Final Call: A B-52’s Ridiculously Low Carrier Flyby, Google Launches International Airfare Searches

The description under the photo completely wrong. The
Ranger wasn’t in the Gulf (never was in the 80s) and the closes the ship was in
1989 was in the Straits of Hormuz for a single mission for a couple of hours to
photo graph the Iranian coast. Then the ship headed back to the Indian
Ocean (Operation Earnest Will happened not long prior). The photo
was taken around February 1989 during Rough Training which is the very
last assessment before a carrier was deployed for a WESTPAC that is a six month
deployment away from homeport. The ship was actually off the coast of Mexico
hiding from the Air Force while play war games (The ship lunched an Alpha
Strike on Hill Air Force Base during the same period that was the longest
training carrier strike at that time). The carrier was preparing
for the deployment preparing to crosses the time zone that triggered Russian
bombers to locate and track the carrier before they were in range of Russia
during the Cold War. A Russian surveillance ship would be off the coast
of Hawaii waiting for the carrier to leave port on the journey to cross the
Pacific Ocean and report back that the carrier was underway. Then
Russian Bears and Badgers would locate the carriers and to take a photos
and track the carrier until the ship was past Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam where they
were stationed out of. The Air Force was playing the role of the
Russians and the carrier’s goal was to intercept the bombers once they were in
range to escort them through the carrier air space preparing for the “real
life” mission that was soon to happen. F-14s would fly on both
sides of the bomber and escort them through the carrier airspace. Unlike
what was posted under the photo on the website, mostly on the crew on the fight
deck saw the fly-by because the ship was in the middle of flight ops that
prevented most the ship in seeing the planes (the photo that you have was taken from vulture’s row that is located along the upper section of the island).
Plus, B-1s also did fly-bys along with the B-52s. The first B-1 was about 100 feet off the deck with two F-14s on both sides. TheB-1 bomber was probably going around 150-200mph then she kicked into afterburners and surprised the F-14s as they struggle to stay with the bomber. I was actually working on the bow (Fly 1) during the war games and took photos looking “down” at the same bomber that you have but I can’t find that photo right now. We actually flew for four days straight at the end of the exercise and finally pulled back into San Diego as we felt like zombies.