Comments by "Gort" (@gort8203) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters" channel.

  1. Like the Hurricane it was a prewar aircraft that was already marginal at the beginning of the war. They had roughly comparable performance, although the Hurricane was a bit faster early on. (Perhaps due to achieving its maximum speed at a higher altitude due to a better blower?) They both contributed a great deal to the allied war effort, yet on the internet the P-40 seems to get far less respect than than Hurricane. If the Hurricane had not earned fame in the Battle of Britain it would probably hold a place in the firmament closer to the P-40, which doesn't get talked about much in proportion to its contributions.
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  2. I would just like to note that the Me-262 is not the best example of early swept wing aircraft because its wings were not swept to increase its critical Mach number, but rather to change the distance between the center of lift and center of gravity. The original design had straight wings but the engine nacelles turned out to be heavier than anticipated, so the wings were adjusted to move them aft. It was simpler to change the wing angle than to redesign the fuselage and rearrange the structure and internal components. The wings ended up at the same slight sweep angle as the earlier DC-3 transport, which had slightly swept wings for the same reason.
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  3. It's not the placement of the engine closer to the center of gravity that made it handle more like a jet, it's is the reduction in propeller induced yaw due to the ducted fan. That and the fuselage as a flow splitter must have all but eliminated the spiral slipstream effect on the vertical stabilizer.
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  4. The real reason this bomber was not produced in larger numbers must be that it failed to fully meet the air ministry requirement to present an awkward and ungainly appearance.
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  5. Just wait until they begin to employ Screamers. . .
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  6. Don't confuse Lend-Lease with the postwar loan the U.S. made to help Britain recover. That was the 2% interest loan mentioned in the video. That loan was eventually repaid, but Lend-Lease was never intended to be repaid -- it was a cost the U.S. was able and willing to bear in support of the allied war effort.
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  7. Except aircraft developers actual don't say those things. Every aircraft is a compromise, with its attributes chosen for what looks to be the best compromise for the needs expected when it goes into service. Nobody says always or forever about such choices, they are making their best guess about the near future.
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  8. This video implies that the F-5 was conceived by the USAF as an alternative to its existing more sophisticated fighters. That's not really the case, and USAF never planned to acquire the F-5 for its own use. The F-5 was designed as a low-cost fighter for allied air forces, not for USAF service. It was a spectacular success in that role, but it was never seriously considered for mainline service by USAF. Also, the F-5 was not developed from the T-38, it was developed from the Northrop N-165. The contract for the T-38 came first, but both jets were developed from the N-156..
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  9. I don't think this is really delta canard, and calling it a tandem wing might even be a stretch. One might call it a delta tailplane and be more accurate. Look at the position of the front wing in relation to mass of the engine. The center of gravity has to be nearer the front wing than the back, which makes it the front wing the main wing rather than a canard used as a pitch control surface. If anybody has more info on location of center of gravity and center of pressure please share.
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  10.  @ibex485  And the equipment they wanted to keep, which was minimal, was discounted at 10% of cost. It was expected that most of the equipment and supplies would be consumed by the war and would never need to be returned. Lend-lease was a huge transfer of wealth from the U.S. to Britain and Russia.
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  11. Ukraine doesn't want them. They need planes that will win, not die. "Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has asked the United States and international partners for Western combat jets and the training to fly them. U.S. officials have weighed in, but they may not be suggesting the right aircraft, a Ukrainian defense official told Air Force Magazine. To target Russian positions in Ukrainian territory, Ukraine needs “fast and versatile” combat aircraft such as the F-16—not slow-moving ground defense platforms such as the retiring fleet of U.S. A-10s, a proposition Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall entertained in comments July 20."
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  12. @Aqua Fyre They were not "too scared to fly low", they were flying the mission under existing doctrine that the B-29 had in fact been designed for, which was high altitude daylight precision bombing. That profile had nothing to do with being scared, as the British could attest to because they were "too scared" to operate that way themselves, and advised the 8th Air Force to also bomb in the dark because it was safer. Lemay did not show the B-29 crews "how it was done", Lemay threw away existing USAAF doctrine on how it was done and created a new way of doing it. The new way was driven by analysis of the targets and the atmospheric conditions extant over them.
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  13. "they will need a dedicated CAS aircraft" No, they will not. If you think that you need to catch up to the reality of CAS in the 21st century.
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  14. "They considered the two-seat dive bomber too cumbersome, slow, and quite frankly a bit of a one trick pony." And they were right. I'm glad they came to this conclusion soon enough to not expend a lot of resources on these aircraft.
