r/Damnthatsinteresting
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u/xXboxPlaysx
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2d ago
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B-52 Military Bomber Hits Birds Mid Flight Video
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u/BillionTonsHyperbole 2d ago
Fun Fact: According to Bird Law, the bigger bird has the right of way. Those birds that were reduced to a fine pink mist remembered too late.
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u/young_fire 2d ago
Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
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u/Party_Side_1860 2d ago
Hummingbirds are illegal tender
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u/baconator_out 2d ago
Really, that tender huh? I'll catch a few tomorrow and fry them up.
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u/furloco 2d ago
I mean... well... filibuster
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u/the_monkeyspinach 2d ago
I can clearly see you know nothing about the law. It seems like you have a tenuous grasp on the English language in general.
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u/Cash4Duranium 2d ago
I demand satisfaction.
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u/matrimc7 2d ago
Ok, let me pencil you in for high noon tomorrow.
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u/nodeymcdev 2d ago
Calm down, calm down. I know you’re hungry. Well get to our hot plates soon!
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u/Crash_WumpaBandicoot 2d ago
Although true, in bird culture this is still considered “a dick move”
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u/Raps4Reddit 2d ago
Fun fact: humans are the only mammal to kill a bird that high.
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u/InsomniacHitman 2d ago
How do you know that bird was high?
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u/kenman884 2d ago
Bruh did you see his reaction time? [10] for sure
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u/86itall 2d ago
Ahhhh r/trees nostalgia. Thanks for this.
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u/_ganjafarian_ 2d ago
Ya I was gonna say, I miss the times ppl would post how high they were with a number from 1 to 10. Brought back fond memories
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u/HanzoShotFirst 2d ago
What about bats?
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u/Apneal 2d ago
Not aware of any bats that fly thousands of feet in the sky.
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u/Ciraldo 2d ago
Bats can fly to 10,000 feet
https://www.batcon.org/article/bats-aloft-a-study-of-high-altitude-feeding/
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u/xxLusseyArmetxX 2d ago
That's altitude, which technically does not mean bats could fly with 10000 feet of nothing under them, only that they reach places that are 10000ft high, but I would assume that's because bats can also live in high altitude places.
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u/RedditedYoshi 2d ago
Oh shit, the bat flight altimeter fandom is really heating up.
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u/Upbeat_Sheepherder81 2d ago
Most species of bats don’t hunt birds, and none that I know of fly that high.
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u/AprilWatermelon 2d ago
Poor birds sucked into a blender made before its great great great great great great great great grandparents
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u/bullish_futuresman 1d ago
Birds are so stubborn. Like the pigeons you see in the road that don't move even as you're about to run them over.
Hey flock, there's a massive flying fortress headed right for you, move maybe?!?!
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u/FloridaGatorMan 1d ago
I don't think birds really have the mental capacity or instinct to understand what is happening when something that big is flying that fast. It's the same with squirrels, they often get hit by cars because their instinct is to try and juke out the predator and make a run for a tree. The problem is the cars are moving faster than any predator can move and is not chasing them.
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u/bullish_futuresman 1d ago
That's true. I think I'm suffering from "it looks like it's moving slow from down here on the ground" syndrome.
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u/live4lax25
2d ago
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Survival of the fittest? Nah
Survival of the GetTheFuckOuttaTheWayiest
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u/HeinleinGang 2d ago •
‘Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.’
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u/Amathindon 1d ago
Rabbits, on the other hand, do not soar but do get sucked into jet engines. The life lesson here: don't cross the runway in front of a jet.
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u/bigbcor 1d ago
Rabbits also get turned to pink mist by nascar. “Let us pause a moment to remember the wabbits…”
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u/__Osiris__ 2d ago
But the bomber was damaged and had to do an emergency landing, where as most of the birds lived
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u/NPKenshiro 2d ago
Yea those two birds probably cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars on top of the normal (high) expenses of the sortie.
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u/Thedrunner2 2d ago
I wonder how often that actually happens
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u/OttoEnjoyer 2d ago
Pretty often sadly
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u/Dchane06 2d ago
If you get a flight radar app that notifies when any plane puts out an emergency signal, you’ll realize emergency landings are pretty common lol.
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u/Aksds 2d ago
I wonder how many are Pans vs maydays.
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u/Rjjt456 2d ago
Pans are a "I need special attention" kind of thing while Mayday is more of a "I NEED HELP, NOW!".
Pans aren't life threatning while Maydays in most cases are. A pan can escalate to a mayday though.
