Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "Audacious class - Guide 245" video.

  1.  @Solidboat123  Your comments on the age of the F-4's are irrelevant. All that would matter was if they could take on the aircraft the Argentinians had - not if they were as good as F-14's. As to the capability of the Harriers - you are aware I trust that ( many ) some of the Harriers they had were lost in operational accidents to the point they were trying to replace their losses ( with Army ) by putting Sidewinders on Gr3 RAF Harriers? And - VSTOL Being superior to CATOBAR because of weather? What reality are you in? That is pure bull shit. .
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  2. I recently posted something else where that it is ironic that Thatcher came out of the Falklands War a big hero - when a lot of this was her fault. The thinking of her government was - that the UK could not afford to keep both a Conventionally Armed and Nuclear Armed Navy. In order to stay in the Atom Club - she had elected to largely forgo a Conventional Navy and just retain the missile boats. With this in mind - the Invincible was to be sold to Australia and the Hermes to India. There was even another Amphibious Support Ship which they were going to sell to Argentina. It is a tragedy and a travesty that the Eagle and Ark Royal were scrapped without CATOBAR replacements. The same can be said for the way the new Queen Elizabeth Class were built. Ski Jump Carriers are the choice of 3rd rate powers. The RN deserved better. Harriers or VSTOL F-35's are great for what they are able to do - and let such as the US Marines operate fixed winged aircraft from their Amphibious Assault Ships - but they are no match for catapult launched aircraft with full ordnance loads. And of course - AEW aircraft would have made all the difference in the Falklands. With Phantoms and Buccaneers if the Argentinians had invaded - which they would have been stupid to do - with two real aircraft carriers in support of them a lot fewer British Sailors would have had to die. .
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  3.  @OhSome1HasThisName  No. Decolonization got started long before WWII - and in fact was caused by WWI. Your mistake is seeing the end of the process as when it got started. The reason for Colonialism was commerce. It was merchants that wanted colonies - not governments. The Governments didn't want them because they knew what they would cost. Nevertheless - the merchants - sometimes by doing things on their own (such as with the British East India Company) would get their nations roped into things. After WWI bankrupted most of Europe - Governments attitudes towards their colonies changed drastically and they became much less willing to continue to support the structure that had let all those merchants make all that money. After WWII - they just didn't care about anything but cost cutting and their Empires were on the block. Some nations, such as France, tried to hold on to parts of their Empire but were in the end unwilling to spend the money it would take to do so. As to some nations having other nations backs? Well there are none who can be counted on in all situations. The presence of some Labor Governments in the UK led to some things that were not helpful to the US - such as giving the Soviets Rolls Royce Nene engines to put in their Mig-15's ... .
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  4.  @Solidboat123  Well ... first off ... if you've had so many people take what you wrote in a manner you didn't intend - then perhaps the problem is with what you wrote - or didn't include - rather than the people coming back at you. If you had conveyed what you just did here the first go around - you and I would not be having this conversation. As to losses - there were RAF Harriers that went down there with the Navy ones - and their total losses were 10 - out of 42 between both types. The intent was just as you said - for the RAF ones to do ground attack while the Navy ones did air defense. While some of those losses were to ground fire - most - of them were operational. While the Harriers shot down 20 aircraft - that would have been a lower percentage of the aircraft available to the Argentines than the losses to the British as a percentage of aircraft the British initially had on hand. And - the Argentinians had been ordered NOT to engage the Harriers - but - to run from them. Why? I have no idea (range?) - but the author of the book I read on it - seemed to feel that had they engaged the Harriers - after so many other losses - the British might well have had their air defense severely reduced. Given the generally poor showing of the Argentine military, despite the bravery of some of their personnel, trying to conduct such an operation with such limited air power - as opposed to what the Ark Royal and Eagle would have had - may have had a much worse ending than it did. As to STOVL being superior to CATOBAR in any way (other than the amount of space required to land or take off) - I have NEVER seen any indication of that - SO - if that is YOUR contention - then I'll rely on YOU to come up with a source for that. And yes - you may well have run afoul of the nature of comments and replies here - where a reply closely tailored to one comment - may be open to misinterpretation when viewed in isolation. With comments and replies - not nested past one level - your reply may end up a dozen further comments down the line from the one you were replying to. That's one of the less well done parts of the YouTube Remarks Format. I constantly have to scroll up the screen looking for the person being replied to by someone in order to try and understand what the hell they were talking about. .
