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Mike Armstrong
Ed Nash's Military Matters
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Comments by "Mike Armstrong" (@mikearmstrong8483) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters" channel.

I've known about these 2 for decades, and I think it's about time they got the recognition they deserve. Nobody ever covers these. Thanks, Ed.
58
With all the different gear coming from a bunch of countries, logistics and maintenance must be a nightmare for Ukraine.
36
Knights in armor went out when something better for the role was found to replace them, a guy with a harquebus. Battleships went out when something better for the role was found to replace them, the aircraft carrier. Tanks will go out when something better for the role is found to replace them. Something with high cross country mobility, armored protection, and heavy caliber firepower. Hmmm..........just sounds like a better tank.
35
The disadvantage of a geodesic airframe is that it cannot support a stressed metal skin and must be fabric covered. Thus, you will never be able to develop an aircraft that can exceed about 250 mph max. And that is obviously a serious impediment once you get past the mid 1930s. On the positive side, it could absorb a lot of damage.
21
To clear up a few myths, the most notable service of the Gladiator is the least known. It was exported to many countries, which had the most successes with it. Malta the myth: 3 Gladiators, named Faith, Hope, and Charity defended the islands and fought off the Italian air force. Malta the truth: Gladiators defended Malta for less than a month before being replaced by Hurricanes. Though they scored some successes against Italian aircraft, these were few, and they mainly served to distract and disrupt raids. Sorry to dispute the gentleman above, but there were actually several Gladiators in service at Malta but only 3 could be made airworthy at any given time. The names Faith, Hope, and Charity did not apply to 3 specific aircraft, and they were not named during their service there. That was a morale boosting story concocted by the British after the Gladiators had been replaced. Battle of Britain myth: Gladiators protected northern England. Battle of Britain truth: Gladiators made a single interception, without downing an enemy aircraft. The Gladiators most successful service was in peripheral areas. In British service, they saw action in Norway, North Africa, and East Africa. The last air combats between biplanes took place over Libya, between Gladiators and CR-42s. Belgium, and Norway flew their own Gladiators against the Germans, with Norwegian pilots getting about a half dozen kills and Belgians getting only 2. Greece flew them against the Italians. Finland's Gladiators scored dozens of kills against Soviet aircraft. A few dozen in Chinese service stood up to the Japanese air force, until the introduction of the A6M.
18
The Privateer was the first aircraft to use self guiding air-to-surface antiship missiles (as opposed to operator controlled missiles, such as used by the Germans) and scored several kills in 1945, including a Japanese destroyer.
17
As if we haven't done the same to them for decades.
17
I fail to grasp how nobody in charge of the program could see that a pair of 100 hp engines weren't going to cut it. By 1916, the British were using the 110 hp Le Rhone, 130 hp Clerget, 150, 200, & 220 hp Hispano Suizas, 230 hp Bentley, 230 hp Siddely and 275 hp Rolls Royce engines, with the American 400 hp Liberty engine becoming available by the time this contraption actually flew.
14
@curtisbryce5096 The Brits had a lot of colonial territory in Africa. They knew well how deadly a fly with a tiny bite could be.
13
You always throw out these odd planes, and commentors always say "wow, I never heard of that". But I always have. From WWI to the 60s, you have never caught me yet; I'm pretty well versed in aviation history and know the off-the-wall planes. Well, you finally did it. Never heard of this one. I owe you your choice of a beer or a cigar, payable upon demand.
13
The B-58 had almost 3 times the range and a substantially longer supersonic cruise time.
12
Ed, there's a few very large blonde gentlemen at the door, carrying pipes and hammers, that want to have a word with you about this thing sounding like "SAAB".
9
The loss of 77 Mathilda 1's was more beneficial than detrimental to the British. If any model could disprove the adage "any tank is better than no tank", that would be the the one to do it. That was a loss of scrap metal to be recycled, not war machinery. Same could be said about the 300+ Mk VI light tanks, although they were at least fast enough to run away from the enemy, unlike the Mathilda 1's that couldn't run away from foot soldiers.
9
@Optimusx1 The F-15 scored a LOT of kills with Sparrows. On the limited occasions when the F-14 fired Phoenix in anger, not a single one in US service ever hit the target, and only a small fraction of those fired by Iran got hits. In US testing of the Phoenix, target drones were required to have transponders to make them appear larger in order to keep the Phoenix from losing lock on.
9
@curtisbryce5096 Exactly. They named it after something small and dangerous that bites. I don't see that as weird.
7
Speaking of combat casualties being not only due to hostile fire, there were quite a few casualties from other helicopter assaults on the island as well. This marked the first action by UH-60 Blackhawks, and pilots who were still not thoroughly familiar with the aircraft suffered accidents. A string of 5 UH-60s attempted a fast combat landing in a line, with the pilots discovering that the Blackhawk did not flare as quickly as a Huey, being much heavier. 4 of the 5 hit hard and boxcar'd into each other, which didn't exactly improve the condition of the troops on board.
7
 @JakubTabas_web Why? Speed is speed. This video isn't titled "The fastest piston engined fighter at specifically 15,381 feet 7 inches".
7
@JakubTabas_web I'm very well versed in physics, thank you. The point is that the video is about the highest speeds, not the highest speeds at any specific altitude. An aircraft that tops out at 480 mph at 20,000 feet is still faster than one that tops out at 460 mph at 15,000 feet, even if the the first one is slower than 460 mph at 15,000 feet.
7
As a former USN flyer, who has studied military aviation for about 50 years now, please allow me to present a possible correction. To my knowledge (which is not scant) the German Luftwaffe studied but did not attempt the parasite fighter concept. Yes, I know there is a wikipedia article that states it was a parasite fighter; my advice is that you don't believe everything you see on wikipedia because any unqualified person can post nonsense on there. By the time the Me-328 was being developed, offensive air action by large Luftwaffe bomber fleets were a thing of the past. What we see here is either a possible test example of the Mistel project, or a test bed for launching the fighter. In the Mistel weapon, the fighter was not carried along to protect a manned bomber, but rather was a control plane for an unmanned bomber loaded up with explosives that was dived into a target. The controlling fighter hitched a ride to the target, then released and conducted the attack. The usual control fighter was a Bf-109 or a Fw-190, depending on the Mistel version. The operational success of Mistel was not very good. A planned attack on the British fleet in anchorage at Scapa Flow never took place. In late June of 1944 a few Allied ships were damaged. Planned attacks on Soviet industry also were aborted. The final use of Mistel was in early 1945, destroying bridges to delay the Allied advance. Alternatively, what I think is most likely is that this is a test bed launch system. The fighter uses the Argus A109-014 pulse jet, which required substantial air flow to begin operating. This is why V-1 flying bombs were rocket launched from catapults; an aircraft or missile powered by the pulse jet could not take off on its own. The testing of the fighter would have required an air launch, in the same concept as US experimental aircraft have been dropped from B-52 bombers.
7
Pilot to observer: "I'll land, and you run on ahead and tell them we're coming."
6
I find it odd that the plane was named the Dragon, as that name had been assigned to the Douglas B-23 developed only a few years before, and which was still in service in limited numbers as this one was being developed.
6
@FortuneZer0 Emergence? Trumps. Kennedys. Fords. Roosevelts. Rockefellers. Sinatras. Fondas. Kardashians (unfortunately). Ducks (not sure that one counts).
6
Trained, ok. Able to do so in combat is a different matter. This isn't talking about replacing a crewman in his own position to do his job. That sort of cross training has been standard among many armies for a long time. This is talking about the ability to switch crew functions without switching crew positions, such as allowing the driver to aim and fire the gun while still in his driver's seat, or allowing the commander to drive the tank from the turret. That is a whole new concept.
