first time I might add, and Keith went off to play his guitar and sulk.”
“Now if the planes that Obama bin Laden sent to smash into the World Trade Center in New York had just had eight legs, they could have walked up the side of the buildings, instead of flying into them, and then everything would have been fine that day, nothing would have blown up or fallen down. Youse see what happens when youse don’t listen to Trump?”
I was not the only one to think along these lines.
You see? If we had only listened to Trump, everything would be in perfect cosmic order. Trump is as Xenu, the Space Emperor, who sent all the people here billions of years ago, or at least that was L. Ron Hubbard’s cult gag and MAGA is Trump’s. Got to hand it to these visionaries who know how to clean out peoples’ pockets. At least Hubbard didn’t run for president, I do give him that.
All you need to stop a hurricane is either a nuclear bomb or a functional sharpie. The stupidity is astounding. Maybe he’d be better served by learning to control his mouth. It keeps writing checks his ass can’t cover.
The only thing that Traitor Tot is good for is cleaning toilets! I should know, I used my Traitor Tot toilet brush today!!
https://www.amazon.com/trump-toilet-brush/s?k=trump+toilet+brush
Oh Nonya, be still my palpitating heart: I used my Trumplet Brush today too! AND some of my Trumpbum paper! Pure happiness.
Where do you get these items? I want them!
I want them, too. Bring enough to share with the class, now. :))
I’m not sure the link will work Ursula & Rainyj, but here it is anyway:
Okay, that didn’t work, so just go to good ol’ Amazon and type in trump toilet accessories. Happy brushing!
Yeah, just ask Hermann Goering about how rotten those Spitfire single engine fighter planes were.
Somebody must have told him about the Dornier Do-X with it’s TWELVE engines
(note – it wasn’t very successful)
How many engines did the Spruce Goose have? I love that plane. I saw it in Long Beach, next to the Queen Mary.
The Spruce Goose now lives in McMinnville, Oregon in a very huge hanger at Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.
It had eight – and flew at 150 mph (a whole 40 mph faster than the Dornier)
On a serious note – twin engines on a fighter can have a serious problem. In the event of onme engine failing, there isn asymmetric thrust, pushing the sircraft to the side of the dead engine. The reason for twin engined fighters isn’t redundancy – it’s increased thrust (which is why the Navy prefers them – they need to get to high speed fast to take off)
You raise an important point about aerodynamics. Jets, particularly commercial ones with multiple engines routinely fly with one (or more if it has three) down to save fuel. The plane’s trim can easily be adjusted in those types of planes with what we think of as conventional wingspans to account for single axis thrust. However, swept wing or “no wing” (which some military aircraft almost are) offer a different type of challenge. Yes, high performance military jets in some cases can do incredible aerobatics to evade missiles or if in a “dogfight” (although some are ungainly and rely on stealth rather than agility to survive) but the sudden loss of one engine presents special challenges. You’re of course correct when you point that out. Worse, if there’s a failure that causes the engine to start tearing itself apart the failed engine will shoot parts into the other engine. This can wind up happening even if the original problem is an engine catching on fire, if it’s not shut down quickly enough. Given the speeds those fan blades go they don’t just stop in a couple of seconds! Not to mention the engine exploding. Given the twin engines sit side by side a single engine failure is (and often does) quickly become multi-engine failure in military aircraft. It’s a bit less of a concern on large bombers with engines slung below the kinds of wings you see on commercial aircraft but again, in smaller delta-winged fighter or fighter/attack aircraft, or even something like the venerable old A-6 Intruder or the A-10 Warthog which is about to be retired (man could the Ukrainians make good use of THOSE!) with regular wings the engines are simply right there if not literally side=by-side then with only a thin bit of metal between them. So again, failure of one engine will often lead to loss of the other.
Trump of course is one of countless technological illiterates who doesn’t have a clue as to WTF is what when it comes to this stuff. Sadly, some such people have a megaphone and lots of people who believe they actually know shit when the truth is they don’t know jack.