747 with an air scoop???

My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?


I'd like to think it was an in-flight LOX production plane, but it's
probably something more mundane. Anyone?


--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
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"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
...
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?

It wasn't the YAL-1A airborne laser, was it?

"Neil Gerace" wrote in
:


"Scott Lowther" wrote in
message ...
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747
in USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing
at an airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a
truncated cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?

It wasn't the YAL-1A airborne laser, was it?

Careful, you'll scare Brad with that talk...

--Damon

In article
,
"Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
...
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?

It wasn't the YAL-1A airborne laser, was it?

That was my thought, as well, although I couldn't recall the designation
off-hand.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
~ Robert A. Heinlein
http://www.angryherb.net

Neil Gerace wrote:

"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
...
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?

It wasn't the YAL-1A airborne laser, was it?

That was my first thought, bu dad says no... the nose of the 747 was
normal. No big laser-mirror turret.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Neil Gerace wrote:

"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
...
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?

It wasn't the YAL-1A airborne laser, was it?

That was my first thought, bu dad says no... the nose of the 747 was
normal. No big laser-mirror turret.

We also built a 767 with a hump on the back to carry an airborne laser
for missle defense, which could be mistaken for a 747 from the side, at
a distance. "Truncated" would be a good description for the hump, which
does not taper into the fuselage the way the hump does on a 747.
--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Dick Morris wrote:



We also built a 767 with a hump on the back to carry an airborne laser
for missle defense, which could be mistaken for a 747 from the side, at
a distance. "Truncated" would be a good description for the hump, which
does not taper into the fuselage the way the hump does on a 747.


Didn't that one suffer a major fire? Or was that a KC-135?

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:



We also built a 767 with a hump on the back to carry an airborne laser
for missle defense, which could be mistaken for a 747 from the side, at
a distance. "Truncated" would be a good description for the hump, which
does not taper into the fuselage the way the hump does on a 747.


Didn't that one suffer a major fire? Or was that a KC-135?

Don't know, but the plane that I was thinking of was the Airborne
Surveillance Testbed (formerly the Airborne Optical Adjunct) which
apparently contained only sensors for tracking incoming missiles. Near
as I can tell, the last flight of that airplane was in Dec., 2002, so it
could not have been the airplane that was sighted. The "truncated" hump
probably refers to the original 747-200 upper deck as opposed to the
extended upper deck on the -400's we build now.

Pat

On 2004-07-09, Scott Lowther wrote:
My father drove across northern Nevada yesterday. At one point, a 747 in
USAF markings flew low across the highway coming in for a landing at an
airport (he does not remember exactly where). The 747 had a truncated
cockpit hump... and a large air scoop just behind that. Does this sound
familiar to anyone?

It sounds like photos I've seen of the "flying laser", though the photos
I remember looked a lot more like they had an airscoop than the ones I
can find online. Bah. How mundane.

http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/abl.html

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/...ps/02_27c.html

I wonder what I'm remembering.

--
-Andrew Gray

"Andrew Gray" wrote in message
. ..

It sounds like photos I've seen of the "flying laser", though the photos
I remember looked a lot more like they had an airscoop than the ones I
can find online. Bah. How mundane.

http://www.airliners.net/Airliners_n...855&ViD=middle

This is the YAL-1A (Boeing Model 747-4G4F) airborne laser, and we see that
it doesn't seem to match the description. Probably an E-4B then, although
that has "United States of America" titles rather than USAF ones.