Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "Found And Explained" channel.

  1. Sonic booms can be used as an ersatz weapon. I did come across a reference to and incidence in the one of the Gulf Wars were a US pilot used a sonic boom to help some British Special Air Service (SAS) troopers who were in close contact with a force of Iraqis. The firefight was at night and with low cloud the US pilot was finding it very difficult to launch an attack in support of the SAS. It was obvious from the radio that things were getting extremely deadly but though he felt he knew where the Iraqis where he did not feel he could attack them without putting the SAS troopers in danger. So out of desperation he came up with a plan. He dived his aircraft towards the ground where he believed the Iraqis were, going supersonic as he did so. At last minute he pulled up but the sonic boom traveled on, as he knew it would, and hit the ground sounding like an explosion. The Iraqis knowing that there was an aircraft above them believed they were being attacked by the aircraft and withdrew. It was not until sometime later that the US pilot was told that his plan had worked and it had allowed the troopers to withdraw.
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  2. Considering what happened when McDonald Douglas took over running Boeing, Airbus must have felt they dodged a bullet
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  3. There were plans for a passenger version of the Handley Page Victor. And the Lockheed Galaxy originally started out as a rival to the Jumbo Jet. And there a number of others. The Avro York was a civilian version of the famous Lancaster.
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  4. I remember watching an episode of Thunderbirds where they had a walking machine. Obviously influenced by this idea.
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  5. When it comes to aircraft Russia never quite gets a handle on it.
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  6. The British engine was superior by the simple expedient of actually existing. The axial flow was known about by Sir Frank Whittle but he went ahead with his engine because at that time the metals needed for the axial flow engines did not exist. His engine could be built as it made better use of the metals available and it was more reliable than that of Germany. The German engine was axial flow but because they also lacked the metals needed it had a very short life span of some 25 hours before it needed to be rebuilt. So, no the American engine would not have been superior because at the time metallurgy would not be advanced enough to build it.
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  7. That's one thought. But I had wondered if China would not have been a better choice. They've been trying to breakaway from Russia's offering so they may have been more open to his ideas'
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  8. Actually I would draw an Avro Vulcan. For one thing as it is a delta wing it would be easier to draw.
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  9. Junkers Ju 287. Why you should not design an aircraft when you have a hangover. Some have said that the Horten HO 229 was a stealth aircraft. The problem with this idea is that this claim did not come about until the 80s when people were looking at stealth technology. One of the Horton brothers saw a chance to get in on it all and made the claim. No such claim existed when the brothers were question just after WW2. The other problem was that one of the components of the glue being used on the aircraft actually increased the radar signature making it easier to be seen by radar.
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  10. Just imagine the effect of those downward pointing engines of the flightdeck of a carrier. The heat they would of created. As if carrier flightdecks were not dangerous enough.
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  11. The XH-59 was unfortunate in that it came about just before the 1970s energy crisis which meant that the cost of flying it shot through the roof. If the Fairey Rotodyne had received the funding it needed the next planned stage would have seen the rotor being folded way and stowed in the roof once it was travelling fast enough and use the engines on the wings to fly it.
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  12. Well technically they now run Boeing. So now it's Boeing which is failing
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  13. I love the sight of a flying boat but, like airships, flying boats they were of their time. Once conditions changed their days were numbered.
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  14.  @robertdragoff6909  A Dorito which twice breached US airspace and bombed the US during exercises conducted by the USAF. Something the B-52 failed to do. And it could out fly the BUFF. I have actually seen it doing barrel rolls and even loops because its power to weight ratio was so high.
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  15. Physics. Isn't that about putting all them bubbles in your coke.
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  16. Well if you want a batshit crazy looking plane this is the place to be. Let them others do the boring normal ones
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  17. I did read that when the US was looking to build their own ground attack aircraft they had two ideas put forward. One became the A-10 Thunderbolt II and went into service with the USAF. The other one was photographed by a Soviet spy satellite and this was used as the basis for the Su-25. For some reason the Soviets never saw the A-10 but they did see the one the went on to build as the Su-25. It has been suggested that this may have been deliberate on the US side to throw them off the scent of the A-10. Another Soviet aircraft which originated in the US was the Antonov An72. The one with the engines above the wings. Again it looks like the Soviet spy satellites photographed the prototype US aircraft but in this case the USAF did not go ahead with theirs.
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  18.  @sundhaug92 Sorry your right. For some reason I was thinking the two were rivals for passenger transport rather than military transport. I think it is probably because the 747 was such a success in the passenger role that in my own mind I was thinking that is what it was designed for. It's somewhat ironic that the 747 is now being contracted to transport military supplies.
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  19.  @pickeljarsforhillary102  Sure that would be a problem for air traffic control
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  20.  @waynesimpson2074  Thanks for setting the record straight👍
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  21. It's not just a question of money. This jet requires components bought from abroad and thanks to sanctions after Russia seized Crimea they are no longer available. This is also why there are no T-14 Amata's fighting in Ukraine. And with the collapse of the Russian economy they cannot afford to build this aircraft.
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  22. So you would be trying to land onto this platform in rough weather when not only would the ship be moving around with the sea swell but the aircraft would be severally buffeted about by the wind. We saw how the Lynx helicopter struggled with that so we can see the difficulty these aircraft would have.