6
They made up for that oversight by carrying a generous supply of Bombay gin on bombing flights (you need that to go into combat in this jalopy).
5
Fly that? Screw it; I'm going back to the farm to work on vaporators.
5
Convergent evolution indeed. 4 different nations secretly working on the same basic design at about the same time.
5
As a side note; it could be debated as to whether the AC-47 was first. The Junkers-Larsen JL-12, pitched to the USAAC in 1923 for a similar role, mounted 28 downward firing drum fed Thompson SMGs in the fuselage, for laying down a carpet of fire in support of ground troops. This was during the era in which US marines were involved in interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, and means of fire support were being considered. 8,400 rounds were carried, the initial load and 2 reloads for each gun. The Thompson's tendency to jam when the 100 round drum magazines were used was an obvious problem, and the Army did not accept the aircraft. Late in the Second World War the Soviet Union experimented with a rack that could be loaded into a Tu-2 bomb bay that had 88 SMGs, though the war ended before it saw service. The AC-47 can lay claim to being the first gunship to see combat service.
5
Working for an insurance company, I once had to take a call from a policyholder that had taken a healthy dump, then lit a match to try to "burn off the odor" before getting in the shower. He flicked the match into the toilet to put it out, but didn't notice he had missed and it went into the wastebasket and started a fire which spread to the shower curtain, resulting in minor damage to the bathroom and burns to the man. Do you have any clue how hard it is to be professional and try to sound like you are keeping a straight face when you are taking a call like that?
5
While Americans are driving "American made" cars with most of the parts manufactured in Mexico and Korea.
5
To be fodder for F-35s in "Falklands 2.0 - Return of the Empire".
5
The Murat would have been a fine aircraft if engines of even just 25% more power could have been obtained, and if Tank had paid attention to the area rule.
5
Britain has had a considerable number of aircraft that only flew because the ground was too embarrassed to hold them.
4
@1954shadow What did you say?
4
@khaingaung What does oil have to do with anything? Whenever there is a US military presence anywhere further than Kansas City, people assume "oh, we're invading so we can take their oil". Completely ignoring the fact that in any case in which we did occupy a country that had oil, we paid full market price for it IF we even got any from there.
4
@flarvin8945 Sending a single battalion overseas and keeping them in a hostile area for a year costs more than a half million barrels of oil. It is cheaper to buy oil than to seize it.
4
If it is uncontrollable, then it isn't a flying aircraft; it is a weird shaped projectile. Caley, Langley, and Ader made manned craft that flew about as long and as well as the average Red Bull fleugtag contraption. Lilienthal, and then Chanute, made the first successful manned aircraft, which were hang gliders. The Wrights are uncontested in making the first powered aircraft. What came before them were valiant attempts only, but not aircraft. With a good start and a raised railroad crossing I can get my car airborne for several feet, but that doesn't make it an aircraft.
4
Serving as a part-time nerd, which I do on occasion, I just happened to glance over and notice that I had source material relevant to your question sitting on my coffee table. The KV-85, last of the KV series, weighed in at 51 tons but due to its wide tracks had a ground pressure of only 11 lbs per sq inch, which was less than the Stug III, Panz IV, Panther or Tiger. For comparison, an equipped infantryman has a ground pressure of about 3 lbs per sq inch. So, if you imagine an infantryman walking on a beach carrying one of his buddies on his shoulders, and one of their buddies on top of him, and some random short guy on top of the 3 of them, they would be about as maneuverable as the KV-2 on a beach, but they wouldn't sink into the sand. And if you actually can imagine that, I recommend you go see a doctor. 😉
4
I agree. But then we do we include the Sino-Japanese War? That was a significant part of WWII, but started years before. What about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia? That was even earlier, and the conflict in East Africa continued into WWII. What about the Spanish Civil War? 3 of the major European powers were directly involved. So how does one define the parameters for naming a specific war, and including or excluding conflicts which take place concurrently and affect the outcome?
4
@rogerpennel1798 And your comment about me believing there is no invasion is just irrelevant hyperbole. That had nothing to do with my response. Practice your reading comprehension. Discussion over.
4
All of your attempts to coerce me into responding to your noncomments have succeeded, and therefore I will not respond by leaving this comment you see.
3
Aside from the fact that this plane did exist, it's a little late for April Fools videos.
3
@DocTommy1972 Thank you, and you can see yourself out. Next contestant!
3
Ok, I have listened repeatedly, and I still can't understand this. The landing gear would not come down due to sabotage, because large amounts of "swolf" (?) were in the hydraulic lines. What the hell is "swolf"? Or can somebody tell me what that word actually is, if it is something different?
3
@gunner678 History could often use a bit of later coloring. Or is that just my life I'm thinking of?
3
I can't hear it worth squat. I have to hold this up to my ear to hear anything. Not the best way to watch a video.
3
The Beardmore license built variant of the Sopwith Pup was very innovative. It had folding wings and retractable landing gear to save space aboard ship. Few were built, but they did see service aboard HMS Furious.
3
The Peruvian Su-22s were hardly highly capable aircraft. The Soviets were very stingy at providing top line planes to their foreign customers. The Su-22s had only rudimentary avionics installed and were very much visual-only for nav and attack. In fact, they didn't even have IFF compatible with the air defense systems that the Soviets provided at the same time, making them vulnerable to their own defenses. Their radar was limited to gun ranging only in the air-to-air function, and their IR homing AAMs were tail-chase only, not all-aspect. And the Su-22 was inherently limited by its development from the Su-7, which had a notoriously short range with any reasonable payload, and poor maneuverability.
3
@jebise1126 The YC-14 had 2 engines above the wing like the Antonov. The YC-15 had 4 smaller engines below the wings. Neither was adopted in service, but their development eventually led to the C-17 which is in service now.
3
@kommissarkillemall2848 Yeah.......for F-16s. And what if they get Gripens? And what about the variety of Russian planes they already have? They may not be publicizing it, and maybe it's not on YouTube, but this is a maintenance and logistical nightmare, and it certainly is affecting them. Just the fact that Russian artificial horizons work the opposite of western ones means pilots cannot switch back & forth between planes. Cable connectors are not standardized, lubrication fittings are not standardized, etc, etc. There is a lot more to it than just relabling things in Ukranian.
3
Flying proof that vodka really works.
3
@GoldMoonGuy If you mean some sort of armored powered exoskeleton type thing, it's not going to happen except in video games. Because the only way to resist the guns already in use is to put on so much armor that you need a large tracked chassis to carry the weight. If something like those mech suits from Avatar tried to get on a battlefield today, a platoon of Abrams would blow the actual almighty ** out of them.
3
@GoldMoonGuy I thought you were serious because there are some limited circumstances where such gear would be better than a tank, and because they are already under development.
3
Rear gunner: Hey, can you pass a message to the pilot for me? Navigator: Just call him on the phone. Rear gunner: I can't; the guy downstairs is tying up the line. Navigator: Well then, use the semaphore system. Rear gunner: Your bean poles are blocking the line of sight. Navigator: Well, did you just want carrots with dinner all week?
3
There have been many dubious incidents of kills awarded. A US F-111 pilot in the Gulf War was credited with a kill on an Iraqi MiG-29 just because he flew so low trying to get away that it crashed on its own trying to get him. There has never been any formal criteria established for what constitutes an air-to'air "kill", although killing the enemy pilot or crew, or causing them to abandon the aircraft (usually by bailing out), or forcing the enemy aircraft to land, is generally considered to be a legitimate kill. This one is really pushing the definition.
