what damage was done to tyndale air force base
Tyndall Air Force Base a 'Consummate Loss' Amid Questions Most Stealth Fighters
Sitting in the ruined aeroplane hangars of Tyndall Air Strength Base, which was shredded on Midweek when Hurricane Michael swept across the Florida Panhandle, may be some of the Air Strength's about advanced — and about expensive — stealth fighter jets.
Tyndall is dwelling to 55 F-22 stealth fighters, which cost a dizzying $339 million each. Before the storm, the Air Strength sent at least 33 of the fighters to Wright-Patterson Air Forcefulness Base in Ohio.
Air Force officials have not disclosed the whereabouts of the remaining 22 planes, other than to say that a number of shipping were left at the base because of maintenance or prophylactic reasons.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Malinda Singleton, would not confirm that any of the aircraft left behind were F-22s.
Just photos and video from the wreckage of the base showed the distinctive contours of the F-22's squared tail fins and angled vertical stabilizers amid a jumble of rubble in the base's largest building, Hangar five. Some other photo shows the distinctive jet in a smaller hangar that had its doors and a wall ripped off by wind.
All of the hangars at the base were damaged, Major Singleton said Friday. "We conceptualize the aircraft parked inside may be damaged too," she said, "but we won't know the extent until our crews can safely enter those hangars and make an assessment."
The loftier-tech F-22 is notoriously finicky and not always flight-worthy. An Air Force report this year found that on average, but about 49 percent of F-22s were mission ready at any given time — the lowest charge per unit of any fighter in the Air Force. The total value of the 22 fighters that may remain at Tyndall is near $7.5 billion.
Hurricane Michael hit the base with unexpected force. Winds roaring up to 130 miles per hour broke the base's wind gauge. Hangars where Air Force jets accept sheltered during past tropical storms began to groan and shudder earlier existence ripped to ribbons.
The eye of the storm cut direct over the base, which sits on a narrow spit of country that juts into the Gulf of Mexico, most a dozen miles south of Panama Urban center. Trees bent in the howling wind, so splintered. Stormproof roofs just a few months old peeled like old paint and were scraped away by the gale. An F-xv fighter jet on display at the base entrance was ripped from its foundation and pitched onto its back amidst twisted flagpoles and uprooted copse.
When it was over, the base lay in ruins, amongst what the Air Forcefulness called "widespread catastrophic damage." At that place were no reported injuries, in part because nearly all personnel had been ordered to leave in accelerate of the Category iv hurricane's landfall. Commanders still sifting through mounds of wreckage Thursday could not say when evacuation orders would be lifted.
[Follow our live updates on the backwash of Hurricane Michael here]
Planes from nearby Hurlburt Field and Eglin Air Force Base also fled inland in the days earlier the storm. Planes that could not make the flight inland were secured in hangars and a pocket-sized "ride out chemical element" of airmen stayed behind during the hurricane.
Its backwash was both devastating and remarkable, with helicopter footage of the base Th morning showing hangars that had easily survived by storms at present riddled with gaping holes. At least three twin-engine propeller planes owned by a contractor and used for preparation were buried in debris from the wreckage of the largest hangar, along with what appeared to be an F-22, and at to the lowest degree v QF-sixteen jets — retired fighters that have been stripped down and turned into drones and used as target practice.
[Click here for photos from Hurricane Michael.]
In a Facebook post late Thursday, base leaders said many of the buildings were "a consummate loss." The marina, its structures and docks were besides destroyed. Power lines and trees blocked nearly every road, and utilities and electricity had non been turned back on.
As the dominicus was setting Thursday, an Air Forcefulness special tactics team had cleared the base track.
The destruction of an air force base can only be matched in scope by the pounding that Hurricane Andrew gave Homestead Air Force Base, just s of Miami, in 1992. That Category 5 storm, with winds estimated at 150 m.p.h., smashed hangars and left battered fighter jets and mammoth cargo planes in pieces on the rails. Nearly all of the surviving planes and personnel were reassigned to other bases. Two years subsequently, it reopened as a smaller, Air Force Reserve base.
The Air Force was unable to say Thursday when Tyndall might resume operations. Other Air Force and Navy bases in the surface area, which were spared the burden of the storm, reopened in a limited capacity Thursday.
Tyndall, where about 3,600 airmen are stationed, sits on 29,000 acres that include undeveloped woods and beaches, as well equally stores, restaurants, schools, a bowling alley and quiet, tree-lined streets with hundreds of homes for both agile-duty and retired armed services. Video footage captured the ruin there, too: The loftier-powered storm skinned roofs, shattered windows, and tossed cars and trailers like toys, transforming the normally pristine base of operations into a trash heap. Multistory barracks buildings stood open up to the sky.
The Air Force said Th that recovery teams conducted an initial cess of portions of base housing and constitute widespread roof damage to near every home.
"At this betoken, Tyndall residents and evacuated personnel should remain at their condom location," said Col. Brian Laidlaw, 325th Fighter Fly commander. "Nosotros are actively developing plans to reunite families and plan to provide safe passage dorsum to base housing."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/us/air-force-hurricane-michael-damage.html
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