A pan gives you priority while a mayday makes everyone bend over backwards to help you out.
Edit: I forgot to add that my conclusion it that most emergency calls are pans.
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u/worldspawn00 1d ago
Yeah, plane is doing something weird, let's get it on the ground before it becomes an emergency, is usually a good idea.
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u/bethtadeath 2d ago
Recommendations for good/preferred apps?
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u/C8H8O3--Pudding 2d ago
Second that request, I had one a while back where you could track flights but never saw one with emergency signals!
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u/sobornostprime 2d ago
Flightradar24 at least has the possibility to set up notifications if there are emergency signals
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u/UtherPenDragqueen
2d ago
edited 1d ago
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My former B52 pilot dad says it looks like they’re dumping fuel so they can make a safe emergency landing; most likely the bird strike caused engine damage
Edit for clarity: Apologies for the incorrect information; thank you to skiller757 and the others (some less gracious) who pointed out that B52s don’t dump fuel like some other aircraft can. My dad is almost 86, and has some memory loss and dementia related to a stroke in 2013. His last B52 flight was in 1983; earlier in his career he did Operation Chrome Dome missions to keep an eye on the Soviets, followed by 16 months of bombing missions over Viet Nam and Cambodia. Give an old Vet a break.
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u/skiller757 2d ago
Current B52 pilot, we can’t dump fuel and the B52 has never been able to dump fuel. They were shooting an approach relatively close to Minot and that’s why they are so low at this point. The birds did cause damage. One of the engines had to get replaced.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 1d ago
Former BUFF crewdog here (EW). Was stationed at Minot and spent many hours when I was SOF with the bird noise gun.
The only fluid BUFFs could eject was the water from the injection system up through the Gs.
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u/kcstrom 2d ago
I was wondering if that's what that was. Ugh. I would be pissed if that fell on me. Less pissed though than if a flaming B52 fell on me. 🤔
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u/UtherPenDragqueen 2d ago
Jet fuel washes off; flaming wreckage, not so much
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u/CutComplete2884 2d ago edited 2d ago
As long as you use GOOD SOAP (like dawn). and probably have to throw out the clothes that got soaked in it.
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u/7N10 2d ago
I wore some coveralls for months after getting splashed with JP-5. The smell never truly goes away
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u/ChaoticGoku 2d ago
Did you ever take it to a dry cleaner? I had a customer drop off clothes that had gotten fuel splashed from a stuck gas station hose and the smell came right out. Plus, occasionally whole batches had to be recleaned due to a filter needing to he changed out and the clothes smelling like petroleum (which is what gets used to clean them efficiently)
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u/Krynn71 2d ago
Jet fuel is a whole different beast. We work with it at my job and have on-site showers for people to immediately wash it off and change their clothes (or we send them home if they don't have a change of clothes with them).
One time a guy decided to ignore that he got his foot doused in some and kept working for a couple hours with a soaked sock, he had pretty bad chemical burns the next day and had to be out a few days and go to urgent care.
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u/viktari 2d ago
Neither does the cancer
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u/7N10 2d ago
Believe it or not, a friend of mine on that same deployment developed testicular cancer a few years down the road (that he eventually beat).
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u/WeimSean 2d ago
just use a match, it burns right off.
Seriously though from that altitude it's doubtful you would even notice it.
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u/pppjurac 2d ago
It is a bit hard to light a diesel or jf fire with ordinary match. Simply thrown into it, lighted match will estinguish.
Vapour pressure of jf is quite high compared to ordinary petrol.
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u/AmIFromA 2d ago
I learned all I know about how to set jet fuel on fire from "Die Hard 2", thank you very much.
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u/palmej2 2d ago
Interesting fact, neither jet fuel, diesel, nor kerosene are technically "flammable"...
they are [combustible](https://blink.ucsd.edu/safety/research-lab/chemical/liquids/index.html)
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u/Ha1lStorm 2d ago
Sounds like you’ve never used a Mr Clean Magic Eraser Extra Durable Cleaning Pad™ before
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u/Abject_Film_4414 2d ago
Fuel dumps evaporate within a few thousand feet. Normal rules are a minimum of 5000 feet except emergencies.
Low level fuel dumps do indeed leave a horrible sticky residue.
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u/Nebnerlo2 2d ago
I thought the throttle up was maybe to clean it out
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u/Vercengetorex 2d ago
This guy rednecks. When in doubt, throttle out.
