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

  1. 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.
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  2. With all the different gear coming from a bunch of countries, logistics and maintenance must be a nightmare for Ukraine.
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  3. 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.
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  4. 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.
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  5. 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.
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  6. 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.
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  7. As if we haven't done the same to them for decades.
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  8. 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.
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  9.  @curtisbryce5096  The Brits had a lot of colonial territory in Africa. They knew well how deadly a fly with a tiny bite could be.
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  10. 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.
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  11. The B-58 had almost 3 times the range and a substantially longer supersonic cruise time.
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  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".
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  13. 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.
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  14. ​ @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.
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  15.  @curtisbryce5096  Exactly. They named it after something small and dangerous that bites. I don't see that as weird.
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  16. 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.
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  17. ​ @JakubTabas_web  Why? Speed is speed. This video isn't titled "The fastest piston engined fighter at specifically 15,381 feet 7 inches".
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  18.  @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.
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  19. 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.
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  20. Pilot to observer: "I'll land, and you run on ahead and tell them we're coming."
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  21. 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.
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  22.  @FortuneZer0  Emergence? Trumps. Kennedys. Fords. Roosevelts. Rockefellers. Sinatras. Fondas. Kardashians (unfortunately). Ducks (not sure that one counts).
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  23. 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.
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  24. 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).
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  25. Fly that? Screw it; I'm going back to the farm to work on vaporators.
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  26. Convergent evolution indeed. 4 different nations secretly working on the same basic design at about the same time.
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  27. 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.
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  28. 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?
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  29. While Americans are driving "American made" cars with most of the parts manufactured in Mexico and Korea.
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  30. To be fodder for F-35s in "Falklands 2.0 - Return of the Empire".
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  31. 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.
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  32. Britain has had a considerable number of aircraft that only flew because the ground was too embarrassed to hold them.
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  33.  @1954shadow  What did you say?
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  34. ​@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.
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  35. @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.
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  36. 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.
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  37. 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. 😉
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  38. 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?
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  39.  @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.
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  40. 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.
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  41. Aside from the fact that this plane did exist, it's a little late for April Fools videos.
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  42.  @DocTommy1972  Thank you, and you can see yourself out. Next contestant!
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  43. 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?
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  44.  @gunner678  History could often use a bit of later coloring. Or is that just my life I'm thinking of?
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  45. 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.
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  46. 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.
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  47. 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.
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  48.  @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.
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  49.  @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.
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  50. Flying proof that vodka really works.
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