Comments by "Gort" (@gort8203) on "Not A Pound For Air To Ground"
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@robertmaybeth3434 It was obviously suitable, or Germany and Canada would not have bought it specifically to fulfill their NATO obligations to perform that role. You can't see this because you do not understand the role or the history of combat aircraft in general. Here are some facts that may help you understand more:
Number of engines is irrelevant. All the aircraft that performed that role in that theater prior to the F-104, such as the F-84, were also single-engine. The F-104 was an improvement due to is speed, which improved its ability to reach its assigned targets, and do so more quickly.
All these single engine fighter-bombers had relatively short legs. It was not a long-range strategic bombing mission. The mission was to deliver a tactical nuclear weapon against an enemy airfield, troop concentration, or supply dump. Strike fighters carried external fuel to extend their range, but even so in many cases it was expected to be a one-way mission. Pilots with insufficient fuel to return to a friendly base expected to bail out over a designated safe area for evasion and maybe have a chance to survive the war. People who did not serve during the cold war may not understand such plans, or the commitment it takes to perform them.
The weapon loadout was a single tactical nuclear bomb, so how much payload do you need. The F-104 could carry four external fuel tanks in addition to the weapon, so it had sufficient range to reach its assigned targets.
Hope that helps you understand the realities.
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@michaelfrench3396 You remain wrong about everything.
The F-105 was the fastest thing going at low level. ALL airplanes are slower while carrying a heavy external load. The A-6 would not have been faster carrying that load. I don’t know that any of these aircraft were cleared for release of an external bombload at supersonic speed. Who said they would be at top speed when releasing their bombs? You are making up counters to irrelevant points not even made.
By the way, heavily laden is a relative term. Yes, bombs are heavy. If you think any jet carrying a normal bomb load is ‘heavily laden’, then they are all always heavily laden all the time, and there is no way to send a non-heavily laden jet against a target. You are soaking your comments in pejorative language that means nothing in realty.
Any jet attacking a SAM site was going to do it at low altitude. Of course there is more AAA there. What plane do you think should have been used to attack SAMs from higher altitude (which was of course within the heart of the SAM engagement envelope). The F-105 was designed for striking ground targets. The air force did not have a better plane for the job or they would have been using it. We could discuss the tactics employed, which varied during the war, but that is beyond the scope of your comments and your knowledge.
Weasels flew in pairs. Of course, in the battle area. Not to make them harder to hit, but because they were a limited resource, and you don’t put them all in the same area. Because they had to maneuver a lot to do their job, and a two-ship flight is a maneuverable formation.
“I'm saying that the military leadership knew that it was a bad idea to throw a Large group of heavily laden aircraft at a Sam site”
No, they didn’t know that, and it’s an inaccurate description of what they did. Again, your pejorative language means nothing. It was a strike package. You have no idea of how a strike package works. It is not “throwing damn near a hundred slow moving heavily. Laden bombers at a anti-aircraft missile site”. A strike package is a coordinated group of aircraft, and they all don’t swarm over a single point in the sky at the same time. You need to learn a lot more before you start criticizing the actions of people with more training, experience, and responsibly in this area than you will ever know.
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As I said, you don't know what you are talking about with regard to Arnold's policies policies and directives. This is From “To Command the Sky” Smithsonian Institution:
In 1939, shortly after WWII had broken out, Arnold expressed concern over the neglect of pursuit tactics and technological development. Arnold up to that point had been a bomber partisan, but now with supreme command responsibility over the Army air am and with the Spanish Civil War and Poland as evidence, he had to consider both sides of bomber vs fighter issues. In a Nov 1939 memo to the General Frank Andrews, former commander of GHQ Air Force, Arnold wrote that “the subject of pursuit aviation—tactics and plane development, has not received the share of attention and interest in the Air Corps it merits. The Idea that fighter aircraft cannot soot down large bombardment planes in formation . . .has been proven wholly untenable. It has been demonstrated recently beyond a doubt that the best antiaircraft defense is pursuit aviation. He suggested that one other factor for the low state of the fighter was the teaching of doctrine in tactics schools, and another could be that higher ranking officers had little experience in command of fighter groups and squadrons, which was a young man’s game. In endorsing Arnold's memo, Col C.S. Russel was even more critical of the neglect of fighters, pointing out that advocates of bombardment had overlooked vital consideration in the ability of bomber to resist fighter attack, such as the concentrated firepower of fighters vs the less accurate flexible guns of bombers. He suggested the service schools lay emphasis on the value of pursuit. The Air Corps Tactics School that had focused on strategic bomber doctrine was soon to be disbanded as the Army began focusing on preparing for actual war.
In May 1939 Arnold appointed a special panel known as the Kilmer Boarder to make recommendations on research and development priorities. Its third priority, behind liquid-cooled engines and fire control apparatus, was for a fighter to rank with the best in the world. Eleven months later Arnold appointed a second panel, which added as a forth priority an escort fighter with a 1,500 mile range. When he receive the report, Arnold exchanged places between priorities 1 and 4. Arnold made the escort fighter priority 1 in early 1940, long before US entry into the war. These were official policies, not the prewar work of the theorists denigrated on YT as the “bomber mafia”. These official actions (and many others) clearly indicate it was not Arnold’s intention to prohibit fighter escort of bombers, as claimed by the uninformed conspiracy theorists crowding YT these days.
