Fly Fishing Forum banner

A salute to our men in Afganistan...

2K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  striblue 
#1 ·
I had the extreme good fortune to meet LCDR Scott "Skweez" Toppel, fighter pilot, after his return from the war in Afganistan. We sure have 'the right stuff' when it comes to air superiority and we can thank guys like Scott for that.

I was sitting there in a new Airbus thinking it was a pretty slick piece of machinery shooting the breeze with Scott and it turns out he flies an F-18. Suddenly the plane looks like a bus!

We see these top gun guys on tv and movies and some of us may have family or friends over there but for me the chance to meet and shoot the breeze with someone who gets catapaulted from a ship into mach speeds in a hornet was a real treat.

We salute you LCDR Toppel, America thanks you!

Here are some images from Skweez... enjoy!








 
See less See more
3
#2 ·
Yes agree. Good pictures looks like that fighter is on its way home after dropping some ordinance. See missing missles. I also met one of these Navy fighter jocks last year at Reagan National Airport and we discussed current day fighters versus the ones I worked on in the late sixties while stationed in Iceland in the Air Defense Command. This Navy pilot could be over there now flying sorties. I was an avionics technician working on the instrumentation and flight control systems, so I got to first hand work with the fighter pilots and debrief them on avionics problems etc... Great guys I will say and brave to fly those single engine F-102s and F-106s over the North Atlantic which our squadron flew to intercept the numerous Russian bomber tests of NATO air defenses.

U.S. appears to have made the Afghanistan campaign a short one for the ground troops so far thank god.

I can't imagine the Taliban lasting long after having several 14,000 pound bomb "Daisy Cutters" dropped on them. Thats what they the government is telling us about don't want to know about what they are not telling us.

God bless america and bring the troops home soon safe !

P.S. While stationed in Iceland I was dying to go fly fishing for salmon. However, it was not possible due to the Icelandic rules at that time, my finances, and moreover my USAF duties. I became the senior avionics air men for the squadron the last 8 months there, and was basically working 7 days a week and on continual alerts due to the russian air force and submarine services testing NATO defenses. Remember the Cold War was still on then along with Vietnam. I did take 1 or two tours arond the island though and did see some of the salmon rivers. One of our officers did go fishing and brought back a twenty pound brown to the base. I have pictures of that somewheres.God bless america and bring our troops home safe.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top