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u/OhyoOhyoOhyoOhyo 2d ago
Pilot: "These damn birds"
puts the plane in 5th gear and floors it
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u/now4somethingdiff 2d ago
Are you sure about that? I thought I’ve read that B52 doesn’t have a fuel jettison system. It looks like it’s just exhaust since it’s dark and fuel jettisoning like more white or gray than dark.
And those asking, rarely are they dumping fuel to reduce fiery crash risk, that only really matters if control or landing gear issues… engine out conditions are designed for - bird mechanical whatever. The fuel jettison is to reduce weight to below max landing weight. Planes structure is designed so they can take off heavier than they can land, with the idea they burn the fuel weight off in flight.
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u/Sacred_Fishstick 2d ago
It's very unlikely that they decided to dump fuel so quickly. Aviate, navigate, communicate. They were still on step one.
What we're likely seeing is that they lost an engine and immediately went to full toga thrust to compensate, which on (at least some B52s) means actually using more than 100% thrust.
That is accomplished by basically pumping coolant directly into the engine to keep the temperature under control while the engine spins faster than it should. This is extremely inefficient and causes unburnt fuel to make its way out of the engine.
So I guess technically they are dumping some fuel but not because they want to get rid of it.
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2d ago edited 20h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 1d ago
Not on H-models, which this is. Earlier models up thru the G had that.
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u/SimpleFile 2d ago
I've heard toga being mentioned before in relation to flight thrust. What does it mean? Full steam ahead or something to that extent?
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u/xFromtheskyx 2d ago
You wouldn't dump fuel that quickly after a bird strike. Probably haven't even shut down the engine yet
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 2d ago edited 2d ago
Sorry, but your dad is remembering incorrectly -- B-52s have no fuel dumping capability. If there's any fuel coming out, it's due to fuel system damage.
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u/Blaugrana_al_vent 2d ago
That's not fuel, that's exhaust. B-52 engines aren't particularly known for their eco friendliness.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 1d ago
Yep, especially on JP-8. When it was introduced in the mid-'90s, my unit saw a 4% reduction in range, and cold-weather starting (I was stationed at Minot) was a major ordeal.
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u/basedsuperslimey 2d ago
This makes me wonder why we didn’t have pilots dumping out garbage bags of pigeons in the ww1 dogfights, seems like a pretty good evasive maneuver
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u/certain_planes747 2d ago
Walks into pet store: yes, I’ll have 5 bags of pigeons please
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u/basedsuperslimey 2d ago
I imagine they had a bunch leftover from the ones that weren’t good at carrying messages
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u/mavrc 2d ago
I feel like the pet store in that one Monty Python sketch would be easily able to hook that up
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u/RajenBull1 2d ago
They only had a deceased parrot.
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u/Meandering_Marley 2d ago
"As God is my witness, I swear, I thought turkeys could fly."
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u/Last_Gigolo 2d ago
Propellers vs jet engines.
It would have been moist dust, at best.
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u/basedsuperslimey 2d ago
Well I’m hitting up shark tank as soon as ww3 kicks off
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u/Former_Indication172 2d ago
Shark tank the show? Or the aquarium exhibit? Because if it's the latter there are easier methods of suicide
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u/GeneralNathanJessup 2d ago
Yea those other engines ramped up fast, you could tell from the pitch change.
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u/melancoliamea 2d ago
Not even close. That is just exhaust. You can hear the engines spool up. The old engine tech means it's highly inneficient and polluting. It's there with the 707, herc and P3 turboprops inneficient.
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u/Dobalina_Wont_Quit 2d ago
God I wouldn't want to be standing directly under a fuel dump lol
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u/Ein_grosser_Nerd 2d ago
Its supposed to dissipate before reaching the ground
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u/dontforget2tip 2d ago
Does the bird smoothie dissipate before landing on heads?
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u/Bananafish1929 2d ago
Yes 110% it’s sucked through a turbine.
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u/Hewlett-PackHard 2d ago
The turbine is what's converting it from bird to bird smoothie, still gonna fall.
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u/Upbeat_Sheepherder81 2d ago
Depends on the altitude. Jet fuel is a lot less volatile than normal gasoline.
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u/SilvermoonTLC 2d ago
I live in flight path - you can smell it when they dump, but the most I’ve noticed is dust pasted to my windshields.
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u/ValuableFarmer6574 2d ago
Idk, I counted the birds before and after on the left side of the plane, 18 before, and 16 after. I think 2 died.