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@Ksozey You're done because the facts do not fit your conspiracy theory, and you want to believe what you like. I'm glad you're done, but for the sake of others reading:
In Feb 1942 Hap Arnold direct the air staff to do whatever necessary to get drop tanks on fighters as soon as possible. Why do you think he did that. The conspiracy theorist here say it was only for ferrying, but ferry tanks existed and are not drop tanks.
. This is From “To Command the Sky” Smithsonian Institution:
In 1939, shortly after WWII had broken out, Arnold expressed concern over the neglect of pursuit tactics and technological development. Arnold up to that point he had been a bomber partisan, but now with supreme command responsibility over the Army air am and with the Spanish Civil War and Poland as evidence, he had to consider both sides of bomber vs fighter issues. In a Nov 1939 memo to the General Frank Andrews, former commander of GHQ Air Force, Arnold wrote that “the subject of pursuit aviation—tactics and plane development, has not received the share of attention and interest in the Air Corps it merits. The Idea that fighter aircraft cannot shoot down large bombardment planes in formation . . .has been proven wholly untenable. It has been demonstrated recently beyond a doubt that the best antiaircraft defense is pursuit aviation. He suggested that one other factor for the low state of the fighter was the teaching of doctrine in tactics schools, and another could be that higher ranking officers had little experience in command of fighter groups and squadrons, which was a young man’s game. In endorsing Arnold's memo, Col C.S. Russel was even more critical of the neglect of fighters, pointing out that advocates of bombardment had overlooked vital consideration in the ability of bomber to resist fighter attack, such as the concentrated firepower of fighters vs the less accurate flexible guns of bombers. He suggested the service schools lay emphasis on the value of pursuit. The Air Corps Tactics School that had focused on strategic bomber doctrine was soon to be disbanded as the Army began focusing on preparing for actual war.
In May 1939 Arnold appointed a special panel known as the Kilmer Boarder to make recommendations on research and development priorities. Its third priority, behind liquid-cooled engines and fire control apparatus, was for a fighter to rank with the best in the world. Eleven months later Arnold appointed a second panel, the Emmons board” which added as a forth priority an escort fighter with a 1,500 mile range. When he received the report, Arnold exchanged places between priorities 1 and 4. Arnold made the escort fighter priority 1 in early 1940, long before US entry into the war. These were official policies, not the prewar work of the theorists denigrated on YT as the “bomber mafia”. These official actions (and many others) clearly indicate it was not Arnold’s intention to prohibit fighter escort of bombers, as claimed by the uninformed conspiracy theorists crowding YT these days.
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@ScoopsTVtools No, they weren’t just for ferry purposes, ‘bud’. I've provided a list of things Arnold actually did to get escort for the bombers, but you reject actual facts and maintain your imaginary story that Arnold stupidly prohibited use of drop tanks just to prove a prewar theory about bombers not needing escort. First of all, that theory was not USAAF doctrine, but let’s not even go there because you will just ignore those facts as well. So let’s focus on the fact that your imaginary story is actually the one that follows no logic.
You believe Arnold allowed General Kenny to use drop tanks to escort bombers in the Pacific while actively prohibited this in in Europe, despite the fact that the daylight precision bombing campaign was struggling. That’s just a dumb idea, and anybody who has been part of any military command structure knows it is a dumb idea. Once an operation begins theory and plans that do not return success are replaced with what works, because nothing succeeds like success.
Arnold believed success of strategic bombing was vital both for winning the war and for seeing creation of an independent air force after the war. He didn’t care one whit about proving an outdated theory that he had jettisoned even before the US entered the war, he cared about the success of strategic bombing. Once push came to shove, he didn’t even adhere to daylight precision bombing theory and put pressure on the 8th AF to bomb through cloud cover and the XXI AF to bomb at night with incendiaries. He fired his good friends Hunter and Eaker in Europe because they were less than energetic at producing results, Hunter specifically for not providing adequate escort for the bombers. Later he fired his friend Haywood Hansel in the Pacific because he was a purist about daylight precision bombing and ignored Arnold by persisting in daylight bombing of Japan despite poor results. Arnold replaced Hansell with Curtis Lemay because he knew Lemay cared about results rather than unproductive doctrine. Success in the war is what mattered, not prewar theories.
Another point of logic is that providing escort for bombers in no way argues against creation of an independent air force, it actually supports the concept, so your theory again makes no sense. As I keep saying, you can’t show me the directive from Arnold prohibiting use of drop tanks to escort bombers in Europe because it doesn’t exist. You can lay some blame for the delay of drop tanks on Generals Eaker and Hunter for administrative bungling, but you can’t blame it on a stupid conspiracy directed from the top to prove an outdated theory.
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