Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Anodizer on April 04, 2009, 10:27:16 PM
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I know this is a weird question and I'm hoping some of you people either know or can point me in the proper direction....
Couple questions:
On long duration combat sorties, do pilots bring any kind of rations or food with them? Any kind of drink?
During WWII, lots of flights were over 4 or 5 hours.. A guy in a P-51 escort mission would probably get hungry and thirsty...What did that guy eat?
During long bombing missions, what did those guys eat? By the way, I know that B-29's had latrines.. Did any other bombers?
How did guys in fighters on long missions take a whiz??
Guys who long ferry flights, like flying F-16's from a U.S. to a base over seas.. That guy obviously has to refuel.. He's gotta eat too, no?
It's easier to find info on how they do all this stuff in space... Figure it'd be easy to find info like this, but it's not...?
Just curious.. I work in the food industry (chef) and this conversation was brought up.. Thanks... :salute
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the wiz part is kinda gross but basically they wear adult diapers. I have seen some ga planes that have drain that goes out the floor and dumps overboard. On the food some of the big planes i.e. b52 has a miniature kitchen in it to heat stuff up like the airliners of old i believe
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You take your attention off of flying to eat and that is exactly when you get attacked. Havent you learned anything in AH? :D
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If it were me extra D-ration chocolates, gum and water. I'm sure there would be a kind of fruit paste or concentrate. Things that are good for fast energy now that wouldn't cause an upset stomach. Coffee in a thermos.
Relief tubes were fairly common as I understand. Some civil airplanes still have them today.
These days I go with jerky, cherries, apples and some organic granola bars. These don't smell up the cockpit unlilke the can of tuna fish someone popped open without notice on me 4 hours from landing while still over the Amazon forest over Brazil. I can't stand the smell of that cat food and I was not happy. Get your bellybutton in the back by the outflow valves (or the waist guns...) with that food of nasal devil.
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I know a guy who races Le Mons (yeah i think i spelled it wrong but you know what I'm talking about) series cars for a porsche team and they have tube that runs through the helmet for water, sort of like a camel pack type deal, they oblivously don't eat in the car, but I'm sure they hydrate similarly to pilots. (he has to train to breath properly because some turns you apparently pull some G's)
He even told me about peeing in his fire retardent suit because he had to go :lol apparently they don't wear diapers.
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Short Sunderlands had a galley with 2 stoves and an oven
Tronsky
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newbies and dweebs duh
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P-3 Orion (At least the C model) has a kitchen of sorts. The one a buddy of mine "owns" has some nifty gadgets in it, including a coffee maker, but it's hard to say what came with the bird, and what they picked up in Thailand on the way home...
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WW2, probably soup inside a termos?
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WW2, probably soup inside a termos?
That's what I'd think.
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WWII bomber crews, I've read of them just snacking or eating sandwiches. As for relief? Coffee cans and drop the contents on the enemy. I've also read of them just pissing on the floor. How to make your crew chief angry.... It was quite a chore to get out of all the clothing they wore to keep warm. And, do you really want to expose anything up there at 30o below zero?
You can't hold it for six hours?
wrongway
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Sandwiches were used.
I have a MACR (Missing Air Crew Report) from 1944 where aircraft were lost in bad weather. In one of the statements a P-51 pilot wrote "my sandwiches fell off of the instrument panel and I knew I was inverted".
Some planes had relief tubes for the pilots, but if you were in a fighter and had to take a dump, then you just had to do it in your flight suit. Not much of a choice. I've read of the bomber crews doing it in their flak helmets and dumping it out over the enemy. Bad part was if you got into heavy flak, instinct makes you put it on. Sick, I know but if you think about it, it's better to have crap in your hair than shrapnel in your skull.
Basically, you gotta do what you gotta do.
:salute
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I Always thought Pilots/personel on a Ship Or Field Mainly Had Some kind of soup with Some Kind of beer.
Just another Reason Why I Want to be a cook in the Navy Some Day.
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P51 had a "leak tube".
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WWII bomber crews, I've read of them just snacking or eating sandwiches. As for relief? Coffee cans and drop the contents on the enemy. I've also read of them just pissing on the floor. How to make your crew chief angry.... It was quite a chore to get out of all the clothing they wore to keep warm. And, do you really want to expose anything up there at 30o below zero?
