Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters" channel.

  1.  @startingbark0356  As one who has seen these things water bombing in bushfire zones, I’m not at all surprised, that huge fuselage section ahead of the cockpit is when the tank is for pesticides, water, etc..
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  2.  @ricardokowalski1579  That’s because true CAS is carried out only in conditions of air superiority. This aircraft is not intended to be able to fight pitched battles against other aircraft.
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  3. And look at the F2 and F1. They are almost identical, except that the F2 is twice as big. The same applies to the Mirage III and Mirage IV, although the IV was a twin.
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  4. I had a similar response from General Electric about 40 years ago when I wanted some information about the CF-6. I remember the rep, whose name was Al Krueger, posted me some amazingly detailed information.
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  5. Pierre Clostermann, in his book, ’The Big Show’, describes the successful interception of a high altitude Bf-109G over Scapa Flow in a Spitfire Mk IV. During the flight, he and his wingman climbed to at least 41,000 ft.
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  6. Thanks for bringing this up. A couple of things spring to mind. First, the radar dish was probably going to be a bit small, compared with similar class aircraft like the F-15 or Su-27. That wouldn't be such a problem now but I think it would have been in the late 80's or early 90's. Secondly, do we know what the datalink capability was like?
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  7. Pierre Clostermann describes an attempted interception of a Do-335 in his book, ’The Big Show’. Green’s book definitely says 474. I have a copy.
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  8. Hey, I've done that with RAAF F-111 and F/A-18s. It's a hoot, isn't it? I asked the F/A-18 pilot about it afterwards and he said he was sighting up the trailing edge of the rudder! That meant he was very close indeed! I daresay those Swedish pilots were doing the same thing...?
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  9.  @khaelamensha3624  Blaming Hitler for wanting bomb racks on 262s is an old trope that doesn’t hold much water. The Luftwaffe had a standing requirement that all fighters have the ability to carry bombs and that requirement had existed since before the war. In the end, 262s were not used as Jabos sandthat decision had no impact on its introduction into service. The delays to 262 production were mostly caused by delays in other parts, such as engines. The fitment of bomb racks was so simple it could be done in the field. The Fw-187 might have been used in the role of heavy fighter but the history of the equivalent - the Whirlwind - shows it wasn’t needed anyway. It wouldn’t have been a lot of use as an escort fighter because it’s armament would have been better for shooting down bombers. The Bf-109 was perfectly adequate for Bomber escort, except for the fuel problem, which could have been resolved with a properly developed drop tank.
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  10.  @khaelamensha3624  Thanks. Same to you. By the way, if you’re interested, there’s a good video about the 262 and bombs on the Military Aviation History channel.
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  11. It’s called a teaser price. It’s only job is to get the manufacturer’s foot in the door.
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  12. 5:00 The Defiant was actually the most successful night fighter of the winter of 1940-41.
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  13.  @FranciscoPartidas  The P-38 had serious problems in a dive and couldn’t get near Mach 1. No propeller aircraft could but the P-38 was afflicted with a problem known as “Mach tuck”. It wasn’t until the introduction of “manoeuvre flaps” that the problem was solved but at a reduced dive speed.
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  14. What advances could the MB-5 have had that would have been of any use in 1963? And there are surviving examples of the Avro 707.
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  15. The Sea Fury - whatever its speed - was a pretty successful aircraft pretty much everywhere it was used.
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  16. The Whirlwind might have been a good bomber destroyer, something that the RAF’s single engine fighters were less well-suited to with their rifle-calibre ammunition. But it would have been at a disadvantage against the Me-109. The other problem was a relatively sedate rate of climb, which would have made interception more difficult.
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  17.  @bronsonperich9430  This is no more limited than the A-10 in the anti-tank role.
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  18. The importance of that digital datalink cannot be overestimated. It was a quantum leap in the effectiveness of the aircraft. Of course, most will argue about its performance and dogfighting capabilities and the SR-71... The datalink was a massive upgrade and force multiplier and extended the aircraft's useful service life by a couple of decades. Needless to say, network centric warfare is top of the heap these days and aircraft like the F-35 are pretty useless without it.