3
The Bell P59 Airacomet. But it didn't see combat service; it was armed but then only used for training. Just after it came the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which was deployed to Italy before WWII ended, but also didn't see combat until Korea, so it sort of qualifies.
3
Oh, come on. This thing looks like Bugs Bunny should be flying it, and Elmer Fudd chasing him in a P-26 Peashooter.
3
Hawker thought the idea of a floatplane Hurricane dubious? And yet they were willing to try out a Hurricane with a jettisonable 2nd wing. Got to wonder about the thought processes there.
3
Videos out of Ukraine cannot be trusted to provide any useful analysis of the situation. They are all edited to show whatever point the producer wants to make depending on their own political affiliation. As an example, I saw a widely distributed video showing a Ukranian missile crew ambushing a Russian tank, with the latter stopping dead and pouring out smoke, presumably a good kill. The point being made that missiles are the ultimate silver bullet, Ukranians are bad ass, blah, blah, blah. I have since seen a longer unedited version of the same video that shows the same damaged tank immediately starting up again and moving away from the kill zone, while the rest of the column deploys in seconds and starts pouring accurate fire into the missile crew's position.
3
A couple of things I wonder about British logic. 1) Recognizing in advance that the aircraft would be a failure, they continued production so as not to hold up the production line. Wait, what? Knowing you are building something you don't want, you keep building it because you don't want to stop the line that is building it? Da faaq? 2) Such a loser that it ends up as a static AA gun with the engine removed. ???? Why remove the engine? What were they going to do; put it in some other plane? It sucked. It was too weak to power a plane, so why not leave it in an airframe that was useless anyway? If they were going to commit the manpower to remove a major component of the plane, then why not remove the turret and set it on a frame or little trailer to use as an AA mount, and scrap the plane for recycling during a time of acute metal shortage?
3
@k3D4rsi554maq I get the feeling that the Poles would disagree with you on that. They didn't seem to think the invasion and defeat of their country was phony. Nor did the tens of thousands of Germans (and a few hundred Russians) who were casualties in that campaign.
2
@DocTommy1972 Very heavily. (I'm not going to admit that was probably the worst pun (and being a pun, that means the best) that I have ever seen on YouTube.)
2
@TheAnxiousAardvark The Winter War only saw Soviets invading Finland, but both France & Britain promised and planned intervention on Finland's part, so why doesn't that push the start of WWII back to 1938? The Sino-Japanese war continued until the Japanese surrender in 1945, and included the participation of US & UK forces, so why doesn't that push the start of WWII back to 1937? Some historians say it does. The Spanish Civil War featured 3 of the major powers of Europe, all belligerents during WWII, fighting each other, so why doesn't that push the start of WWII back to 1936? The Italian invasion of Ethiopia started conflict in East Africa that eventually involved UK forces, with fighting that continued until 1942, so why doesn't that push the start of WWII back to 1935? The reason Sept 1st 1939 is generally considered the start is because that is when Germany invaded Poland, which drew in Britain and France, and shortly after that the Soviet Union, so people think of that as a world war because 4 of the major powers were at war with each other. A very Euro-centric, if not outright condescending attitude if you ask me; does the invasion of little countries with less than 10 million people mean nothing? Does the killing of Asians mean nothing? Even if these conflicts involved some of the same belligerents who were still fighting each other later, during the period that is "properly" considered the war? As for your acquaintance insisting WWII started only with the beginning of US involvement, there must have been some misunderstanding between you two, because that is ignorance beyond comprehension. Incidentally, I'm his age and also a conservative, but apparently I know history better than him. Did he get his degree by bribing a professor?
2
Are there not any international laws forbidding the use of the words "French" and "elegant" in the same paragraph, when discussing interwar bombers?
2
@razor1uk610 As opposed to "fugly"?
2
The basic Bell 47 was tested during the Korean war with 2 .30 cal Brownings, not to meet any requirement issued but as a field mod by innovative pilots.
2
Technically, Washington was not the first president. He was the first to be elected after the constitution was ratified. But there were a few others that served as the president of the Continental Congress, and then president of the independent united colonies, before him.
2
Correct me if im wrong, but the Vulture was a V-engine, wasn't it?
2
@allangibson2408 So I guess that's why it wasn't very successful. Take a bad engine and double it to try to get a good engine. Two wrongs don't make a right (although 14 cylinders do make a Wright).
2
@duartesimoes508 Control force inputs on the Su-7 were very taxing on the pilots. I have read that some pilots compared it to flying a Hawker Hunter in manual reversion mode without the hydraulics. It's a good thing it had limited range; pilots would not have been able to withstand flying the thing much longer without serious muscle strain.
2
Or, perhaps we can hope that it doesn't just stay at that. A warmongering view? I prefer to call it pragmatic. Any conflict for Iran, that causes military casualties and attrition of military hardware, and consumes military oriented resources, win or lose, can only improve the status quo vs the US. Losses to them are a victory for us, even if we are not involved. But we are not at war with Iran, so shouldn't I feel compassionate about loss of life? No. Iranians have shown that they shed no tears over the loss of American lives; often they will even celebrate. They have chosen a belligerent status against us, they have backed terrorist groups that have attacked us, they have made themselves the enemy. So, it is only beneficial to the US if they go to war with someone else. The belligerence and threat to regional peace presented by the Azerbaijanis only makes it better. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unless the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy, in which case let them wipe each other out while I go look for more reasonable friends.
2
This thing looks like it should have a reverse gear.
2
My first inclination was to post a comment about inferior planes being superior in Finnish service, only to find that 14 of you sons-of-biscuits have beaten me to it!
2
Are cars that different in the UK than in the US? Over here in "the colonies 😁" there is no way you could leave any vehicle and lock the doors to keep people in (police vehicles excepted, of course), only to keep people out.
2
After seeing so many videos starring Aerosucre, it's refreshing to see any latin American country with an organization called FAA.
2
Thanks; I wondered about that.
2
@prfwrx2497 Well, that brings it to a choice of using a sharp spruce stick or a sharp oak stick. The answer, of course, is both, and sharp cattails if needed. But that still doesn't make it any easier to maintain a supply of sticks.
2
Probably just as well that they dropped out of NATO, since the French decision making process seems to go something like this: 07:00 Soviets attack western Europe. 07:15 "Let's support NATO." 07:38 "Let's sit this war out." 08:04 "Let's design a new fighter." 10:23 "Let's make it a rocket powered torpedo plane instead." 11:01 "Let's fight the Soviets after all." 11:02 "Our own communist party has started rioting, so let's not fight, and we will put a Ugandan rubber band motor in our new bomber that will be an ornithopter." 11:19 "All aircraft production is to immediately cease until we have had croissants and fig jam." 12:00 "Now that we are through with croissants and jam, it's lunch time." 13:05 "Do we have a design yet for our rocket rubber band torpedo interceptor? Non, Mssr Dassault is upset that a Japanese company is making money building aircraft that have nothing to do with Europe." 13:18 "Mssr Dassault says he will give us 11 new designs as long as we give him half the treasury and none of the designs have to be built." 13:21 "Are we at war or not?" 13:22 "Oui, we have just attacked Iceland, and are about to surrender to the town of Woolsey-on-Thames".
2
He done didded it again. Another plane I knew about and never expected to see a video about.