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  15. All famous aircraft are overrated, and many are underrated. This is because there is no objective rating system, and these "ratings" are arrived at through repetition of the subjective feelings of aircraft fans. Professionals that operate aircraft know them as tools, and always endeavor to use these tools to the best of their abilities without the effects of subjective emotions.
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  16. RE: the lecture by the F-14 designer at 3:05. Any airplane can "take" another in the right circumstances. However under most circumstances the F-15 had superior maneuverability. This is only natural, as the F-14 was handicapped by the weight and wing needed for the fleet defense role the F-15 did not have to perform.
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  17. Okay. In comparison the Globemaster flew 5 years earlier and could lift more weight with significantly higher performance. One possible area of advantage for the Beverly might be an ability to swallow pieces of outsize cargo, but it's hard to judge just by looking at photos.
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  18. Yes, the B-47 was much more innovative than this uncompetitive design, and the engine pods on pylons were the biggest part of it. I can't understand what Martin was thinking with their engine installation, which probably slowed the airplane so much that it didn't even need swept wings.
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  19. It's way past time to retire this outdated airplane. Keeping it is a drain on readiness. BTW, Ukraine has stated they don't want the A-10, they need faster multirole aircraft like the F-16.
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  20. If they built another dedicated CAS from the ground up it would look just like the A-10. The problem is not the aircraft, it is the outdated CAS tactic of low and slow strafing and dropping dumb munitions. The A-10 has already been replaced. It's called the F-16/F-15E/B-1/B-52. If they run out of those, they will have a more serious problem than needing the F-35 do CAS.
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  21. Morale is not priceless, and is actually very costly when serving it at the expense of actual combat effectiveness leads to more casualties and defeat.
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  22. Good points that are all true. Plus, Ukraine has already said they don't want the A-10, they need something faster and more versatile like the F-16.
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  23.  @GoSlash27  It seems you didn't read my comments and want to stick to your own narrative. Of course the side-by-side seating was not a deal breaker for the Navy; they had insisted on it over the objections of the Air Force in the first place. The fact is that F-111B was not designed to dogfight at all. Too big for carrier operations? The A-3 could fit on the elevators but the F-111B could not? The F-111 had worse visibility during landing than the F-4 or A-5? From Smithsonian Magazine: "In the summer of 1968, when the fifth F-111B prototype flew its carrier trials, Pete Pettigrew [of Topgun and F-14 fame] was aboard the USS Coral Sea. To the surprise of many, the big interceptor completed its evaluations without major problems. “It flew a nice approach, wasn’t too fast, and performed well on the ball,” says Pettigrew. “They were pretty happy about it.” The Navy pushed negative narratives about the F-111B after 'internal reconsideration' led to the desire for a combination air superiority / fleet defense fighter rather than a dedicated fleet defense aircraft. That was the right decision, but blaming the Air Force and McNamara for the switch was just politics aimed at Congress.
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  24. Good points.
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  25. That does not solve the problem, which you are ignoring, because the aircraft would be no more survivable if flown by the Army. The Army is not stupid. It is not the Army that cares about the A-10, it is politicians. “The only thing I care about is the effect on the target, I don’t give a rat’s ass what platform brings it in,” Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “I could care less if it’s a B-52, if it’s a B-1 bomber, if it’s an F-16, an F-15, an A-10. I don’t care if the thing was delivered by carrier pigeon. I want the enemy taken care of.”
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  26.  @SoloRenegade  Especially during an era of rapid evolution in both technology and warfighting doctrine.
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  27. The USAAF certainly did exist. The U.S. Army Air Corps was the Army's aviation service from 1926 to 20 June 1941. The Air Corps became a subordinate element of the newly created U.S. Army Air Forces on 20 June 1941, and was abolished as an administrative organization on 9 March 1942. USAAF then remained in place until the U.S. Air Force was created as a separate service in Sept 1947.
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  28. Another smart choice by the Navy was cancellation of this program. The thinking that almost brought us the light sea control carriers and these silly fighters seems to have returned years later to spawn the littoral combat ship, which my Navy friends consider the worst Navy shipbuilding program ever.
