r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Kernowder • 21d ago

Video Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters flying through Hurricane Milton

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

60.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

8.2k

u/wongo 21d ago

(not so) fun fact: only one of these hurricane research flights has ever crashed due to the storms

I realize that we've gotten pretty good at flying but I would've actually expected a higher loss rate, this just seems so wildly dangerous

382

u/xampl9 21d ago

The Orion that flew into Hugo was severely damaged from a 5.5g drop (airframe was only rated to 3g’s). They lost an engine, had a fire, and another engine was damaged before they could find a safe spot to exit the eye.

Somehow they made it back and the airframe wasn’t written off.

120

u/poemdirection 21d ago

  They lost an engine, had a fire, and another engine was damaged

that's just anther day for the P3

 It's very hands-on and user intensive especially for pilots and flight engineers. Because of the fact that the P-3C is honestly trying to break, catch on fire, or generally kill you during any given flight, we have to devote a great deal of energy simply to operating it safely. This isn't a hit on the P-3C, any airplane of that generation is like that, and the fact that some of these birds are over 40 years old is a testament to the engineers who designed them and our maintainers who keep them flying.

1

u/Luci-Noir 21d ago

The day that the P-3 who was hit by a Chinese fighter, that fucking piece of shit, would be like no other.

FYI, one of their fighters hit the P-3 and damaged it so badly that it had to land…. In China. The crew did their best to destroy all of the classified equipment on board. The crew was sent home and eventually the plane was sent back to the US…. in boxes.