2
Caley, Langley, and Ader all made valiant attempts, which flew about as well as the average Red Bull fleugtag contraption. Lilienthal and Chanute preceded them with gliders, Santos-Dumont and others preceded them with airships, but the Wrights were the first to fly a controllable powered aircraft. Britain, France, Russia, China, and Brazil (and probably North Korea) all claim to have flown first, but not one of them can offer anything other stories about it as proof. Edited because I mistook what you were saying. Yes, there were other heavier-than-air craft before the Wrights. But in general, aviation historians look at powered craft rather than hang gliders. So I guess we are sort of in agreement.
2
What is the major malfunction with Latinos??? When you fuck up your own country because you want to be a macho idiot dictator that doesn't know jack shit about how to run a government, invading someone else for popularity DOES NOT WORK. The UN needs to send a couple of large representatives to walk into fat boy's office, slap him across the face a few times, and say "Remember Leopoldo Galtieri?".
2
My first thought would be Fuerza Area Argentina (Argentine Air Force). But I'm weird anyway.
2
Why waste additional resources and manpower to finish a ship that no longer has a useful role at that point and will never leave the Baltic?
2
It is a mystery to me why this plane gets so much attention in print and video. There was only one, and it wasn't very spectacular, and it accomplished nothing. Yet it seems to be as fundamental to any examination of WWII aircraft as a B-17 or Bf-109.
2
@hugobloemers4425 Yes, I'm aware of the content of this channel. The comment had nothing to do with this channel specifically; it was an observation in regard to this particular aircraft.
2
That has always been my thought as well. I'm surprised that a designer of Tank's status was not more familiar with the area rule.
2
"This little beauty......" ??? Do you have vision difficulties? And the comparison was definitely offensive to Thunderbird 2!
2
Aaaaahhhhh!!!! You have awakened an ancient memory. Now I have part of that tune in my head. What was that from?
2
@nonamesplease6288 Yes, they were underpowered, unmaneuverable, and a maintenance headache. But that applied to them everywhere. In response to the original comment about landing them on a beach, I'm just saying it is entirely possible because they wouldn't sink into the sand. How much use they would be after getting 12 yards off the beach would still be in question.
2
@Rich77UK Yeah, because the USA is to blame for every fucking thing since the beginning of recorded history, and of course Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo had nothing to do with it, did they? Dumbass.
2
@pushkarajdongre Alas? He needed 25% more lass? Or are you saying his area rule was to look for a lass in the area?
2
Fiat G50, Curtiss Hawk, Brewster Buffalo, Morane Saulnier MS406, Gloster Gladiator, Fokker D21, Hawker Hurricane. It seems the Finns had an eccentric passion for excelling at air combat in substandard planes.
2
840 hp. You have to replay it and listen close to get around his accent.
2
@ThePsiclone Valid point. I'd forgotten that detail.
2
@oldbloke204 Sorry, but no hillbilly here. I'm well educated, well travelled, and well aware that the US is not the center of the universe, as some of my ignorant countrymen believe. But in this case, I'm responding to an earlier comment that the Mirage was what the Hustler "wanted to be". No, it wasn't. Although a maintenance nightmare, the Hustler was much superior in performance and capability to the Mirage, mainly just because of its bigger size.
2
Pursued by a giant wooden badger flying a Union Jack, with Cunningham leaning out the window and one hand on the steering wheel.
2
A shame they didn't push the program. Many outstanding aircraft, particularly fighters, started off with crashes during initial testing. Just off memory, the P-38 Lightning, F-14 Tomcat, F-100 Super Saber, and the JA-39 Gripen come to mind, though I know there have been many more. Perseverance pays off. Consider the P-51 Mustang, which was a disappointment that the USAAC didn't want due to its poor performance at the start.
2
@noahwail2444 Typing in haste, I chose my words poorly when I said it needed air flow to "operate". I meant to start. The Argus pulse jet required pressurized air forced into the inlet to start combustion, and could not operate without the artificial air flow until a certain temperature had been reached. When you see film of V-1s idling on the ramps, they are warming up with air nozzles blasting pressurized air into the inlets. And you are correct that the small wing area of the V-1 would also necessitate a catapult launch. The Me-328 being larger and heavier, a catapult launch may not have been feasible to obtain minimum flight velocity. An air launch would have provided much better control in a test environment, and with the Mistel program underway, the Germans would have been already familiar with stacking a fighter on top of a bomber.
2
Having studied aviation development for 50 years, and being quite familiar with a multitude of types most people have never heard of, it amazes me that you can always seem to come up with something that is completely new to me. You are an archival prodigy, sir.
2
This settles it. There can be no doubt that LSD was created in Britain in the 1920s.
2
With 4 high velocity 37s it would probably have been the only plane of that era that actually had a realistic chance of hitting a tank with a gun big enough to do damage, at least from the rear. Under ideal test conditions with nonmoving targets and top pilots, it was found that there was only a 7% probability of hitting a tank sized target with a 37mm, which allowing for a 15 round drum magazine meant a single hit at most. Against a moving target, with someone other than a test pilot, facing light flack, in variable weather, an antitank mission relying on guns was almost always a wasted sortie. 20mm guns with higher rates of fire, higher velocities, and more ammo capacity were better for the role, but with almost no chance of armor penetration the best a pilot could hope for was track damage or starting a fire on the rear deck.
1
Another factor not mentioned was that, since France had a strong nationalistic push to go "only French" for their military, the Jaguar was seen in disfavor as it was a cooperative effort with the British. The Super Etendard was pitched as a "completely French" aircraft, built solely in France, by the French and for the French. In fact, almost 40% of the Super Etendard was of foreign manufacture, with all the parts being shipped in and assembled by Dassault. This was hardly any less than the Jaguar M, which had much better performance in terms of speed, range, maneuverability, and payload capacity.
1
1) America is TWO continents. 2) Unless you can offer evidence that some other American country flew a fighter before the USA, then the USA's first fighter is America's first fighter.
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@observer6294 You need to go back to the 5th grade and try to pass this time. There are 7 continents. Asia Europe North America South America Africa Australia Antarctica That has been established by the actual professional geographers long ago, is accepted as the standard by the international union that controls such definitions, and your personal opinion is completely meaningless on this matter.
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@observer6294 Central America is a region, it is not a continent. Christ's hairy ass, dude, you can look this crap in 30 seconds if you don't have an actual education !!!!
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@observer6294 Oh, geographers don't say what a continent is? And I suppose bankers have no idea what an interest rate is? And pilots don't know how to fly planes? Because obviously you know more than any of them. You're a delusional uneducated fool, and I have nothing more to say to you; I only discuss with people who know what they are talking about and you clearly don't know jack shit like you imagine you do.
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Ummmm..........perhaps someone should tell them that naming your army the KIA is not exactly the best way to inspire high morale.
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@k3D4rsi554maq I hope you realize that Britain was not the only belligerent of the war. You're saying that only British decisions determine when the war started? Really? Tell that to the Poles. The Belgians. The Norwegians. The Lithuanians. The Danes. The Latvians. The Dutch. The Estonians. The Finns. Almost of whom had been invaded and defeated before France. The idea that only when Britain decides to get into the war does it begin, is as laughably ridiculous as the American idea that WWII started at Pearl Harbor.
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What a waste of Irish taxpayers' hard earned money. Who does Ireland need to worry about? Give me a serious answer. Not counting the internal struggles, or a general disagreement with Britain (for which a handful of jet fighters will do them absolutely no good whatsoever), who has threatened war with Ireland over the last couple centuries? Ireland is like Iceland; they need a force that can do search and rescue, interdict smuggling, enforce fishing restrictions, handle customs and immigration, and all that civil stuff that does NOT require an armed force prepared for major combat. The Irish people are getting fucked by politicians that have fallen for the fancy sales pitches (or bribes) of the war material manufacturers.