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  29. The failure of the F-111B has become a mythical narrative on the internet. The reality is that the Navy changed its mind about the roles its next fighter needed to perform. The lessons of the TFX program are commonly misinterpreted, but if you repeat a narrative for decades it becomes "truth". The idea that one basic airframe could fulfill two different roles was not a dumb idea at all. History is full of examples of aircraft that were versatile enough to fly for different services and even perform different missions. The original requirements presented by the Navy and USAF were not incompatible, but the requirements changed. Initially the TFX program was reasonable because USAF and USN were both asking for a large aircraft that could lift a heavy load of fuel and weapons, with long range or long loiter, plus high-speed dash or intercept. Twin engines and an innovative variable geometry wing were called for, and DOD logically assessed that it would be wasteful to develop two very expensive advanced airframes when a single one with some variations could do both jobs. The reason one basic airframe could do both jobs was because the original USN specification was for a fleet defense fighter, not an air superiority fighter. It was not originally intended to be what later became the F-14, but to perform the role meant for the Douglas F6D Missileer, with the addition of supersonic dash capability. I was never meant to be a dogfighter. The biggest difference between the airframe requirements of the two services was that USAF wanted a tandem cockpit and USN want side by side seating. Boeing tried to make both services happy, but MacNamara’s DOD thought USAF could suck it up and have the crew sit side by side. This is ironic considering that when the Navy cancelled its version USAF was stuck with the cockpit it didn’t want, which also ironically contributed to the airplane being too ungainly for a dogfighter. But if the Navy had expected the F-111 to be a dogfighter it would not have insisted on the side-by-side cockpit over the objection of the Air Force. The F-111 cockpit was suitable for a radar interceptor, but not for an air superiority fighter. The original idea wasn’t dumb -- what happened was that needs changed. USN revised its needs as result of combat experience in Vietnam, and realized they also needed an air superiority fighter to replace the F-8 and F-4, but couldn’t afford that in addition to a dedicated fleet defense aircraft. Thus, the TFX would now have to be able to dogfight as well as be a missile interceptor. The F-111B could have worked as a missileer, but it was too fat and underpowered to compete as an air superiority fighter. It was proper of the Navy to recognize that its needs had evolved. This was perhaps the beginning of the Navy realizing that budgets and hangar decks did not have room for so many specialized aircraft. USAF desperately needed the F-111 to replace the F-105, so they sucked it up and accepted the heavy airframe caused by the loveseat cockpit they never wanted.
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  30. The fact that the wing of the follow-on F-5 more closely resembled that of the F-104 than it did that of either the MiG-21 or Mirage might be indicative of how exaggerated the "widow maker" narrative has become.
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  31.  @Verminator4  You are correct, sir. USAF knows what it is trying to do, and the guy who did a dissertation on CAS should already understand that low and slow manned CAS is the way of the past, not for the future or even the present.
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  32. They did. HH-60G Pave Hawk.
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  33.  @30AndHatingIt  You should read more carefully. No one ever said an F-14 could never beat an F-15, only that the F-15 is overall the more maneuverable aircraft. As it should be, having been optimized for that attribute, while the F-14 had to meet more varied requirements. They don’t call them the laws of physics for no reason. BTW, there are all sorts of accounts online about everything, including visits by flying saucers. There is actually a web page by an experienced F-14 pilot who claims the airplane was not really that good at dogfighting because it wasn’t designed for that. He’s wrong, of course, but that extreme example illustrates the validity of internet accounts. My statement was based on face-to-face discussions with multiple F-14 and F-15 pilots about dogfighting in these aircraft. But F-14 fanboys will remain fanboys.
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  34.  @ibex485  The equipment delivered after the the war was paid for at the 10% rate because the British government wanted to keep it for post-war use and did not intend to return it. I'm sure most of the equipment shipped out during the war was 'destroyed' in one way or another. The cost of shipping it to back likely exceeded its value. We've all heard the story of why there were so many U.S. jeeps left behind in the Philippines after the war. The distributor caps were removed from the engines so they could be logged as disabled.
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  35. Other aircraft have already taken over the role. The have already done more CAS than the A-10 over Afghanistan. They can do everything the A-10 can do except shoot 30mm, and that tactic is not survivable on a modern battlefield. These other aircraft can also do lots of other things the A-10 cannot do. The A-10 has to be retired to make room for more versatile and effective aircraft.
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  36. These terms really mean nothing and are used interchangeably by so many people. The real problem emerges when attaching strict meaning to the letters "F" or "P" when part of an aircraft designation. Both letters have been used by the US to designate fighters, which started out being called scouts in the first world war. But they are fungible today. The F-105, F-111, and F-117 were really tactical bombers, and were labelled with an "F" mostly for political reasons rather than to describe the primary function of the aircraft. Another issue is that while the Navy had separate communities of fighter and attack pilots, USAF tactical air forces called all their pilots fighter pilots even if they flew an attack type aircraft, because being a fighter pilot was more a state of mind than an air to air mission, and pilots could transition between both types of aircraft. There has never been a letter to designate "interceptors" because all fighters can perform the interception role. There were a few dedicated all-weather bomber interceptors, but they all had the F-designation. For example, the F-89, 92, 102, and 106 were all designed to intercept and destroy incoming bombers, and had unique equipment not then used for air superiority fighter. That dedicated bomber interceptor era is pretty much over now.