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  19.  @FranciscoPartidas  Borzhe moi... Why did you say it could do almost Mach 1 in a dive if you also knew about its aerodynamic problems? Let's get a few things in order about air combat. In the post war period, an American pilot called Bob Hoover postulated that there were two kinds of air combat: energy and angles. In WWI pretty much all fighters were angles fighters and they spent much of their time trying to get a lead on their opponent. There were exceptions, like von Richthofen who stalked his prey. In WWII, virtually all aircraft were energy fighters. Their pilots usually used speed and altitude to bounce their opponents. The P-38 was 100% an energy fighter. It had three advantages for the pilot: long range, which was very useful in long flights over the ocean in the Pacific campaign; good speed and finally, its rather limited firepower was highly concentrated in the nose of the aircraft, which totally eliminated the need for convergence. It also had its down sides. It was bigger and heavier with higher levels of inertia meaning that whatever its aerodynamic layout, it would always be at a disadvantage in manoeuvres, such as roll, against single engine, single seat fighters in an angles fight. If the initial bounce didn't work, the pilot was left with rather limited options and if manoeuvre evolved. The P-38 had another problem: it was much more complex aircraft than a single engine aircraft. It was said of the F6f Hellcat that you could teach a college grad to fly it in six weeks but a P-38 pilot needed about 400 hours to be combat ready. The aircraft was a lot more expensive to build and a lot more expensive to operate. It had, to use a modern expression, a high pilot workload. That meant the pilot had to ficus on flying the aircraft to a greater extent than others while he was trying to stay alive. In spite of the OP's original comment, I doubt if any reasonably contemporaneous fighter would have been an "easy kill".
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  20. The Bf-109 was perfectly adequate for the task but was not well used. By forcing the fighters to stay in close proximity to the bombers, they lost their advantages of observation and surprise as well as losing their optimum cruise performance and costing them precious fuel. Prior to WWII, Messerschmitt had developed a drop tank for the 109 but it was not successful. While the aircraft always had a centreline hard point, the drop tank was made of papier mache and had a habit of self-combusting, taking the aircraft and the unfortunate pilot with it. For some unknown reason, development of this strategically essential component was dropped and was not revisited in any meaningful way until after the Battle of Britain had been decided. Rather than developing a new fighter, the Germans could have done a lot better with what they had in a much shorter time and at much lower cost.
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  21. If this came from the program I think it did, the Scorpion was the first to be eliminated. I believe the cost was something like $20 million per copy.
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  22.  @GregStachowski  Okay, gotcha. I thought this must have been a spin-off from the fly off a few years ago that involved the Tucano and the AT-6. Clearly not.
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  23. Props are more survivable too.
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  24. Climb rate is almost always more important than top speed.
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  25.  @williamzk9083  I suspect the wing had a small amount of twist in it too. That’s how it looks to me.
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  26. How many furlongs was the Grand National in those days?
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  27. The P&W TF-30 might have been better than any a French engine but is was the weakest link in the F-111 and F-14.
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  28. Comparing the prototype F5 to a Hurricane, Spitfire or Bf-109 is a bit pointless, especially wing loading. The F5, as far as I'm aware, was never fitted with armament. Also, I don't think anyone thought radial engines were done. If they did, they mush have forgotten to tell Roy Fedden. Radials had a number of advantages, not the least of which was the ability to absorb battle damage.
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  29. Can you prove this?
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  30.  @altergreenhorn  Oh, sorry. You meant it was too fast for Clostermann or his section to catch. Got it.
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  31. Harris was just as derisory about Handley Page. I don’t know if he had shares in Avro but he seemed to be doing a lot of back room politicking that they benefitted from.
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  32. F/A-18 and its derivatives...?
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  33. Low top speed is not a problem for ground attack/close air support types.
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  34. In a networked environment, stealth isn’t that important. Network Centric Warfare is where it’s at and is the reason western air forces have held their position for so long. Read about the Bekaa Valley Air Battle of 1982. That’s the basic model that’s still in use today, stealth or not. That’s why the primary targets of all fighter screens are force multipliers, like tankers and AWACS & AEW&C aircraft. If you dominate the electric battlespace, you’re hard to beat, regardless of your level of stealth. With the appropriate jamming, your enemy will be blind and unable to communicate anyway. All of these modern types are designed to operate primarily in a networked environment. The F-35 simply isn’t enough bang-for-buck.
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  35.  @humptydumpy8029  The F-35 doesn’t give enough bang-for-buck and all that SA is nice but rather unnecessary in a well balanced and properly networked force. There are lots of aircraft that have excellent sensor fusion and there are some which are better in some aspects than the F-35. The fact is that the F-35 is very unlikely to be used as anything other than a bomb truck for the vast majority of its career and a lot of that grunt work can be done by much cheaper types, including turboprops. I would much rather have a much larger, better balanced force of cheaper and more reliable types than a fleet of F-35s for the same price.