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  5.  @zopEnglandzip  That is the exact opposite of all I've heard of operating these aircraft. They are and have always been inherently unsafe to operate. As to the number of US Carrier aircraft lost per year - while I don't know what that is (and discredit your figure) - the fact that the US has vastly more aircraft than the number of VSTOL aircraft in the rest of the world would make your argument irrelevant. The fact that you can land a VSTOL aircraft vertically - pretty much anywhere - is the reason these aircraft exist. Of course you couldn't land an F-4 the way you could one of them. Aircraft launched from Catapults can carry a lot more than aircraft that have to trundle up a ski ramp. Because of that - they have much more endurance and can carry much heavier loads of ordnance. VSTOL aircraft have only one thing over conventional aircraft - and that one thing is the amount of deck space they need to land and take off. .
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  6.  @OhSome1HasThisName  And you would be wrong there. The Decolonization of the world was a result of the end of the Colonial Empires and those Empires began to end for the reasons I listed. Thus - again - what you saw in Africa and the Caribbean - was the end of a long process - not the beginning of it. .
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  7.  @zopEnglandzip  Just heard that one of them blew up on take off. The thing about launching aircraft off ships - is that this is inherently dangerous. The thing with flying VSTOL aircraft - is that it is inherently dangerous - where ever you are. You are balancing your aircraft on it's thrust - and if something happens that disturbs that balance ... you have a problem. Has it occurred to you that in bad weather you have some very strong wind gusts - that can come from any direction? What's that going to do to someone balancing on their thrust as they try to land? What's going to happen when you cut your thrust as you're about to land - and the ship drops away from you? And yes - most of the accidents occur during training. It is a testament to the skill, professionalism and training of the FFA Pilots that more of these VSTOLs haven't crashed. As to 2 for 1? That's two crappy ships for the price of one good one. Far, far better - to have two good ones. If you can't afford them - then you are reduced to the equipment of a 3rd rate power. The RN & the FAA - deserve better. As to accidents? Again - I would point out the thousands upon thousands of take offs and landings on CATOBAR carriers. Of course you're going to have accidents and ramp strikes are nothing new. As to fewer deck crew? Well then - you can't really have very many deck crew around a VSTOL aircraft with it's thrusters violently shoving air in all directions - now can you? If they'd had CATOBAR ships at the Falklands - there would be a lot of British people who would be alive now that aren't. There is also the very real possibility that Argentina would not have attacked the Falklands had they known they would be facing RN CATOBAR Carriers. Yes - there certainly is a use for VSTOL aircraft - but - to have these your primary aircraft? No. Things are going to be fucked up if you do that. And as has been pointed out again and again - the AEW capability of aircraft launching off these ships is restricted. At the Falklands - that may have made more difference than anything else. At least for the Queen Elizabeth's they are talking about an AEW V-22 Osprey. One of the things about these ships - is that they are at least big enough to operate an aircraft that size. I just don't know if they've done it yet. .
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  8.  @Solidboat123  OK. Cool. Thanks for the references. You certainly have people here who think that VSTOL is safer than CATOBAR in bad weather. I don't believe them but this isn't just you saying that so - good job on the references. When I challenge other people to do that - I usually get nothing ... not even a reply ... in response. So again - good job. One thing that is confusing for me about that is this quote from the Cats and Traps article; "The first tentative F-35B SRVL trials were successfully conducted last year but there are still questions about the safety of the manoeuvre in anything but the most benign weather conditions." I know this is a different manner of landing but ... why would the weather make a difference here ... or is it just that they've never tried it in heavy weather? My understanding of the maneuver was that it allowed them to return with their ordnance instead of jettisoning it. As to the Paul Adams article you have the opinion of someone who is biased in favor of VSTOL that CATOBAR operations in the Falklands area would have been "impossible" - yet - they also mention that the greater range of catapult launched aircraft would let the carrier operate from better weather - such that he considered the issue a wash. Since there were no NATO CATOBAR carriers down there ... we don't know if it was really "impossible" for them to launch. The Argentine Carrier ... well ... it was a CATOBAR carrier but ... it was so old it couldn't get enough wind across the deck to launch aircraft with ordnance ... so ... For myself - (I was a computer guy) but having worked with people involved with Navy and Marine aviation ... I don't ever remember anyone saying that VSTOL was safer in any way - ever. So ... this isn't just me being obdurate - I've got experience with people working in this area. Sadly ... having been retired now for ... sixteen years ... I don't know any of those people any more and cannot ask their opinions. My personal experience is limited as I've only spent two weeks at sea (on separate occasions) and only have two cat launches - with no arrested landings. For the QEC's ... I would say that the big problem here - was that they were not designed to be CATOBAR carriers in the first place. Apparently the UK's Government was sold a bill of goods when they were told that the carriers would be convertible to CATOBAR - but then - when they actually decided to do it - found out that the cost of the CONVERSION from VSTOL to CATOBAR was not going to be cheap. Here - also - having been designed in their CATOBAR configuration to use EMALS they've got that thing to deal with ... and we can not (to my knowledge) yet get the thing to work reliably enough for the ship to deploy. Here - the article seems to act as if the ship needed Nuclear Power to generate steam - when all the previous non-nuclear carriers in the USN were able to do it. The general consensus of the article seems to be that while the QEC's won't be as capable as a USN CATOBAR carrier - they will be much more capable than the Falklands carriers - which were after all - taking ships that had been intended to be Helicopter Carriers and putting jets on them. If they'd never had to do anything but land troops and fly ground support they'd have been OK ... but trying to use them for Air Defense was a disaster. I also noted that while they mentioned the use of V-22's as tankers - they did not mention they would be used as AEW aircraft. They're going to use another Helicopter ... something I regard with disgust ... .
