Why didn they use B-1s against Iceland?
Date: 1996/06/13 Clancy replies to this question: Because at the time, strange though this may sound, the B-1B Lancer heavy bomber was not certified as safe to drop conventional bombs. I got around to asking about this and learned that you actgually have to check to see if the bombs deploy properly instead of banging into one another, which can be bad for the bomber. The same guy told me that they had a similar problem with the -117 which Ben Rich fixed, rather cleverly and inexpensively. The fix was a vertical steel panel, transverse to the axis of the aircraft, with base-ball-size holes punched in it. The ins and outs of dirty-hands engineering are fascinating to behold.
