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My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

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Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#121

Post by WaitWaitWha »

phpisthebest wrote: post #38
thepasswordis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously, that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

> ... but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

Assuming that the power needs to exist, this implies that we would need more people, which in turn makes the government larger.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#122

Post by fijiaarone »

aidenn0 wrote: post #66
phpisthebest wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously, that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

Assassinating the president has little to do with denying him the power of the presidency, and more to do with what he is a symbol of. Kind of like how 9/11 wasn't about killing some office workers

A lot of presidents have been assassinated in America. Not one assassination has affected the continuum of government or been more than a personal tragedy.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#123

Post by yencabulator »

pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

1994 was a long time ago. Here's a picture of one known setup for you:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30027303/...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#124

Post by mannykannot »

In addition to everything else, this pilot may have put himself at considerable risk of running into wake turbulence by following behind a 727. Waiting 3 minutes or more for the vortices to dissipate would not have gone down well in this situation.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#125

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

thepasswordis wrote: post #105
pixl97 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government and nuclear weapon problem?

Is there a continuation of government reason why every former president continues to have a full time secret service detail?

They are bodyguards. Ex-presidents pissed off a lot of people, domestically and internationally, when in power. They are much more likely to be targeted for murder than the average citizen.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#126

Post by dwater »

throw827474737 wrote: post #52
itslennysfault wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm surprised by "follow the river" as a flight instruction. That sounds like the directions you'd get from someone that doesn't understand cardinal directions. "Turn right at the gas station, then turn left at the big oak tree" or something. I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"

Hmm, can someone just paint me that path into Google Maps? Washington National has no 18, but only a 19, and I guess everyone takes off southwards as directly north is the White House? Also the river is like parallel to the runway and then the natural extension of it, so "follow the river" there is super clear, no turn needed? I must be looking at the wrong airport?

I used to sit nearby on my lunch break, and on a clear day you could watch planes after takeoff clearly follow the course of the river N/NW until completely out of sight, which would probably have been close the DC/Maryland border. They would be going in and out every few minutes and they all took the exact same flight path.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#127

Post by rtkwe »

theideaofcoffee wrote: post #89
squallgmn wrote: post #84

Washington National doesn't have any runways that run perpendicular to the Potomac, so if the pilot maintained runway heading on takeoff, he should have already been more or less aligned with the river going north or south. The story says he landed on a 6000 foot runway. There are three runways on the field: 1/19 is 7169 feet, 15/33 is 5204 feet, and 4/22 is 5000 feet. It's possible the runways were configured differ…

He mentioned in the piece that he was on 18: "Seat belts fastened, I rolled forward made a right turn and taxied to runway 18..." 18 at the time it was written/recounted, and 19 now most likely due to pole drift.

That does match with the rest of the story. Left turn of of 18/19 to go up river would point him back towards the Whitehouse and Capitol. It does make their mistake a little more egregious though because if they're 'following the river' turning nearly 180 to do that and also not following the flow is much larger change than simply following your current heading and making the small turn to follow the river out to sea. That unexpected and uninstructed turn back towards the WH and Capitol certainly would have raised a lot of eyebrows.

One thing I am having trouble with is picturing where they would have been crossing the river at 1500 feet. The Potomac is basically at the end of the runway he took off from.

On the other hand for the rest of the process small planes aren't that rare in National and there's even a rather scenic approach pattern that actually follows the Potomac into runway 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zco3XlYt6Ko

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#128

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

ok_dad wrote: post #112
pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

The answer is that the people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile into the middle of a huge city full of important officials since moving the President and other important officials to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna. Instead, they waited for the plane to come down some…

> knew the aircraft was no threat

A Cessna intentionally crashing into the White House is no threat? Especially if packed with explosives?

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#129

Post by rtkwe »

krisoft wrote: post #54
fh973 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no. The fact that to the left was a restricted airspace (that the pilot must be aware of) disambiguates the instructions already. Obviously the pilot did not do their flight preparation, was it includes being familiar with any airspace restrictions.

Also. I'm looking at a chart of the DC airspace. P-56, the restricted airspace containing the White House, is not on any rivers. If you are following the river (left, right, doesn't matter) then you are not getting into P-56. If you are oscillating around the river then yeah, you are going to have a bad time. Also, I'm looking at all the runways at this airport. They all have one obvious direction which way you shoul…

From the description they took off from 18 (now 19 due to pole drift) it sounds like they might have taken a left basically immediately off the runway which would put them pointed pretty directly at the restricted airspace around the Capital and White House. It is odd they'd be there though considering the story says the check for the river on reaching 1500 which even at best climb would be around two minutes after take off which should be well past the river.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#130

Post by rtkwe »

jefftk wrote: post #48
pja wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably assumed that a) the pilot knew about the exclusion zone (kind of a big deal!) and b) you follow a river downstream (usually) so their instruction seemed (to them) unambiguous.

> you follow a river downstream (usually) Weird; I don't have that connotation of "follow" at all.

Taking off from runway 18 (now 19) you're pointed essentially down river already though. The Potomac is right there at the end of the runway. That's the most confusing part of the story to me is how he was ambiguously crossing the river after taking off basically straight downstream.
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