The cold isn't that bad for brief periods. They probably were more concerned of pissing on their electrically heated suits if they had one.
Many bomber crews had a habbit of pissing at the bomb bay I hear. Initially it caused some confusion when bomb bay doors didn't open at the bombing altitude but were functioning just fine back on the ground. Liquids have the funny habbit of freezing.
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P51 had a "leak tube".
Even today planes have 'relief tubes' and yes it was taught in basic training on how to properly use one. Not all the water that falls from gliders is intentional ballast. :D
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Cold cup noodles here ... Tofu Sandwishes... Peanut butter jelly sandwishes ... carrots ... water. :D
(http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2677/75/73/1457351318/n1457351318_282978_7632359.jpg)
Real pilots are skiny :t I peed in my water bottle a few times. I had my F/O go in the cargo bay take a dump in a Wallmart plastic bag once, his stomach didn't like the pie he just eate :rock
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I've heard of bomber crews in WWII having to watch what they ate as the altitude could give them some bad stomach cramps. Better not eat beans the night before. :D
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I read about something called Bubble n' Squeak, a sort o pancake mixture, made from left over cabbage and potatoes and fried up like latkes. When you got to altitude, they made your intestines get filled with gas, hence the name. :aok
Came from Spitfires, Thunderbolts, and Warm Beer
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I never wore an adult diaper on any sortie, including the 13 hr atlantic crossings. I have had WSOs who had the squirts during sorties and couldn't hold it until we landed, but thankfully I never had to crap myself in the plane. I did fly back to back 2.5 hr T-37 sorties unpressurized at 25,000 ft while I had full-blown food poisoning, but I had another instructor with me at the time so I pretty much sat in the right seat and concentrated on breathing and not soiling myself for both sorties. Not fun, not recommended, and the flight doc was not amused since back to back long-duration sorties at 25k is hazardous due to the threat of decompression sickness even when you're 100% healthy.
As for food, "low residue" is the word. Like wonderbread and processed lunchmeat, stuff that has lots of calories and digests easy.
Water and fruit juice to drink. Pee into a special bag with a funnel built into the top and granulated gelatin inside. For sorties in an anti-exposure suit (think mildly flame-retardant scuba drysuit) they have a tube thingy you can use to help make sure you don't pee all over yourself or the seat, but I never need to use it having managed to figure out the geometry problem of how to pee into a bag while wearing a drysuit.
I often brought a snickers bar and maybe a chewy granola bar on "shorter" 6 hour sorties where I figured I'd be out of the plane before I had to take a dump.
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As for food, "low residue" is the word. Like wonderbread and processed lunchmeat, stuff that has lots of calories and digests easy.
Interesting... Surprised they don't have some kind of issued meals for long duration flights.. No doubt they'd be something like what astronauts have, low residue
included..
I've done considerable research especially into the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab food technologies as well as "waste management systems".
Amazing how primitive some of the stuff was especially in the earlier days.. It was worse for the Russians..
Anyhow, thanks to all for the insight.. <S> :rock
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I never wore an adult diaper on any sortie, including the 13 hr atlantic crossings. I have had WSOs who had the squirts during sorties and couldn't hold it until we landed, but thankfully I never had to crap myself in the plane. I did fly back to back 2.5 hr T-37 sorties unpressurized at 25,000 ft while I had full-blown food poisoning, but I had another instructor with me at the time so I pretty much sat in the right seat and concentrated on breathing and not soiling myself for both sorties. Not fun, not recommended, and the flight doc was not amused since back to back long-duration sorties at 25k is hazardous due to the threat of decompression sickness even when you're 100% healthy.
As for food, "low residue" is the word. Like wonderbread and processed lunchmeat, stuff that has lots of calories and digests easy.
Water and fruit juice to drink. Pee into a special bag with a funnel built into the top and granulated gelatin inside. For sorties in an anti-exposure suit (think mildly flame-retardant scuba drysuit) they have a tube thingy you can use to help make sure you don't pee all over yourself or the seat, but I never need to use it having managed to figure out the geometry problem of how to pee into a bag while wearing a drysuit.
