i would love to know if someone really has taken a jet or helicopter as ransom for info. Its a good thing Hawke never took a Tom cat
in space no one can hear you scream
No government would ever allow that to happen. Made for a cool show though.
shareWell if it did then they wouldn't tell us about it, now would they?
In reality it's very unlikely that something like this could happen. complex military machines need a LOT of maintenance, and a constant supply of spare parts - something like Airwolf would need thirty or forty hours worth of work for every hour it spent in the air. Not to mention all sorts of specialist testing and repair equipment. There's just no way a private citizen could keep it running. They handwave that in the show by saying the Firm provide support, but the sheer amount of traffic you'd have to have running in and out would make it impossible to hide where Airwolf was hidden.
In the real world, the closest we've ever seen to an Airwolf scenario is the defection of Viktor Belenko back in the 70s. He flew a Mig 25 for the Russians, which at the time was considered to be a very advanced super-jet. Belenko decided he wanted to defect, so one day he flew out on a training exercise and headed straight to Japan. The US got to test the Mig on the ground, and ultimately disassembled it and shipped it back to the Russians in crates. As it turned out, the major secret that was revealed was that the Mig 25 wasn't actually much of a super jet after all.
Similar things have happened with other pilots. Kind of hard for repressive regimes to keep hold of guys in jet fighters!
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