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

  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.
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  2. 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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  3.  @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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  4.  @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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  5.  @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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  6. 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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  7.  @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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11.  @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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  12.  @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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  13.  @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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  14.  @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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  15.  @givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935  The B-29 did not have fabric covered control surfaces. I believe your source material is in error.
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  16.  @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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  17.  @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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  18.  @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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  19.  @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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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. 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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  26.  @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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  27. @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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  28.  @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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  29.  @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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  30.  @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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  31.  @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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  32.  @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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  33.  @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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  34. 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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  35. 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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  36. 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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  37.  @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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  38. 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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  39. The He-177 or the Pe-8? That would have been a tough choice!
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  40.  @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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  41. 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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  42. 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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  43. 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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  44. 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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  45. 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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  46.  @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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  47. 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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  48. 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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  49. ​ @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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  50. 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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