I often brought a snickers bar and maybe a chewy granola bar on "shorter" 6 hour sorties where I figured I'd be out of the plane before I had to take a dump.
Ever have anything like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNdR53fyLck
Warning!: Some foul language!
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My dad flew C-5's for 15 years or so as a load master then flight engineer. He always told me depending on how long the flight was going to be, they'd send someone on a McDonalds run before takeoff. Course the C-5 has 2 fully functional galleys onboard. One up in the forward crew compartment between the cockpit and the wing box, and one in the upper aft troop bay. He said standard long duration over water flights though, they would be issued Swanson TV dinners they could heat up in the galley ovens but most of the guys would bring a small cooler from home with a bunch of food and drinks in them. I think they have microwave ovens onboard now. The C-5 also has 2 heads onboard just like what you'd find on a commercial airliner.
I know for sure though that part of my dads flight kit was his small coleman cooler and thermos. He never left the house when he was flying without packing a bunch of food in the cooler and filling his thermos with a pot of coffee. One of the advantages of flying a trash hauler.
Reminds me of a joke my dad told me once.
A KC-135 tanker was refueling a flight of F-16's on their way over to Europe. One of the F-16 pilots after refueling started doing barrel rolls off to the side of the tanker, and generally giving the tanker pilot grief for flying a bus.
The tanker pilot called over the radio and says to the F-16 pilot, "Hey that's some fancy flyng!! You wanna see something REALLY neat though?"
The F-16 pilt responds in a smug voice, "Sure bus driver, lets see what you got."
After 5 minutes goes by and the tanker keeps flying in a straight and level manner the F-16 pilot calls over and asks, "Hey I thought you were going to do something impressive."
The tanker pilot responds, "I shut down 2 engines, went and took a piss, and made my self a sandwich....your turn!!"
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There is a running joke about tanker pilots getting upset whenever a fighter request results in them having to put down their pudding cup in order to comply...
That said, when I went to combat archer, I got a last-minute flight on the tanker hauling everyone who didn't get to fly down a fighter down to tyndall. Since I was last aboard, I had to sit in the instructor jumpseat. All I can say is... damn. Freaking pigsty. There were old boxed lunches sort of crammed under the seat with half-eaten food squishing out of the containers, the prototypical empty pudding cups with the spoon sticking out of the empty cup and a little dribble of purplish-brown pudding dripping onto the floor, and a coke can stuffed between an insulation liner and a piece of structural sheet metal that was sort of hidden from view so it had probably been there for months.
Maybe that plane just returned from a long mission or something and they didn't have time to clean out the cockpit, but I was taught as a Lt that if I made a crew chief clean out my mess no matter how small, I owed him a case of beer no questions asked. I still remember running out into a driving thunderstorm one sortie when I realized I had left a supplemental checklist in the cockpit, and I wanted to retrieve it before the crew chief found it and traded it for some beer. Unfortunately I ran up to the plane right as a grizzled 20-year staff Sgt came down the ladder with a big s**t-eating grin on his face and my checklist in his hand, because he knew I was going to provide the beer for his weekend movie night :furious
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All pilots have the choice of steak or fish.
That's why I had the lasagna
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I just thought they took a big handfull. Of the little bags of peanuts you get, when you fly commercial. :D
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Well the pilots/rio's that i worked with flying F4 phantoms and F18's would take all kinds of stuff to snack on, and during the over seas ferry flights (Beaufort S.C. to Iwakuni Japan, 2 tours, and 1 tour to Yeachon Korea) the cockpit's had no room to spare.
Fruit and raw veggies (carrots, celery, radishes, cauliflower, ect..) seemed to be the biggest snack foods.
MRE's when they first came out had a pork patty meal, thing looked like a dogg turd, that they had to discontinue because when pilots would eat it, it caused so much gas in the pilots that they'd get a form of the bends when they went up to altitude.
As for taking a leak, we had what they called "piddle packs" they were heavy duty clear document bags (zip lock bags) that had a compressed dry sponge in them. Pee into bag, sponge soaks up pee, seal, throw in trash after landing.