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  37. Wasn't the Boston the Douglas A-20, rather than a Martin product?
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  38. And yours is the thanks they get for a 2% interest long-term loan to keep the country afloat. And let's just forget lend-lease, which was not a loan but a gift. The naval bases were traded for destroyers. Where do you think Britain would be without all this assistance.
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  39.  @emaheiwa8174  Every high performance single-engine fighter of that era had high mishap rates compared to today, and every country flying them lost pilots. The F-104 mishap rate was not that different overall, but was much higher in service with Germany than it was in countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Italy. To repeat myself, his was not due to the design of the airplane, but to the way it was operated. You can read up on it if you are really interested.
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  40.  @mahbriggs  LOL, that didn't take long. All I can say is you need to read more regarding current and future operations. The B-52 has already provided close air support. The A-10 cannot operate in hostile airspace any more than the B-52 can. Any fighter or bomber in the inventory can now provide CAS, and most have, including the B-1 and B-52, with greater survivability than an A-10 flying low and slow over the target. Your vision of CAS is very outdated. You need to keep up with the times.
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  41.  @mahbriggs  "if all the B52 can do is operate from over the horizon in a hostile environment, fail to see what it can do that a cargo plane can't!? Yes, you do fail to see that a B-52 can drop every dumb and precision guided weapon in the inventory, including the coming hypersonic weapons, in a number of different operational circumstances. All the short-range slow-moving C-130 could launch is Rapid Dragon. There is no comparison in combat versatility.
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  42. Thank you, United Kingdom.
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  43.  @kittyhawk9707  Most F-105s were downed by AAA. I think the 105 had a positive exchange rate with the MiGs. It also shot down more Vietnamese MiGs with its gun than all other US fighters combined.
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  44.  @thelandofnod123  Not just the F-35, but the F-16/18/15E/B-1 and B-52. People talk about replacing the A-10 with the F-35 but that is misnomer. The A-10 has already been replaced on the modern battlefield. It needs to be retired to make room in the budget for more F-35s and other more useful aircraft.
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  45.  @GoSlash27  The Navy drove the design of the TFX as much as USAF did, if not more. The F-111B was not meant to be an air superiority fighter, it was meant to be a Phoenix missile fleet defense interceptor, which is what drove the swing wing and the side by side cockpit seating. I put more detail in a separate comment if you want to read it.
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  46.  @duncanhamilton5841  Yes, that is one of the atmospheric conditions that weighed against high altitude precision bombing. Lemay was not afraid to abandon established doctrine that was not producing results, and took the difficult decision to switch to the low altitude night area bombing that was so effective against Japan. He also had free thinkers like Robert S McNamara on his staff.
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  47.  @johnruddick686  Yes
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  48. Israeli is probably self-centered, but perhaps they haven't really been given much choice. You might consider Israel is surrounded by enemies and has frequently had to use everything it could scrounge up to defend itself. And when was the last time New Zealand had to repel an invasion.
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  49. We need to be careful not to mis-categorize aircraft. The U.S. did not convert medium bombers into fighters, they converted them into ground attack aircraft. A B-25 with a bunch of guns in it nose was great for attacking ground targets, but not not air to air combat. The heavy fighter category was originally about bomber interception or bomber escort. The concept was a fighter with more armament and range than a single-engine fighter. Since any fighter could do ground attack obviously a heavy fighter could do that even better.
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  50. What has actually been crippling are the policies of the current office holder. Worse than crippling, they have been enabling of the hot conflicts now underway.
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  51. You are correct. One thing never discussed is that the C-17 did not meet its range specification. It was intended to meet the REFORGER mission profile, and fly a specified cargo load directly from the US to Germany without refueling. When the time came for proving runs to demonstrate this capability they knew the C-17 could not lift enough weight to meet this requirement. So they split the specified load across two aircraft and filled their fuel tanks to the brim. They then flew those two aircraft to Germany in formation and recorded it as a single mission. I don't know if Congress was fooled by that or not, but apparently it worked as a fig leaf and the airplane was produced. By that time we really needed the C-17 because the C-141 was structurally worn out and could not fly much longer.
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  52. It was not really viable in the last century. It was conceived to replace the A-1, yet the A-1 had already become vulnerable over Vietnam. The wisdom of procuring another slow mover was questionable, but it was necessary to win the funding wars with Congress and the Army. This channel believes the myth that in Vietnam jets were bad at close air support. Not really. Marine Corps Air exists to provide CAS, and they have been doing it with supersonic jets since Vietnam without asking for a slow mover.
