World's best job--and it's a different world

This clip shows the latest generation of U.S. fighter jets having fun. 

 

Looks...interesting.  What you can't truly understand from the video is that some of these maneuvers are pulling nine "g's"--nine times the normal force of gravity--on the pilot.

In another life I flew a predecessor of these planes.  It could pull six g's, and that's an experience I don't care to repeat.   

At six g's, everything--including your blood--weighs six times more than normal.  Your blood wants to go to your feet, and your heart doesn't have enough pressure to make it go to your head with enough pressure to run normal vision.  So what happens is that you lose vision, starting from the outside and progressing inward, toward the part of the eye that has the best blood supply.  It's called a "gray-out," and in a sustained turn all you have left with a tiny circle of vision.  Everything else is gone.

That's a warning, telling you not to pull the stick back any farther, cuz if you do you'll lose consciousness.   

In that airplane the pilot sat straight up, as you would in an ordinary chair--cuz that's the way pilots had always flown, eh?   But tests in a huge centrifuge showed that if the pilot was in a more reclined position, he could withstand 9 g's instead of six.  Ah.

Of course designing planes to withstand nine g's made 'em heavier, which meant they needed a lot more thrust, so a lot of things had to improve to make it all work

Now, why would you want to increase the maximum g-load an airplane can pull, eh?  As the notorious Hill-beast once bleated, "What possible difference could it make," eh?

It's a hold-over from both World Wars, and Korea:  Air combat used to be called "dogfighting."  When the only weapon was guns, the key to winning was being able to get behind the opponent to get a firing position.  The key to doing that was to be able to turn more tightly than the other guy.  So the ability to pull nine g's allows a plane to excel in air combat using guns.

In an age of air-to-air missiles, how often do ya think high-g dogfights happen, eh?

Virtually never.  And dropping back to six g's would cut the weight of the airframe, allowing more fuel or more missiles.  But the big plane makers know the Air Force and Navy love planes that can pull nine g's, so there ya go. 

Point of all that was to try to get across that high-g turns are unbelievably hard on pilots.    

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