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  9.  @zopEnglandzip  The QEC's are only crappy compared to what they might have been. Had they been designed as CATOBAR carriers from the get go and used steam catapults - they'd be much better ships than they are now. Of course - they may have had to do something different with their power plant to get the steam ... Yes - as they are now - they are better than anything anyone other than the USN has - but - they could have been much better and that pisses me off. The problem is that people argue "but we couldn't afford it" - like that's real. The real issue - is can they afford NOT to do it? They canceled and scrapped their CATOBAR carriers prior to the Falklands and ended up with a bunch of dead people because of that. If Argentina had been more competent - they could have lost the war. If you really care about the effectiveness of your Navy and the lives of it's sailors - you can find a way to pay for it. You raise taxes or cut something else - but you give your military weapons that are not going to cause any more of them to die than need be. God Damn Bean Counters ... believe me ... we have our share over here ...
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  10.  @zopEnglandzip  Yes. I believe you may well be right on both counts. This is the reason why military people tend to be fairly conservative in their outlook. Experiments get people killed. .
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  11.  @richardvernon317  Yep. The problem being that the wind direction can change without warning - especially in bad weather - and then the pilot has to be quick to adjust or he's in trouble. .
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  12.  @richardvernon317  As to the "Army" mistake - sorry about that - I thought I'd fixed it. Someone else corrected me saying it should have been RAF. As to the number of aircraft lost - the book I read on the Falklands Campaign some time ago I remember as indicating that there were a number of operational losses. This book indicated that the Argentine pilots had been told NOT to engage the Harriers - which was a mistake. If they had engaged the Harriers, even a few more losses would have helped lessen their Air Defense capability. All in all the Argentine air operations were largely incompetent with only their Naval Aviators really having any idea what they were doing. The UK would have lost several more ships if the Argentine Air Force personnel had known how to properly fuse their bombs. If they'd used mass attacks with fighters escorting their attack aircraft - things would have been harder on the Harriers. Also - me and my buddies were war gamers at the time - and we tried to recreate the Falklands War - as it was being fought. I was commanding the Argentine Air Force. Our victory conditions (our gaming rules not including ground operations - just ships and planes) were for the British to deny the Argentinians the use of the Port Stanley Airfield. Since the Argentinians did not base fighter aircraft there - by our rules - they forfeited the match ... The idea that they tried to protect the islands from the mainland ... is just so stupid it is beyond belief. If they'd had any competence at all - they would have gotten that airfield modified to handle jets All in all - you had a ... not so good military going against a NATO power - even if an impoverished one and the end results were about what we would expect. The UK won but it's military paid in blood for the money it's government had saved. This link indicates that there were 9 Harriers lost out of 42 - which is about 21% total losses - it indicates that 3 of these were operational https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/av-8-ops.htm It is my understanding that these losses resulted in Sidewinders being mounted on the Gr3's so they could be used in Air Defense. As to the Phantom's - I don't ever remember anyone complaining during Vietnam about the Phantom's radar. So .... I don't know what to say about the low serviceability of their Radar's with the FAA. The complaint during Vietnam - was the Sparrows not tracking - but - Phantoms worked fine with the Sidewinders and it was the Sidewinders that got a lot if not most of the kills for the Harriers in the Falklands. So - if the UK had kept or replaced it's CATOBAR Carriers as it should have, not only could they have had aircraft with a lot more range and E-2 AEW aircraft instead of helicopters - they would have had at least as good a missile as the Harriers were using - and - the radar missiles if that radar was working. With E-2's to vector the F-4's they could have engaged the Argentine aircraft beyond the range at which the Argentine aircraft could engage their ships. As I have repeatedly said on this subject the RN and FAA did a superb job with what they had to work with - but they deserved better and a lot more of them would not be dead if they'd had it. .