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British pilot shot down. Captured by German troops. American pilot shot down. Captured by Japanese troops. Italian pilot shot down. Captured by Australian troops. Russian pilot shot down. Captured by Finnish troops. South African pilot shot down. Proceeds to capture the local French troops. Everybody else: "Goddamn French! Weren't you paying attention? Follow the script!"
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I'm not an engineer, so I don't know exactly why that is, but I have read it in many reputable sources, including documentaries about Barnes-Wallis, and apparently he readily admitted it. As for racing planes, they were fabric covered in the rear but metal in the front, and didn't use the geodesic construction. My guess (and only that) is that the framework couldn't stand the pressure of stressed metal skin, and the fabric wouldn't cover the basket weave smoothly enough to withstand the air pressure of higher speeds.
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@anzaca1 The Latecoere 6 was a failed single prototype that barely made 120 mph. While it did have a metal skin, I'm not sure it was a stressed skin, which would have been necessary for any higher speeds.
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@WALTERBROADDUS I took you up on the challenge, and I've been looking up the racing planes of the 1930s. Any one that I could find online, that approached or exceeded 200 mph, had plywood or metal skin. The sole exception I found that specifically indicated it had partial fabric covering was the Granville Brothers (Gee Bee) R6, which did 295 mph. And according to aviation historian and author Walter Boyne, it never finished a race it was in.
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@gordoncroft4524 You are correct, but it was not of geodesic construction. There were certainty many planes that went faster than 250 that had fabric skins, but we are discussing the merits of geodesic construction, as mentioned in the video, and my original comment was that geodesic construction with a fabric skin was limited to about 250. Looking back, I see I have been unclear in my comments so far; I think I implied that no plane could exceed 250 with a fabric skin, but actually I am only referring to those with geodesic structures.
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@JohnyG29 The Windsor did not have a fabric coating, nor did it have a stressed metal skin. It was covered with a fine wire mesh coated in plastic. That was probably the only way to get one up to that speed, but that was a very inefficient manufacturing process.
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@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 The B-29 did not have fabric covered control surfaces. I believe your source material is in error.
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@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 I don't have to look at a photo; I have looked at it with my own eyes from standing next to a B-29. I've seen the surfaces myself from a few yards away. The ribbed surfaces are still metal skinned. Just like the rudder of an A-4 Skyhawk, which looks in a photo like fabric but obviously isn't. Also, in 50 years of studying military aviation (because I was a military flyer) I have never seen any reference to fabric covering on any part of a B-29, because there were no US combat aircraft being built with fabric covering since before the B-29 ever flew. But I'll humor you. Please tell me any references you can find that say a B-29 had fabric covering anywhere on it.
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@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 The only dope here is you. I hate having to put up with idiot amateurs that think they can get a real education by watching a YouTube video. Go look at a B-29 yourself, fool. Spend a few decades studying military aircraft and flying on them. There are no fabric surfaces anywhere on a B-29. Go to any REAL source of information about them. Your idea that you can tell what a material is by looking at it from a distance on a YouTube video is ridiculously laughable.
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@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 You proved yourself wrong with that one. There is a nice bird's nest in a tail turret, there are lots of aileron and rudder ribs exposed from the skin removed, but their is no fabric hanging off anywhere. You just can't get a clue. You DO NOT learn everything by watching YouTube or playing war thunder. Learn how to read a book. Learn how to do actual real research.
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@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 You started the offense with your smartass remark about being perfect, child. Now, there are 24 surviving B-29s in this country. They are spread all over, so it's no difficulty to go see one. They are of all metal construction. Including the control surfaces. Always were.
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And when you have 2500 flight hours in combat aircraft (NOT on a video game) then come talk about your expertise, Mr. YouTube Professor.
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Transports with a secondary role as bombers. Developed in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. All nations with colonial empires, and a need to support far flung garrisons or bomb unruly villagers as needed.
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The heavy armament actually hindered its ability to conduct ground attack. Soviet tests showed that a 37mm gun, under ideal test range conditions with the best pilots, could hit a large vehicle sized target less than 7% of the time. With 15 rounds to work with, that's 1 single hit for all the ammo expended. A single 37mm hit is not worth flying the sortie. If it didn't have the big gun, and had 2 more heavy MGs in the nose with 200 rounds each, it would have been much better at ground attack. At least a 20mm with 60 rounds was an improvement. Then there is the issue that it had a liquid cooled engine and 1 lucky shot rifle bullet could put an end to plane and pilot. All air forces in the war learned that air cooled radials that could take damage were much more survivable down in the weeds. Sure, many liquid cooled V engined planes were used for ground attack, but they were taking bigger chances and suffered proportionately higher losses.
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While not at the top, I think it quite impressive that Argentina, a minor power and not a belligerent, with an aviation industry limited in capacity and experience, even got on this list at all.
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The RAF? If they had so much as mentioned it in a secret whisper, the US would have tried to mount 4 of them on a P-47. Yanks and their guns!
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In regard to US citizens that think WWII started at Pearl Harbor, that is not a matter of historical debate; it is an issue of pathetic education, if not outright propaganda promoted by biased teachers. Ask any North Korean and they'll tell you they soundly whooped the US and drove them put of Asia. Ask any Russian and they'll tell you that the Soviets alone won the war and the west had almost nothing to do with it. That doesn't make these ideas actual history.
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@TheAnxiousAardvark Nationalism is one thing; saying "the war didn't start until we got into it" is laughable. And most Americans (which I use in reference to US citizens) these days are clueless that we were heavily involved in the war while we were still neutral. I doubt the Poles, or the Chinese, or the French, or the Britains, or the Danes, or the Belgians, or the Norwegians, or the Dutch, or the Ethiopians, or the Finns, or the Latvians/Lithuanians/Estonians would consider December 1941 to be the start of the war. In fact, Pearl Harbor seemed pretty irrelevant to most of them. I doubt that the Japanese who were casualties in China thought the war had not started yet. I doubt that the US casualties in the Atlantic thought that the war had not started yet. The average US high school graduate these days knows less about history, math, and science, than I knew entering the 7th grade. Edit for typos.
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@Håkan Bergvall Were you born stupid, or do you practice at it? The mentally ill wannabe-dictator, that tried to illegally overthrow the US government, also blocked arms shipments to Ukraine because their government was ethical enough to not cooperate with him in trying to eliminate legitimate political competition here. His Russian mail order brides can't stand him any more, so he's jumping right in bed with Pukin'.
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@mihaiserafim I have seen enough of them to know that better aesthetics can be achieved by a 5 year old with Legos. The French appear to have entered a secret contest with the British as to who could produce the most gag-inducing designs.
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@razor1uk610 "A style typically their own". What a wonderful statement! If you don't have a copyright on that, may I use it to tactfully describe some slightly less than comely women?
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@mihaiserafim Limited knowledge? I have a degree in aeronautical engineering and 2500 flight hours in US Navy combat aircraft. So I'm entitled to share my opinions on planes. What's your intellectual claim to fame? A worthwhile education from spending your days on YouTube studying the history of the Kardashians?