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u/MyFacade 2d ago
The internet says the B-52 can't dump fuel, so now I don't know what to believe.
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u/gayness_in_uranus 2d ago edited 1d ago
You're talking out of your ass. No Pilot is going to start dumping fuel willy nilly 10 seconds after hitting some birds while there isnt even a compressor stall or an engine fire or anything. This isnt a fucking action movie. B-52 Engines just smoke like that on high throttle.Since they had their flaps out and gear down in that video, they were probably on final approach to a landing. After hitting the birds, they aborted. Throttle up, pull up etc.
Edit: It appears i was being an asshole unnecessarily.
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u/whitelimousine 1d ago
Yeah these fly in my local area, Rarely but you see em, and they literally look like an environmental disaster in flight. In fact until it hits the bird is the first time I’ve NOT seen it hulking out phat lines of dirty exhaust
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u/GoFlemingGo 2d ago
I thought planes were built to be fine with bird blending? I vaguely recall some teacher talking about a frozen chicken test…he might have been trolling.
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u/Xeroque_Holmes 2d ago
I vaguely recall some teacher talking about a frozen chicken test…he might have been trolling.
To the cockpit. It will still absolutely destroy your engines.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow 2d ago
Frozen chickens were indeed used for bird strike testing. The thinking was that it simulated a tensed bird. Now they use plastic/clay substitutes.
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u/_-ez 2d ago
It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
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u/pgpathat 2d ago
At um, at least it was quick?
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u/Schubert125 2d ago
We're gonna end up in the Hudson
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u/Francis_Bonkers 2d ago
Is the bird okay?
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u/U_So_Smart 2d ago •
Yeah, just give the little guy some time. He's a bit mistified right now,
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u/Conscious_Zebra_1808 2d ago
They rest were ok minus the two who were obliterated 😶🌫️
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u/2wenty-3hree 2d ago
That’s extremely dangerous for the plane. Birds have taken out many planes. Both by smashing through the windscreen or by being sucked into the engines.
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u/Chocobofarms 2d ago
B52 has 8 engines. It probably would be one of the better ones for this to happen in. Mind you, fully fuelled, the older ones were so heavy they needed to “burn water” to get the performance for take off.
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u/____phobe 2d ago
That’s extremely dangerous for the plane
It looks extremely dangerous for the birds too...
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u/CookieJarviz 2d ago
People in the comments section saying it's dumping fuel. That's not dumping fuel, it throttled up its engines, BUFFs are smoky gals.
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u/-safi-jiiva- 2d ago
Mfs have the whole ass sky to themselves and still choose to be in front of a plane. Thems the deer of the sky
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u/kismethavok 2d ago
Birds were there first so technically the plane had the whole sky to themselves and chose to damage their plane and make an emergency landing.
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u/Hedge_the_Hog_HtH 2d ago
Those exact birds are surely younger than the plane. I don't think they know how their ancestors were alone in the skies.
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u/VAMSI_BEUNO Interested 2d ago
So the black smoke coming out of it's engines is due to the birds?
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u/point50tracer 2d ago
The black smoke is caused by them throttling up the other 7 engines after losing the one. B-52s are the only jets I know that roll coal. Seeing them take off is always a bit concerning with all the black smoke.
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u/millijuna 2d ago
Won’t be doing it for long. They’re finally getting re-engined. With 8 engines that you would normally find on a gulfstream jet. Vastly more fuel efficient, the new engines will have a 4:1 bypass ratio vs the 1.4:1 as on the current engines.
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u/Medical-Competition4 2d ago
B-52H can't dump fuel, I don't know why I keep seeing people talking about dumping fuel. It burns fuel by flying around longer.
The exhaust you see coming from the engines is normal for those engines. Happens everytime they fly. They are old engines.
If it was really an emergency, the jet would just land heavy. It would probably exceed the brake limits and burn them up on the runway but they could get the jet on the ground
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u/Worldly_Bill6093 2d ago
gotta love when the mechanics just install and engine that they've weeks or even months to get only for it to suck a bird right down to the core.
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u/permanentlysick 2d ago
You have *(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻* the ENTIRE sky
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u/puzzle_factory_slave 2d ago
flightpath. also, like when you're driving at 200 mph on the interstate, it is difficult to swerve to avoid birds
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u/HomoFlaccidus 2d ago
They didn't hit some birds. These birds recently received word from those orcas around Portugal, and are running some trials of their own.
It's coming.
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u/Iron_Bob 2d ago
Bird strikes are no joke