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  53. Timing is everything. I like twin engine fighters, but at the time that type did not enjoy universal acceptance at high levels of command. The Merlin was much in demand for other proven and arguably more important aircraft, and the Whirlwind was not really needed.
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  54. Ukraine does not want them. They need effctive planes, not relics. "Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has asked the United States and international partners for Western combat jets and the training to fly them. U.S. officials have weighed in, but they may not be suggesting the right aircraft, a Ukrainian defense official told Air Force Magazine. To target Russian positions in Ukrainian territory, Ukraine needs “fast and versatile” combat aircraft such as the F-16—not slow-moving ground defense platforms such as the retiring fleet of U.S. A-10s, a proposition Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall entertained in comments July 20."
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  55. No mention of why the Navy wanted to explore fighters with liquid cooled engines. Perhaps for the same reason the European powers used liquid cooled engines in their carrier aircraft? Liquid cooled engines in general can produce more power per unit of displacement, per unit of frontal area, and sometimes even per unit of weight. Basically, superior cooling allowed use of higher manifold pressure. The liquid cooled engines were also generally more fuel efficient, allowing an airplane to carry less fuel or fly longer on an equivalent amount of fuel. The countries using the liquid cooled engine were not deterred by the supposed drawbacks commonly attributed to them, so how serious could they be? For example, do radials really require so much less maintenance that the difference is significant enough to outweigh the superior performance of liquid cooled engines? Eliminating the need to maintain a cooling system (and the stores to service it) is a benefit, but then you have more spark plugs to check and change, more valves to adjust, maybe more bolts and connections to check for security considering all the separate cylinders and the wider temperature cycle of the air cooled engine. I would like to hear from a maintainer of these WWII engines on this subject. Perhaps the Navy preference for radials is due as much to the usual factor that drives the Navy – tradition -- as it is to these perceived advantages of the radial. Between the wars, radials were pretty much king in the U.S., and inline engines more favored in Europe. It was natural for many U.S. fighters to have radial engines, even the land-based Army fighters. It was only after the excellent Allison V-1710 arrived that the P-40 was developed out of the radial engine P-36, and outperformed it. (Note, as aircraft speeds increased the advantage of lower frontal area was magnified.) In the run up to WWII the U.S maintained an edge in radial development and Europe had an edge in inline development, so perhaps the superior potential of the liquid cooled engine was not really perceived by many in the U.S. Perhaps the Navy just stuck with what they knew rather try to put that engine developed for the Army into one of their fighters. Food for thought?
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  56. The Brits originally went to North American Aviation to ask them to built the Curtiss P-40 fighter under license. NA instead offered to build a better fighter that would outperform the P-40 on the same engine, and the P-51 was born. The Brits used the Mk I in the same low altitude roles they used the P-40 in because it suffered from the same inadequate V-1710 supercharger, but that doesn't mean it was not designed as a fighter, which it was, just like the P-40. The later fighter bomber or attack version of the plane was the A-36 Apache. The Army turned it into a dive bomber to call it an attack aircraft to get around the lack of funding for new fighters at the time. They must have learned this trick by earlier getting around the ban on funding for twin engine fighters by inventing the term "interceptor" for the P-38 specification. They saw potential in the new design and wanted to get it into US service.
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  57. Perhaps Martin should have built the B-26 instead. Actually, in away they did. There were only 1,575 Baltimores built, as opposed to over 5,000 Marauders. Over 7,000 Douglas A-20s were built, and the Douglas is more directly comparable to the Baltimore but outperformed it somewhat. Seems there was no great demand for the Baltimore.
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  58.  @Knight6831  This shows how uninformed you are about CAS. Apparently, you don’t really know what it is and how it is done now. The B-1 has been doing CAS for years. The B-52 can do it with JDAMS but is getting the targeting pod so it can do take over that role from the B-1 as it is retired.
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  59.  @Easy-Eight  Yes, when comparing airplanes you do have to try to compare them at like phases of their development and under like conditions. l agree that the P-40E and later models were superior at lower altitudes. I think the Hurricane with the constant speed prop was probably superior to the early P-40 models at the higher altitudes needed during the Battle of Britain, or at least that's what the Hurricane fan club will tell you. I think the P-40 was a good airplane in the lower half of the sky and would get more respect if it were not overshadowed by later aircraft.
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  60.  @thekraken1173  I don't know that any airplane actually "needs" an "angled engine", but I would say the fact that this airplane didn't have one answers your question.
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  61.  @Galil-aces  Thanks for proving me correct.
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  62. Myth.