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@mihaiserafim The Bloch 162 and NC 150 can be ignored since they were single prototypes only and therefore unlikely to be seen by many people. The MB 131 had barely 120 made and was such a poor performer that it was used primarily for target towing. The Amiot 354 had less than 100 built. The LeO 45 series was the only decent one you mentioned, but half of 220+ built by the start of the German invasion were airframes only, without engines or flight instruments, thank you very much to the inefficient French government bureaucracy and strikes instigated by the French communist party. The mainstay French bomber was the Amiot 143, mentioned in the video as a flying greenhouse. It offered a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower from all crew positions, and managed to drop a whopping total of just over 500 tons of bombs throughout the conflict. Noted for only a single aircraft out of 12 returning from attacking the bridges at Sedan, which is rather remarkable since it must have been quite an eyestrain for German pilots and flak gunners to focus their aim at it. Its combat competitor was the Farman F222 which bombed Berlin (yeah, a ONE plane raid can cause serious damage, hmm?), and aesthetically it made colon cancer look good.
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@mihaiserafim Respect for what? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you read most of the comments you'll see that a consensenus emerges; people think French interwar planes were ugly. We're entitled to our opinions, and they seem to be in the majority. What fool told you that you have the right to dictate what other people's opinions should be? And to say that other people aren't educated on the topic if their opinion disagrees with yours? You're just being an arrogant ass who has escalated an offhand facetious comment into a personal argument. So you like French planes; good for you. Now shut the f*** up with your personal attacks, or get lost.
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@treszenrv9401 You got me on that one. Say, do you happen want a few Kardashians? We'll be glad to send them over. Free shipping!
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Grumman's next jet, the F-11F Tiger was a very good and successful design, and unlike this barely flying beer keg, paid attention to the area rule.
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People just love the idea of "what ifs". This is just one more plane of which only a single one was built, that captures people's fascination, and just like the Fokker D XXIII can be found in any military aviation reference book as if it had seen wide service.
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So, Soviet designers were still contemplating biplanes by the time 1800 hp engines had been developed? What kind of reasonably sane logic was being applied there?
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@toolmaker9411 Aaaaahhh, thank you! And if it is material left over from machining, I wonder what evidenced that to be sabotage rather than a manufacturing error? I must assume there was some sort of quality control process that made it not possible to be there unless it was intentionally placed.
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Absolutely nothing. Why are you bitching about it? If it was a video on astrophysics and she was wearing nothing, I doubt you'd complain.
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The He-177 or the Pe-8? That would have been a tough choice!
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@Otokichi786 There's also this thing called "sarcastic asswipe", of which you apparently are one. Did you notice that other people are also bitching about the audio on this channel, assuming you can read? And I see no reason to buy something new to accommodate one video producer when there are a lot of other similar channels out there.
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How would you like to be the test pilot that had to pull that lever for the first time in flight? And wonder what was going to happen?
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It also demonstrates the hazards of an aerial melee, as the P-38 flew right into the line of fire of a friendly fighter in the midst of shooting up an opponent.
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Any time any plane looks even the slightest bit like another, people start hollering "this was a copy of that" or "he got the idea from the other guy". No. No. No. No. No. There is such a thing as convergent evolution in design. When particular needs generate particular problems, engineers will come up with the most logical solutions. Since engineering is based on physics, and physics doesn't change, engineering solutions will be similar even if independently derived. So if every nation was looking at an evolving requirement for a longe range multi seat fighter in the mid to late 30s, then every nations' engineers would be coming up with similar designs, often without ever seeing the others.
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Hmmm.....they are exporting terrorism, close to open war with their neighbors by their own acts, their economy is dependent on opium production and export, and they are a barbarian culture with little better than stone age social ideals despite their laughable attempts at appearing modernized. And the UN is fretting because they will soon starve. Well......not soon enough. And don't hand me that nonsense that "Oh, it's just the Taliban that are evil; the Afghan people are poor victims." The people made their government. The Taliban are the people. Every Afghan man enabled this. If millions of Afghans starve, then that will be millions less Taliban supporters.
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One has to start wondering how much the consumption of Guiness played a role in British aircraft design during this period.
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@direktorpresident The L12 Liberty was first run only 5 months after the 1st flight of the Nighthawk, and the earlier L8 Liberty was developed roughly concurrently with the Nighthawk. So my comment was poorly worded when I said "available" by the time it flew, but the anticipation of the imminent introduction of the engine should have put the flight testing on hold for a while (not that the concept was really valid anyway). And it's a matter of power to weight ratio; if the engine is twice the weight but 4 times the power, it will fly. The much smaller DH-4 had no problem flying with the L12 Liberty.
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1:00 Incorrect. There was no such plane called an F-5A Tiger. The F-5A/B was named the Freedom Fighter, because it was intended to be produced for America's allies. It deployed to Vietnam for combat testing and assessment under a program called Skoshi Tiger. Associated with that term, the improved F-5E/F model was called the Tiger II. This was because it was the second US fighter to be named Tiger. The first was not the earlier F-5A, but rather the Grumman F-11F Tiger, a USN fighter with a very brief career that included serving with the Blue Angels, and becoming the first plane to shoot itself down with its own guns by going supersonic and running into its 20mm cannon shells from behind.
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In other news, a coalition of American small towns, high schools, and car dealerships have offered to provide an assortment of F-84s, F-86s, F-100s, F-104s, and A-7s, that are currently in "ready storage" on concrete and steel pylons. And if Ukraine wants one, I can get you an EF-111 Spark-Vark. Batteries not included.
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@sdkfz2519 I probably make a much better living than a loser who has nothing better to do than go on the internet and criticize people, because he's ashamed of his own life. Do you make $114K like I do, or are you just another bagger at Piggly-Wiggly like most trolls of your type?
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I'm sure I make a much better living than a grocery bagger such as yourself who has nothing better to do with his life than search the internet for people he can criticize instead of making a meaningful contribution to the topic at hand.
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From a tactical vulnerability standpoint, I would question the A-9's engine layout. The engines on the A-10 are masked from ahead and below by the fuselage, which reduces the lock on capability of all-aspect MANPADS. The engines of the A-9 are below the fuselage, making lock on from below more probable. And those huge intakes below the fuselage are just begging to be fed a snack of ground fire.
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Out of that whole paragraph, only 4 words mattered; "if unopposed by fighters"... Germany could have easily conquered Britain if unopposed by the RAF, RN, and British army. They could have sent panzer divisions racing across America if unopposed by the Atlantic Ocean. When engineers design something that works perfectly on the drafting table and then assume field conditions will be exactly the same, whatever they designed will fail before it ever completes its first test use.
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@jebise1126 Below the wings worked, since the plane had massive multi-slotted flaps which lowered into the exhaust. The wing was high so FOD would not be a problem. Yes, it was to replace the C-130. That didn't work out. A typical case of a classic aircraft being so good that the "better" replacement flopped.
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@pd4165 Well, alrighty then. Thank you for the informative response.
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ASW: How about the Kyushu Q1W1? Topping out at 200 mph with only a single 7.7mm MG for defense, and carrying only 2 depth charges for offense, it's not much of a combat plane. A range of under 750 nautical miles should limit its ASW potential fairly well. And being Japanese ought to throw another wrench in the logistics machinery. Selling points: it's new (in service Jan 45), it's not a biplane, it looks modern, and it has radar and MAD. With over 150 built and not intended to fight anything other than submarines, after just 9 months of war service, there were bound to be enough survivors to make a squadron or two.
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@flarvin8945 Here's an equation for you. Sending a single brigade overseas and keeping them in a hostile area for a year costs as much as a half million barrels of oil. It is cheaper to buy oil outright, even at inflated prices, than to seize it by force. The concept of the US invading countries because they have oil is based on nothing but bar talk.
