Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nones-leonard.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 228 posts

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

#191

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

thrwwy95fab9d1 wrote: post #91
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…

I had the same skeptical reaction to this story. The runways may have changed numbers (I’m not sure how to confirm this), but if they were crossing the river taking off from what is now runway 19, they seriously deviated from their flight plan and deserved the call.

With magnetic shift runway 18 could very well have been renamed 19.

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

#193

Post by plondon514 »

Thanks everyone for reading the story and the investigators for figuring out the real runway!

My grandfather is an amazing man, storyteller, and my personal hero. He was an ad photographer in the mad men era. You can see some of his photographs here: https://condenaststore.com/collections/leonard+nones

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

#194

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

jancsika wrote: post #116
phpisthebest wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbols can be powerful... That is the issue, the foundational principle of the United States was that we were a federalist system with a weak and narrowly defined federal government. The office of Presidency should be inconsequential to the Everyday citizen of either the US or the world. The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reas…

> The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reason the president is a "Symbol of Power" This is all rank and dubious speculation wrt your general rule about POTUS needing a dedicated security team. Hell, Duane Johnson needs a dedicated security team. If you are positing a federal government so weak that POTUS is not widely known withi…

Can you name the president of Switzerland?

This is the nation that hosts the davos summit, is the hub of FIFA and red cross, plus several other high profile multinationals, NGOs, and wotld bodies, and is also the only core european country not parricipating in thr EU zone agreement.

Surely if you know the PM of Spain, Norway or Poland you ought to know switzerland right?

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

ihattendorf wrote: post #135
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not if you have ample time to move everyone to safety before it arrives. Seems a good trade off to make if you aren't confident what the pilot's intentions are instead of just blowing them out of the sky.

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by aikinai »

phpisthebest wrote: post #77
aidenn0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Symbols can be powerful... That is the issue, the foundational principle of the United States was that we were a federalist system with a weak and narrowly defined federal government. The office of Presidency should be inconsequential to the Everyday citizen of either the US or the world. The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reas…

The Japanese emperor has zero power and lives in one of the safest countries in the world, but no one would be naïve enough to think he doesn’t need protection.

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

#197

Post by therealcamino »

cafard wrote: post #72
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…

"Landed" is not quite correct for 1994: the guy crashed it. (He had been smoking crack beforehand, as I recall.) This led the government to close Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 15th and 17th Streets. The reasoning was not apparent, for the pilot had certainly not taken off there--he flew from a field in Maryland.

Pennsylvania Ave was closed to vehicle traffic on May 20, 1995, following the April 19 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died.

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

#198

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

dctoedt wrote: post #168
phpisthebest wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from that not actually being true. To the extent it is, the impact of that is far less than when Large Multi-National corporations use comparatively less money to capture the federal government. This idea that Federal Government is opposition to rent seeking is laughably absurd given the context of the last 50+ years where ever single omnibus spending bill that is passed is littered with pork to rent seekers. A…

I certainly don't dispute that the federal government is vulnerable to regulatory capture by rent-seekers. But if you imagine that state- and local governments are any different, you must live in a laudably-different place than do most of us.

An elephant falling the proportion of twice his own height will probably die.

A mouse falling the same proportional height will survive without a scratch.

Systems behave differently depending on the scale. Small is beautiful, and its a good heuristic that the smaller the scale the more tolerance to variance that system has.

A few local govts that have been captured (SF? NYC?) will not collapse the US.. But if the FBI, the executive, legislative get captured...

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

#199

Post by therealcamino »

colonwqbang wrote: post #24
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…

Yes, it seems unlikely. How many civilians would be in danger by the debris raining down on central DC (or the white house itself, if he really was right over it). Not to mention the risk of a missile missing the target and instead exploding somewhere down on the street.

There's a missile launcher across the street from the White House -- see the Popular Mechanics link in a sibling comment.
Post reply on HN