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  13.  @stephenchappell7512  That would be Operation Journeyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Journeyman I didn't seen any indication that this cost Callaghan the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Callaghan There is speculation though that if Thatcher had done something similar Argentina might not have invaded the Falklands. .
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  14.  @stephenchappell7512  Yes. I can see what you mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ykxM3w2MU .
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  15.  @Solidboat123  As to their reliability, more would have had to be done than just - not scrapping the Eagle and Ark Royal. They would have had to be maintained in a useful state. Unwillingness to do that would - I would assume - being the reason for the scrapping. .
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  16.  @OhSome1HasThisName  No. YOU are concentrating on the end phases of Colonial Empires - NOT - what brought them about. The End Phases would not have existed without the root cause. Thus - these End Phases were NOT the beginning of decolonization - THAT began with the root causes. Again - get it out of your head that you are talking about the beginning of decolonization in these areas. AGAIN there would have been NO decolonization in these areas - without the root causes that made the Colonial Powers willing to give up on their Colonies. By the time the Colonial Power decided to leave - the process was very much nearing it's end. Do you think for one second - that the Colonial Powers couldn't have just suppressed these rebellions and kept their colonies - if they had wanted the expense of doing so? It was the bankruptcy of the Mother Countries - caused by TWO world wars - that made them shed themselves of the financial burden of governing their Colonial Empires. YOU are being simplistic in talking about "Africa" and "the Caribbean" when each and every "country" went through it's own individual process. Each of these processes was different depending on which Colonial Power had controlled the colony - and - how it had regarded them. For France - Cochin-china and Algeria were PART of France. There were no British Colonies with that type of a connection to the Mother Country. And - of course - all of this was complicated by the fact that the boundaries of these "countries" had been drawn by the Colonial Powers with no regard to the various Tribal Territories these boundaries cut through. And - in Africa - each of these tribes was different and each had it's own relations with the Colonial Power. For the Americans, BEFORE WWII, they had promised the Philippines their independence in 1945 . That was the reason that when the Japanese invaded, the Philippines had their own President and their own Army - all in preparation for becoming an independent nation. The War in fact delayed their independence but - they did get it. And yet - the Americans kept a large military presence in that country for decades afterward. And - had a very special relationship with the people of that country. Eventually one of their governments decided they didn't want us there any more - and then we left. Soooo ... you could say ... that Decolonization in the Philippines began shortly after they became an American Colony - and didn't fully complete the process until decades after they had officially been granted their independence. And that is how things were - there. Each and every one of these Colonies had their own story. OF COURSE things were more nuanced than I'm describing. You could write BOOKS on each of these Colonies/Tribes/Colonial Powers. What do you expect from a YouTube Comment? Oh ... and ... if you're afraid to tell someone they're wrong ... you have a lot more regard for social niceties than I do ... but then ... I'm a nerd so ... eh ... One of the hall marks of Nerds - is that they a care a lot more about accurately analyzing data - than they do about peoples feelings. .
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  17.  @OhSome1HasThisName  Ha! Ha! Would if I could ... would if I could ... .
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  18.  @richardvernon317  (IIRC) they were given a tour of the factory where in one of the Russian Guests wore spongy shoes. He walked around where some grinding was going on - stepping in the shavings on the factory floor. When he got back they took the metal out of his shoe soles and analyzed it. .
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  19.  @richardvernon317  Well - the Americans did not "give" the B-29 to Soviets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4 - air crews concerned that they couldn't make it back to their bases across all that water - landed in the Soviet Union and were interned. The Americans demanded the return of the aircraft but were ignored. The Soviets then reverse engineered the Tu-4 from these interned B-29's. That is much, much, much different than the Labor Party of Clement Atlee intentionally GIVING the Soviets that engine. Yes the soviets designed the air frame but that Rolls Royce engine was much better than what they had to put in it. They had German information on a more advanced engine but they didn't have an engine developed from it that could be produced and put in their aircraft. To Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its Minister of Trade, Sir Stafford Cripps, were perfectly willing to provide technical information and a license to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene. Sample engines were purchased and delivered with blueprints. Following evaluation and adaptation to Russian conditions, the windfall technology was tooled for mass-production as the Klimov RD-45 to be incorporated into the MiG-15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15 As to the Tu-4's being a greater concern than the Mig-15's ... Yes the fact that the Soviets had B-29's was of great concern to both the US & UK as before that neither were impressed with Soviet Strategic Bombing capability. The Soviets built 847 Tu-4's while they built 13,000 Mig-15's. The Tu-4's were obsolete when they were first built due to the lag resulting from having to reverse engineer them - the Mig-15's were not. The only reason the Tu-4's would have been a greater concern would be if they were carrying nuclear weapons. .
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