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@flarvin8945 You keep saying that the US will intervene in other nations because that gives us better access to oil. It doesn't. The intervention makes it more costly to get oil. We may intervene for other reasons, right or wrong, but oil is not a reason. It is flat out cheaper to buy oil, even from nations that aren't overly friendly to us, then it is to intervene to secure access to it.
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@flarvin8945 That is an uniformed position. The cost of intervention in Kuwait and Iraq was many times greater than the value of the oil that we have purchased from there since then. And why would countries who had nothing to gain, some of which were almost openly hostile to us, join the coalition? Do you really think the US or any other country only intervenes for self serving motives and never for humanitarian reasons? A lot of guys buried in Normandy would disagree with you. "It's all about the oil" is a fallacy, a common myth perpetuated by bar gossip; we can produce or buy enough on the open market that we don't need to invade anybody to get it, so why incur the excessive cost and public wrath to do so?
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@flarvin8945 Read a history book yourself, and not just a 5th grade one. There was far more to fighting Germany than just "they declared war" because Japan had. The US was actively involved long before Pearl Harbor, and it had nothing to do with getting resources from Germany. Now go back and look at your comments, right from the beginning. You said it's about the oil. It's right there in print. End of discussion.
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I grew up in Oxnard and I've never heard of this place. Is it new?
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The only modern combat aircraft we have seen becoming tent pegs are the other side's. I suppose you have either forgotten or aren't old enough to remember that US fighters have slaughtered any opposition since 1944 on.
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@lurch8111 Yes, running off aged memory only, I lumped Caley in with Langley and Ader for failed attempts at powered flight, when I should have included him with Lilienthal and Chanute for his contribution to gliders. For some reason I was fixated on his helicopter design that never flew, without thinking about his gliders that did.
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@neiloflongbeck5705 Uh....that's just what I said. I thought you were claiming the Wright's didn't fly powered first. They did. And as we both said, there were gliders before them. I edited out the comment about historians disagreeing with you after I reread your comment.
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@neiloflongbeck5705 Well I'm disagreeing with your agreement about my disagreeable comment on our agreement to disagree.....ah, screw it, I got lost here somewhere.
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It would have been nice to hear mention of Hampdens attacking the viaduct of the Dortmund-EMS canal, a raid which imposed enough damage to halt important German interior barge traffic for a month. Also, I would like to know if that single Hampden in Swedish service was an influence on the design of the Saab 18, a very similar looking bomber that first flew in 1942.
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This guy is really full of himself, isn't he? Bad enough to look like a cross between Gollum and Dick Cheney, but to sound like a cross between Mussolini and Kim Ham Chunk? Maybe, having failed at what they were paid for, his mercs should wander off to find real jobs.
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There are plenty of places to get a sandwich, so avoid going to Subway which has refused to close their 400+ shops in Russia. And obviously don't watch any Putin-lover Segall movies.
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Why would anyone think that giving the pilot a single fixed .303 mg would have any effect at all? That was 1915 armament.
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If you have proooof otherwise, we'd love to seeeee it.
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If it wasn't for the tragic loss of lives every day, I'd say the situation for the Russians is getting downright comical.
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Same situation as the Germans. They started one by converting the liner Roma into a carrier, renamed Aquila ("Eagle") since there was a battleship already named Roma. It would have carried 51 fighter-bombers. It was almost completed by the time of the armistice in 1943, was seized by the Germans, then disabled by Italian frogmen, and scrapped after the war.
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@chefchaudard3580 Are you sure that was the DXXIII? I was under the impression that was the Fokker G1 that impressed everyone at the Paris Salon.
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The British are renowned for producing aircraft that can only fly because the ground is too embarrassed to hold them.
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I wonder if the Spit could have had improved performance with a single float, but the British never were keen on single float seaplanes. As an aside, the Germans also tried out the Arado 196 as a single float seaplane, but also settled on twin floats. The French and Italians went the same way, while the Americans went single float and the Japanese went with both. I'd be curious to know why the Pacific seemed to be more suitable for single floats than European waters.
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@shawnmiller4781 The Kittiwake was a flying boat rather than a floatplane. Different catapult design. It came in the 1920s, but the British have pretty consistently stayed with twin float seaplanes since early in WWI, with the Short Gurnard and Mussel of 1930 being notable exceptions. But I commend your knowledge on the topic; the Kittiwake is rather obscure.
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@shawnmiller4781 Fred sends a text to his neighbor Tom and says "I have a confession to make buddy; I haven't been able to get it at home so I've been tapping your wife for the last 6 months". Tom goes upstairs, gets his pistol, comes back down into the kitchen, and shoots the cheating bitch dead. Then his phone chimes. He looks, and it's another text from Fred. "I meant 'wifi'; damn autocorrect!".
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@EdNashsMilitaryMatters So does toenail fungus, but that doesn't make it attractive! BTW, really like your channel. Been studying aviation history for 45 years (as an amateur, and former service flyer) but you still come up with a lot of stuff I haven't heard of. I'd sure like to know how you find these gems.
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@bigblue6917 What was that from?
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Francois, are you educated? Do you know how to fly a helicopter or a jet, or fix one? Then what makes you think some tribesmen, with mostly no more than the equivalent of about a 5th grade western education, suddenly have that skill? The Taliban do not have an air force. They have a bunch of aircraft that will sit on the ramp until they rot.
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In any video showing bombing, I am always horrified and disgusted by the wanton destruction of those poor orchards that were not at war with anybody (at least at that moment).
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"Behind the curve on aircraft and powerplant development"? The Ki-83 fighter. 430 mph. 2200 mile range. Ceiling over 40,000 ft. 2 x 2200 hp engines. Maneuverability equal to the best single engine fighters. Doesn't sound too far behind the curve to me. Could have made dog food out of the Grumman cats.
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1200+ sorties to destroy 1900+ trucks. A truck & 1/2 per sortie. Really getting their money's worth. No wonder we lost.
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I smell Lockheed sales tactics here, just like the Starfighter scandal. That Air Chief Marshall certainly has an offshore account that just happened to run across a large deposit. And why does Thailand need top end fighters? Why are they maintaining almost 100 already? They have a coup almost every year, but they haven't faced a real external threat since before the invention of powered flight. F-35s to defend against what? Loss of air supremacy to such mighty powers as Myanmar or Kampuchea?
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@GreatPolishWingedHussars Then the term ethos fits. It describes their ideology. It doesn't have to be positive to maintain its definition.
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@GreatPolishWingedHussars Wrong! Look up the definition. It is the characteristic spirit of a culture. There is no requirement that it has to be positive.
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@rob5944 Well, better than flogging a live one! 😉
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@GreatPolishWingedHussars Ok, we all acknowledge that you are the ultimate arbitrator of the English language and that actual definitions by linguists are irrelevant compared to your personal opinion. Happy now?
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@GreatPolishWingedHussars There are still too many people like that. The nazis deserved to be eradicated. Their ideals were completely wrong. But that doesn't mean all the German people.
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So few produced, so short an operational career, and yet so widely recognized among aviation enthusiasts as if it was a major player in the war.
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Not exactly the first plane to come to mind when mach numbers are mentioned.
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@starliner2498 Maybe. Which post? You will have to allow for the fact that I have multiple personalities, and we don't always agree. Yeah, well that's my own fault. Hey, when I want my opinion I'll give it to me. Okay, me two, knock it off! Me stay out of this!
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A drone is just a cruise missile with a weak engine. Or a cruise missile is just a drone with a warhead. Many American target drones were made from surplus missiles with warheads removed. So, yeah, the V-1 could be called a drone.