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  63.  @kirkmooneyham  Not relevant. I flew jets in the Air Force, did you? Not relevant. This is a question of the history of the A-10, not my personal history or yours. Grow up and read some history.
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  64. Tired old dramatization of the F-104 accident rate has been debunked so many times it is sad to see it again here. The accident rate in German service was atypical, and was not due to the design, but to the way the airplane was operated. The F-11 would likely have suffered an atypical mishap rate there as well.
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  65. It has multiple uses. One is launching volleys of cruise missiles at important fixed targets deep in enemy territory, and it can do this from bases within U.S. if necessary. Or it can drop just about any weapon in the U.S. inventory over more permissive airspace. Over a modern battlefield it will be more useful for on-station close air support than an A-10 will be due to longer loiter, a larger magazine, and more survivability than an A-10 trying to use a gun or dumb bombs.
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  66.  @mahbriggs  You are obviously not paying attention. I said the B-52 can't penetrate hostile airspace. It is a well-known fact, but you apparently think USAF does not know this. Another thing you don't seem to know is that the B-1 can't penetrate either, which is which is why it is scheduled for retirement. The only USAF penetrating long range bomber is the B-2, which will also be replaced by the coming B-21. But it will not replace the B-52, which is still a reliably useful bomb truck in permissive airspace. With the new engines the B-52 will be more reliable and less expensive to maintain than the B-1, which has become a maintainability challenge. They are already retiring a portion of the B-1 fleet in order to use the O&M funds and parts of those airplanes to sustain those still operating. I'm not going to address the lack of logic in the rest of your statements because you don't recognize logic. You have no idea what is going on and should try reading a little before coming to your uninformed and poorly reasoned conclusions.
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  67. Looks as if they took a design for a propeller airplane and just stuck turbojets in the nacelles. These nacelles looked to the past instead of the future, in contrast to the pylons of the Boeing B-47 which were the way of the future for large subsonic jets.
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  68. Cockpit visibility would have been even worse than contemporaries.
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  69. Come on man, you're spoiling the mood for all the easily impressed day dreamers out there!😉
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  70. How would it be different from the A-10? How would it solve the problem that low and slow CAS is no longer survivable? The A-10 is not being retired because the airframe is old, it is being retired because those tactics are obsolete.
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  71. Only in science fiction.
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  72.  @thekinginyellow1744  Yes, the significance of the 163 is that it was a tailless flying wing. Actually, I don't think the wings of the 163 were swept to delay compressibility at all. I think they were swept for the same reason all flying wings without a horizontal tail are swept -- so the outboard portion of the wing is far enough aft to balance the nose down pitching moment of the wing and provide pitch control.
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  73. No, about the same thrust according to what I have read. They will be much more economical to operate and maintain and will pay for themselves.
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  74. Ukraine rightly doesn't want them. "Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has asked the United States and international partners for Western combat jets and the training to fly them. U.S. officials have weighed in, but they may not be suggesting the right aircraft, a Ukrainian defense official told Air Force Magazine. To target Russian positions in Ukrainian territory, Ukraine needs “fast and versatile” combat aircraft such as the F-16—not slow-moving ground defense platforms such as the retiring fleet of U.S. A-10s, a proposition Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall entertained in comments July 20."
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  75. Admitting that it could not fly would ruin the whole video for those viewers whose enthusiasm for such things depends on suspension of disbelief.
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  76. If this were not YouTube I wouldn't be able to understand why there are so many gushing comments about this airplane. Folks, it was just another one of many also-rans in the story of military aviation. The Navy already had the F-8. For USAF this jet might have outperformed the existing F-100 at a couple of the margins, which was no reason to buy it when superior aircraft were in the pipeline. This was another failed attempt by a manufacturer to get a new lease on life for an existing product that could not compete with newer designs during an era of rapid aviation progress.
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  77. Remember the Brits originally went to North American Aviation to ask them to built the Curtiss P-40 fighter under license. NA instead offered to build a better fighter that would outperform the P-40 on the same engine, and the P-51 was born. The Brits used the Mk I in the same low altitude roles they used the P-40 in because it suffered from the same inadequate V-1710 supercharger, but that doesn't mean it was not designed as a fighter. The intended fighter bomber or attack version of the plane was the A-36 Apache. The Army turned it into a dive bomber to get around the lack of funding for new fighters at the time. They must have learned this trick by earlier getting around the ban on funding for twin engine fighters by inventing the term "interceptor" for the P-38 specification. My personal opinion is that too much is made of the fact that the P-51 was liquid cooled, because so were most other airplanes used for ground attack, such as the famous Typhoon, and even purpose built ground pounders like the JU-87 and IL-2. And all airplanes had oil coolers that were vulnerable to a single hit.
