The New Yorker: Getting bin Laden

[JakeandElwood]

Can you imagine being the guy lying down next to bin Laden's dead body so they could guesstimate his height?

 

[Boom_70]

Can you imagine being the guy lying down next to bin Laden's dead body so they could guesstimate his height?

And he was the only guy close to 6 foot. The team must have been all shrimps.

 

[Chris17]

How bout the fact that bin Laden's actual nickname wasn't Geronimo.... it was "Crankshaft".

[Insert pornography / crankshaft jokes here]

How raunchy is that.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

I want to know why the White House ordered sandwiches from Costco. The West Wing kitchen couldn't handle it?

 

[doubledown68]

Settling with power is an aerodynamic phenomenon from which helicopters suffer because they pull air down through a rotor system.

At high gross weights, high density altitudes and high power settings (because they're really heavy), helicopters can begin to "settle in their own downwash." They begin to develop higher and higher rates of descent until the rate of descent is so fast that the air is actually flowing UP through the rotor system, rather than from top to bottom. This causes a vortex ring state around the rotor blades, rendering them pretty much useless.

Have you ever seen the jet wash from an airplane? Those "air circles" that form as a plane lands and the tires create smoke? When helicopters get slow enough -- between 16 and 24 knots, or below "effective translational lift" -- they begin to actually operate in those vortices. If we sink too fast, all that rotorwash is basically shoved back through the rotor system and it screws up the airflow, causing you to develop faster and faster rates of descent. A pilot can correct this problem by simply moving out of the air column, either forward or laterally. But pushing forward on the controls is probably the last thing someone who's trying to stop would do.

That make any sense?

As for the 160th comment, those forkers are always balling up aircraft and killing people. They think their shirt doesn't stink. Well, guess what, assholes. It does.

What effect, if any, did the solid walls of the compound have on the crash, considering they trained on a simulation that had a chain link fence?

If there was an effect, is that something the pilot could have/should have foreseen?

 

[Boom_70]

I want to know why the White House ordered sandwiches from Costco. The West Wing kitchen couldn't handle it?

I wondered that also. What a great little nugget of information.

 

[doubledown68]

I want to know why the White House ordered sandwiches from Costco. The West Wing kitchen couldn't handle it?

Helluva point here. I always thought one of the cool little nuances of being the president is the ability to get what I wanted, when I wanted. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the White House can get a finer deli meat selection than Costco.

 

[Boom_70]

Settling with power is an aerodynamic phenomenon from which helicopters suffer because they pull air down through a rotor system.

At high gross weights, high density altitudes and high power settings (because they're really heavy), helicopters can begin to "settle in their own downwash." They begin to develop higher and higher rates of descent until the rate of descent is so fast that the air is actually flowing UP through the rotor system, rather than from top to bottom. This causes a vortex ring state around the rotor blades, rendering them pretty much useless.

Have you ever seen the jet wash from an airplane? Those "air circles" that form as a plane lands and the tires create smoke? When helicopters get slow enough -- between 16 and 24 knots, or below "effective translational lift" -- they begin to actually operate in those vortices. If we sink too fast, all that rotorwash is basically shoved back through the rotor system and it screws up the airflow, causing you to develop faster and faster rates of descent. A pilot can correct this problem by simply moving out of the air column, either forward or laterally. But pushing forward on the controls is probably the last thing someone who's trying to stop would do.

That make any sense?

As for the 160th comment, those forkers are always balling up aircraft and killing people. They think their shirt doesn't stink. Well, guess what, assholes. It does.

What effect, if any, did the solid walls of the compound have on the crash, considering they trained on a simulation that had a chain link fence?

If there was an effect, is that something the pilot could have/should have foreseen?

Story mentioned that - something to do with the air flow difference of enclosed area.

Look forward to Three Bags incite on this one.

 

[Boom_70]

I want to know why the White House ordered sandwiches from Costco. The West Wing kitchen couldn't handle it?

Helluva point here. I always thought one of the cool little nuances of being the president is the ability to get what I wanted, when I wanted. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the White House can get a finer deli meat selection than Costco.

I wonder who paid the membership fee.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Author will be doing an online chat at 3 p.m. EST:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2011/08/osama-bin-laden-raid-nicholas-schmidle.html

 

[Pringle]

So I guess this is one way to become a journalist, huh? Just up and do it.

From Amazon.com's Booklist review of Schmidle's book on Pakistan:

"In 2006, wanting to become a journalist but lacking any journalistic experience, Schmidle decided he would go to Iran, but political upheaval there nixed that plan, so he chose Pakistan instead. After hurriedly gathering background, he spent two years in the country, exploring its past and present, living among its people, writing about them."

 

[Clerk Typist]

I want to know why the White House ordered sandwiches from Costco. The West Wing kitchen couldn't handle it?

Helluva point here. I always thought one of the cool little nuances of being the president is the ability to get what I wanted, when I wanted. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the White House can get a finer deli meat selection than Costco.

My guess is they didn't want anyone to know who/how many top brass would be in on a Sunday afternoon, lest there be a leak.