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@mstevens113 Drones do not have to be under operator control. The US has used dozens of types of drones for the past 60 years that were often preprogrammed, particularly target drones. For one example, the Talos naval SAM was designated a missile if it had a warhead and was guided to a target; the exact same Talos was designated as a drone if the warhead was removed and it was used as a target.
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@richardpentelow655 Yes, WWI was fully resolved. In 1945. Or in 1991, if you want to go by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Or in 2001 if want to go by the end of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo conflict, since Yugoslavia was an artificial nation formed of several ethnicities from smaller traditional nations, by the Versailles Treaty. Or it hasn't been resolved yet, since Brexit is still ongoing.
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The air to ground role is a myth that has been repeated so often that it has come to be accepted as dogma. This stems from the Soviet description of its role, which translates roughly as "low level support of ground forces". Westerners automatically equate that to close air support as we know it, attacking ground targets. But to the Soviets the term meant low level air cover. First, we sent about a 1/2 million rounds for the 37mm gun. All of it HE. Not a single round of AP. And they weren't about to open a factory to produce ammo for a gun that was in fairly limited service for them. Second, the Soviets did extensive testing of large caliber aircraft guns against tanks and found it to be a losing proposition. The best test pilots shooting at static targets achieved about a 7% hit ratio. With 15 rounds carried, that meant 1 hit per loadout, with a round that had a low probability of penetration. In the field, with less experienced pilots shooting at moving targets, it was a waste of a sortie. Planes like the Ju-87 and Hurricane that mounted a 37mm or 40mm under each wing doubled their chance of a hit and were therefore feasible. Third, Soviet archives released in the 90s record that the plane wasn't used in the ground attack role, except on occasions when a pilot might find an ideal target of opportunity, which might be attacked just as any pilot in any plane might. So why even put a 37mm on a plane? So you can shoot at other planes. An aircraft, even a fighter, is substantially larger than a tank, and since you are most likely chasing it, you have a much lower closing velocity and can get much closer, so the chances of getting a hit are much better than hitting a tank. Also, a single 37mm round that is unlikely to do more than scratch the paint on a tank is an almost guaranteed instakill against an aircraft.
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@derrickstorm6976 Yep, basically. Climb like a biplane, then jettison a wing and have monoplane speed. It worked in testing, but wasn't feasible for service; it was complicated and resource intensive, and by the time it was considered for production the Battle of Britain was over and the need for fast climbing interceptors for home defense was no longer there.
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@derrickstorm6976 "Ed Nash's Military Matters" has a decent video on the Hillson biplane Hurricane.
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@oldbloke204 Meaning what? Published combat ranges of aircraft are always listed at the maximum, including drop tanks. The range of the Hustler without a tank is still greater than the range of the Mirage IV with or without tanks. The Hustler needed refueling to get from the US to Russia; the Mirage needed refueling just to get from France to Russia.
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@Optimusx1 How remarkably odd that in the 3 instances in which US pilots fired Phoenix in anger, all 3 failed, and yet Iran has achieved 70+ kills. This "statistic" comes from an Iranian author, who also claimed that a single missile destroyed 3 planes at once and damaged a fourth. To put it simple terms, you are incredibly naive to believe the words of some son-of-a-goat who is lying out his ass. Iranian delusional propaganda is not a good source of information, even if it has been put into wikipedia (which can be done without any proper review or fact checking).
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When even the Mexicans don't want it, you know you've got a loser.
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Yeah, right. And the Brazilians say you are wrong, because they invented it. And the French say the Brazilians are wrong because they invented it. And some some dude in another comment says a New Zealander was first. Every country wants to claim they invented the first airplane, the first submarine, the first telephone. Problem is that none of them can offer any evidence more solid than just bar talk.
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@timb3499 No it isn't. I can see hills from my front door, so that proves it isn't flat. 😆
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P-39Q: Good choice. With only 15 rounds carried for the main gun, using AP ammo would be a safe bet to not knock anything down. And with a secondary ground attack role, well .... the P-39 was way overhyped in that role, which is why, contrary to popular misconception, that is not the role for which the Soviets used it.
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@rogerpennel1798 Of course not; analysis by various means shows that Russia is not succeeding as planned. I'm saying no one should rely on videos that they are seeing at home as a source of real information about this conflict, because the vast majority are not telling the whole truth; they are only showing the selected parts that someone wants to present as the big picture.
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@rogerpennel1798 Ok, I'll grant you that; there are indeed many characters whose opinions aren't worth the miniscule server space their comments take. And I was probably a little harsh in my response in that regard. Edit: your comment doesn't seem to be showing up in the thread, probably due to its reference to a wig-wearing ex president. But I got to read it in my notification, and I agree on that point.
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@burningphoneix A tank unit quickly reacting to an ambush with return fire, without calling artillery or deploying infantry support, is not using combined arms tactics. And that was the content of the video. Of course combined arms are much better, but my original point still stands: don't believe everything you see coming out of Ukraine. Because obviously the Ukranians are going to be releasing more videos than the Russians who are denying they are invading, and they are going to show Ukranian successes. They don't want anyone to see: "Look, our heroic defenders fired a missile, but it didn't kill the tank right away, and they got shot to shit in return."
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@JohnyG29 I think he was sarcastically referring to the fuel leak issues, and the Betty's reputation as a "one shot lighter".
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The FW-189 was slow, as you say, however it had a reputation for being anything but "easy meat" for enemy fighters. Being very maneuvable, it was a difficult target for a fighter to get onto or hit.
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Of course China is happy to see him in office. He has threatened to imprison election officials that didn't declare him the winner, and is talking about using the military for law enforcement, so China couldn't pray for a better person in charge of the US. He is the proponent of exactly the kind of policy they like to follow.
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Why did they paint it white? And where's the trunk?
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There's something about Rohrbach aircraft; they all look like sausages.
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Don't start a war by sticking to an alliance with a country that invaded another country to further political ambitions. Don't start a war by attacking other countries that come to the aid of the country that was invaded. Don't start a war by invading other neutral nations yourselves. Oh, wow; look at the ensuing results! You don't get your ass whipped, you don't get peace dictated to you at gunpoint, you don't get disarmed, you don't go bankrupt paying for what you caused, and your people don't starve. If millions of Germans were able to collectively find 2 brain cells to rub together and make a spark, then there would not have been a Treaty of Versailles and there would have been nothing for them to cry about like whiny little wussy losers.
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It has always been a misconception that the Japanese couldn't have designed their own aircraft if they were better in any way to western designs. During the war it was basically taken as official fact. There was no way that the Japanese, with their slanted eyes meaning inferior vision, and their recent evolution from a feudal society, could possibly be effective as engineers. This myth was taken as gospel even into the 60s, and still hasn't died today. The Zero has been considered a copy of a few different candidates, but it was entirely an indigenous design.
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2500 hp was way beyond ambitious in 1940.
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No doubt Ed already knows these details, but for everyone else's benefit, the Army/Navy bombing trials of the 20s were unsuccessful in their intended purpose due to the differing objectives of the services. The Navy wanted to use the trials to learn the effects of various bomb types and sizes on ships, so that resistance could be built into future designs. The Army wanted to prove that ships were obsolete in defending the US coasts and aircraft should become the only means of defending the nation. Meaning that the Army should get the prestige (and the bulk of the defense budget). In the end, the only thing proven was that unmanned, undefended, unmoving ships could be sunk by the primitive bombers of the time. The most vocal advocate of air power at the time was General William Mitchell who was court martialed for insubordination, not for anything related to the bombing tests, but for going straight to the press to criticize his superiors in the War Department (who were not ardent proponents of air power) for their supposed negligence in the loss of the airship Shenandoah.
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