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  23. Ejection seats in helicopters is not a new idea as it was earlier proposed by the US during the Viet Nam War. But US helicopter pilots did not like the idea as it involved explosive bolts to remove rotor blades before ejection and they were concerned a bullet hitting on one of these bolts could cause the loss of a rotor bringing the helicopter down. Also if they were used it would leave the crew chief and door gunner still in the helicopter with no chance of survival. The biggest problem for the Ka-52 is the seating arrangement for the crew. With the tandem seating for the Apache it gives the pilot and weapons operator a good all-round view out of the cockpit. But with the side-by-side seating of the Ka-52 this leaves the pilot sat on the left with restricted view to his right and this means if a MANPAD is fired at that side he may not be able to see the missile in order to evade it.
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  24. To help reduce wing warping the Germans planned to move the two wing mounted engines further toward the tip of the wings.
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  25. History is full of what looks like very good projects only for it to run out of time. You only have to look at all the aircraft projects which were shelved at the end of WW2
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  26. Me too
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  27. There were plans to make a passenger version of Handley Page's Victor bomber, though this never came about. Interestingly the aircraft makes an appearance in the 1963 British comedy film The Iron Maiden where the promise of the films was an attempt to sell the passenger version to a US airline president. Talk about product placement.
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  28. If Fairey had received the funding for the next stage of the Fairey Rotodyne it would have been where the rotors would have folded away. This would have been ahead of the US helicopter. Fairey had reached the stage where they modeled and tested the mechanism to fold away the rotor.
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  29. Not sure what use the Flying Wing aircraft would have been flying from the US to Europe during WW2. The German Luftwaffe would have been able to deal with them, especially as they were not protected by the P-51. Having a low radar signature may have helped but they would have had to fly over Spain and as Spain worked with the Germans they could have reported when the flying wings flew overhead. Still. I would have loved to see them flying.
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  30. Does 1440 teach you how to pronounce these names you keep getting so very wrong. Also not only did these aircraft not have stealth capability but the glue used actually increased its radar signature.
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  31. The BAE aircraft was not a ground attack aircraft, as it would have been used against the Soviet Union's large fleets of helicopters. It was realised that if the Soviet Union and NATO went to war the Soviets could use these large fleets of helicopters to land troops and even light troop carriers in NATO's rear areas attacking Headquarters, supplies et cetera. The idea was to use a highly agile aircraft with a rear mounted turboprop engine which would have flown at very low level to attack these fleets while they were still in the air. The aircraft would have had something like a 20 mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannon and a number of short range air-to-air missiles under each wing. The aim was to disrute these helicopter fleets before they got into NATOs rear and break up their attack.
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  32.  @sundhaug92  that quite a temporary solution.
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  33.  @mikerichards6065  thanks, Mike. I'd forgotten about them two.
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  34. Considering how Russia is struggling with the engines they have now I am not sure how they are going to build these new ones. And let's not forget their economy is no bigger then that of Italy so how can they afford these new aircraft. They make most of their money from the gas they are exporting to other countries and the military equipment they sell to others. They are so desperate for money they are still selling aircraft to China despite the fact that they know China keeps stealing the technology from Russia by reverse engineering it.
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  35. Oh, look. Another bat crap crazy idea for the use of nuclear energy. And tied to an airship. You know. That perennial idea that keeps turning up and that is noted for its bouncing around in the bad weather like your washing in a washing machine and crashing
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  36. You should take a look at the scimitar wing of the Handley Page Victor if you want an interestingly shaped wing
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  37. Actually the Germans planned to fight the French not the British. If they planned to fight the British then U-Boats would have been much more useful. And Britain had over twenty years experience operating carriers by this time. Whereas Germany had none. Germany's knowledge of aircraft carriers and there operation was so limited as to be useless. They planned to launch their aircraft by using catapults of the type normally used to launch floatplanes off warships instead of using the aircrafts engines for takeoff from the flightdeck as the British, Americans and Japanese did. So each German aircraft would have to be moved into position, attached to the launcher and then it would be launched. You can just imagine how long it would take to get a strike strike force into the air, as well as the amount of fuel wasted by the first aircraft to be launched waiting for the rest to get airborne. By this time a British strike force would be well on its way by that time.
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  38. The F-1 was based on the Sepecat Jaguar
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  39. An interesting aircraft but at this time there were so many aircraft which looked good on paper but never made it any further. Australia did come up with some excellent aircraft designs but time was just not on their side. Having said that there were a number of very good aircraft coming out during this period but were made obsolete by the jet engine. I do question the use of the 50 calibre machineguns. Britain had been using the 20mm cannons for some time as it was realised you needed something with which you could bring down your enemies aircraft a quickly as possible, a lesson the US had to relearn with the 50 calibre armed Sabre flying against the cannon armed MiG 15 in Korea.
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  40. The Nimitz. Wasn't a flight of Japanese Zeros was it? We've all seen the film. Remembering the CIAs involvement in the UFO stories to cover up them spying on Communist Russia you have to think this is something similar. Makes you wonder what DARPA has been up to.
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