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  78. Forget the F-35, that is a red herring. The A-10 has already been replaced by the F-16/18/15E/ and B-1 and B-52. Look at which platforms already delivered most of the CAS over Afghanistan. The future of CAS is not low and slow, because that is not survivable.
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  79. Funny, the Navy and the Marines have been providing close air support with fast movers all along, and nobody has demanded they acquire an A-10 or equivalent. The fact is that the A-10 is obsolete, and CAS is provided by fast moving jets and high altitude bomb trucks. Trolling along low and slow to eyeball targets is a death sentence over a modern battlefield. But legions of keyboard air warriors truly believe they are so much smarter than the U.S. Air Force.
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  80. Because dogfighting is not the test of a modern multi role combat aircraft. Not that the F-35 is bad at it, but it does far many more useful things.
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  81. Keeping the obsolete A-10 is a sentimental mistake, and those wedded to this airplane need to wake up and smell the coffee of the 21st century. You don't keep an airplane because it performed great service in past wars, you keep it because it will perform great service in the next war, and the A-10 is not suited for the war USAF is trying to equip itself to fight. USAF doesn't need to procure something to replace it because it already has. Guided munitions are the current and future way of CAS.
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  82. ​ @craigmcculloch4342  I agree that book is a must read. It helps debunk the idea that strategic bombing was ineffective.
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  83. The B was not originally intended to be an air superiority fighter -- it started as an update of the Douglas F6D Missileer fleet defense aircraft. But Navy air combat and equipment doctrine was evolving in the light of Vietnam combat experience, and they realized that also needed an air superiority fighter to replace the F-8 and F-4. They also realized that they would not get the money for that in addition to the F-111B, so they decided the F-111B would now have to be an air superiority fighter as well as a fleet defense missileer. As you know the F-111 was a great plane in many ways but it was not a dogfighter, so the Navy was wisely allowed to withdraw from the TFX program that no longer made sense for its needs.
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  84. You have probably read too many of those stories about the Bernoulli principle and that it takes a cambered wing to produce lift. A completely symmetrical airfoil produces lift given an angle of attack. Even flat plate will produce lift.
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  85.  @KevTheImpaler  A symmetrical airfoil will fly just as well inverted as it does upright. At zero angle of attack it does not produce lift. A positively cambered airfoil will produce lift even at zero AOA, and you have to go to a slight negative AOA to get zero lift. They are not so efficient at inverted flight and required a more exaggerated negative AOA to fly level inverted. Symmetrical or near symmetrical airfoils are common on high performance and aerobatic aircraft.
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  86.  @martingenerous1678  It not up to Boeing to cancel it. The Air Force placed contracts for it, and it's up to them to cancel it when they no longer want it. I suspect they kept working on it until they knew the jet designs were going to pan out soon. If they had canceled the B-54 and then the next gen didn't work out, all the internet armchair procurement officials here would instead be blaming them for cancelling one system before its replacement was ready, putting our country at risk and risking our brave troops by not giving them the best equipment available.
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  87. Loss of pressurization would not force the aircraft to descend while over enemy territory. I think a little discomfort is preferable to risking interception. The cabin altitude while pressured was already 24,000 feet. The pilot had been breathing oxygen long enough to purge much of the nitrogen from his tissues.
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  88. @Unstoppable Specimen PGMs are not prohibitively expensive and the USAF way of battle is now built around them. You probably have a GPS in your car and your mobile phone. A kit that turns a Mk-82 into a JDAM is not all that expensive in relation to what it costs to expend dozens of unguided aircraft and munitions to achieve less effect than one weapon that shacks its target. CAS is already primarily provided by guided weapons, even in permissive environments, because it is more efficient with less danger of collateral damage. In the non-permissive environment of a high intensity conflict, strafing or releasing near the target at low altitude will not be survivable.
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  89.  @GoSlash27  No, this argument is rooted in an unwillingness to accept the consensus of reality, and a desire to twist the argument into one you can win. You can argue all the ifs ands or buts you want all day long. The truth is that the F-15 has superior overall maneuverability to the F-14, as it should considering what these aircraft were designed to do. You must not think that USAF would have specified a heavier aircraft with a VG wing on the same thrust if it would have given the F-15 more maneuverability. They looked at that for the F-15 and discarded it because it was inferior. End of story for those of us who accept reality, but you seem to think Grumman worked magic that overcame the laws of physics. Have a nice day.
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  90. Those vertical tape flight and engine instruments were the fashionable standard for USAF jets in that era.
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  91. Yes, a superb film which is another great piece of work between Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer.