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  36. The problem was that the Australian aircraft industry was very small and lead times were long. Unlike Britain or the United States, it simply could not respond quickly enough to demands and the variety of engine options was simply not there. While we successfully built aircraft like the Wirraway, the Boomerang, the Beaufort, the Beaufighter and the Mosquito, we were still very reliant on supplies from our allies. While Australia was not short of talent in any department - show me a contemporary aircraft with remotely controlled barbettes - realising these ideas was by far the greatest challenge.
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  37.  @julianviefers6703  Almost everybody does - particularly the Air Force - but it’s true. This came from Col. Mike Pietrucha, who headed up the OA-X program. It’s in his article on the “War on the Rocks” website. The article is called “OAX Strikes Back: Eight Myths of Light Attack”. This competition pitted both jets like the Scorpion against turboprops like the A-29 Tucano. Pietrucha talks about the ground attack exercises that are the equivalent of Red Flag (green flag? I can’t remember). Basically, they pitted a bunch of turboprop Tucanos against a detachment of Marines armed with Stingers and offered a weekend pass to anyone who could score a theoretical kill. No one did. That’s difference between a hot jet exhaust and a turboprop. A jet will always have a hot exhaust for an IR seeker head to home in on. A turboprop mixes the exhaust with the prop wash, which, as it turns out, makes it much harder for an IR seeker to see. If some of the best trained people with a missile like the Stinger can’t do it, I’m not sure there’s anyone else out there who could either. He points out that the Afghan Air Force never lost an A-29 and neither did the Colombian Air Force.
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  38.  @jeffstrom164  Are you sure you don’t mean CAS?
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  39. 4:30 That incident was reported in William Green's 'Warplanes of the Third Reich', pp.168-169.
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  40. …except that it was still out-climbed by any contemporary fighter aircraft. The P-47 was a good aeroplane in spite of itself. In any other scenario where it didn’t have the advantage of altitude it would have struggled. Johnson’s memoir is an entertaining read but not short on bombast and hyperbole.
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  41.  @petesheppard1709  Johnson also claims that no German fighter ever out-climbed him again…. And probably didn’t before. The point was that there was never a need for the P-47 to have to climb because it always had the advantage of altitude and the Allies usually had air superiority over Germany.
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  42.  @williamzk9083  Not entirely. They still needed the port wing to be set at a different angle.
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  43.  @christophernewman5027  Fair enough. On a similar train of thought, I suppose you probably also know that Sqn Ldr Don Finlay, who flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, won a silver medal in the 110 metres hurdles at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
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  44.  @cvjanzen550  The point of the Mosquito - and it’s German equivalent - was that it was built from non-strategic materials, which the Fw-187 was not.
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  45.  @scootiepatootie7721  They still took a toll on American aircraft and it wasn’t just because of the want of a gun. Though the F-4 fared better than the F-105.
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  46.  @KB4QAA  As far as I can tell, the Phantom I was referring to in the point about stall characteristics was the F-4E. There was a comment that some pilots used a sort of pre-departure notch in the stall curve to some advantage but that sounds borderline suicidal to me.
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  47. One explanation for this might be the allied use of a pressurised radiator system. The Germans didn’t have these things and as far as I know, never developed them. This is can be found in Calum E. Douglas’s book “The Secret Horsepower Race”. What it means is that the Germans were committed to using larger radiators and it doesn’t matter how well you fair them in, they will always produce more drag. For that reason alone, the high end top speed figure is extremely suspect to the point that I think somebody got the numbers in the wrong order. I also notice that the 309 had a lot of dihedral built into the main plane. To my mind this suggests that there might have been some basic stability problems, particularly in relation to rate of roll, though I noticed that Messerschmitt kept the leading edge slats which, on the 109, deployed automatically. This seems kind of counter intuitive to me. I think it would have been very difficult to build a single engined fighter like this with a nose wheel. That probably explains why the fuselage is so deep in comparison with the older type.
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  48. Whatever, the Zero/Zeke was better.
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  49. No. The reason was that the Spitfire wing proved to be better than expected and the Spiteful wing not as good. The nasty stall characteristics could probably have been resolved with a bit of tip washout. But it’s easy with hindsight…
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  50. “This is really an exercise in navel gazing.” It’s also a great way to start a bidding war with people believing whatever they like.
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