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  92. The P-51 was designed at the behest of the British Purchase Commission prior to US entry into the war. The US Army saw it and liked it, but was not authorized to spend any money on another fighter plane at that time. There was no prohibition on spending money on attack aircraft, so they ordered the Apache.
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  93. Very parochial and ignorant of reality. Most of what USAF does is "ground support". Giving the A-10 to the Army would not solve the problem that it is not viable over a modern battlefield. The Army knows this as well as anyone: “The only thing I care about is the effect on the target, I don’t give a rat’s ass what platform brings it in,” Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “I could care less if it’s a B-52, if it’s a B-1 bomber, if it’s an F-16, an F-15, an A-10. I don’t care if the thing was delivered by carrier pigeon. I want the enemy taken care of.”.
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  94.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  So I’m the ignorant one for quoting the generals in charge of the actual policy, while you are the genius for ignoring them and making up you own facts. [insert sardonic laughter] Fact: most of what USAF does is ground support, be it close or distant. USAF was the only US service to develop and procure a dedicated close air support airplane. USMC also does air to ground support, and in fact that is the very reason Marine Air even exists. They have been doing CAS with A-4s, F-4s, and then F-18s, and you say they are renowned for it. So ask yourself, if they are so renowned for CAS why have they never asked for the A-10? They could even have had a navalized version, so that is no excuse. No, I don’t want an answer because I know you will just make up some more BS, but try to think it out in your own mind and you might learn something.
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  95.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  Three more repeats of your previous comments after I said I was done. Just stop because I am done arguing with you. Goodbye.
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  96. Later versions of the Allison did get a 2-stage supercharger.
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  97. Based on what is seen in this video I don't even believe it would fly at all. It looks like the solid wings just flap up and down in a single plane of movement, which would seem to push as much air up as it does down. I don't see how warping them to provide some forward thrust would overcome the net lack of lift. Insect wings don't simply flap up and down on a hinge in one plane, they have more complex movements that move the air in a net direction rather than just back and forth. Anyone got film of this aircraft flying?
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  98. The 1950s bomber interceptors like the Northrop F-89 were design to fire a salvo of Mighty Mouse folding fin aerial rockets at enemy bombers. The idea was similar to that of a scatter gun: fill the piece of sky containing an enemy bomber with a pattern of small rockets and enough of them should hit.
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  99.  @mikenodine6713  Thank you. The official position the U.S. Army communicated to the Pentagon earlier this year is that they don't care what platform USAF employs to deliver CAS. All they care about is that it gets delivered effectively when needed. The Army is not wedded to the A-10 any more than the Air Force is, they just want warheads on foreheads.
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  100. LOL comparing the most potent and versatile combat aircraft yet with this turkey.
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  101. I've never seen a USAF taxiway with an arresting cable, but all runways at fighter bases have a cable at both ends so an arrested landing can be made at the approach or departure end depending on the situation.
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  102. The video does not mention the risk involved with reliance on upper surface blowing for lift during STOL operations. If an engine fails during STOL flight near the ground the loss of lift on that side will probably be uncontrollable. I would not want to fly this aircraft at STOL speeds unless every occupant was sitting on an ejection seat. Combat aircraft that use engine bleed air for low-speed lift, such the F-104 and A-5, had ejection seats. Two engines can increase the risk in STOL operations in lighter aircraft due to control issues. As an example, if an OV-10 engine failed suddenly during an STOL takeoff the aircraft was below Vmc and would likely crash, hopefully straight ahead IF the pilot reduced power on the operating power engine immediately. Therefore USAF restricted normal operations to takeoff and approach speeds higher than Vmc unless STOL was absolutely necessary
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  103. There was no merit to the idea.
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  104. The problem is not that the airplane is "clapped out", the problem is that it is unsuitable in modern warfare. Suitable replacements are already in service and have been providing CAS. F-16/F-18/F-15E/B-1/B-52 . . .
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  105. Looks like it was bodged together on an episode of "Junkyard Wars".
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  106. The center of gravity is not in the nose, it is somewhere near 23% Mean Aerodynamic Chord. Moving the engine from the nose to amidships doesn't make an airplane 'better balanced'. It doesn't really matter were the engine is as long as the center of gravity is forward of the aerodynamic center. If you move the heavy engine back you also need to move the wing back to maintain this relationship. It is not better balance, but it is better visibility for the the pilot and more room in the nose for guns.
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  107.  @vipertwenty249  My pleasure.
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  108. They did -- they call it the 1900. 😉
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  109. This was not a good choice, and the brass knew what they were doing. Some people seem to think every aircraft concept that shows up on YouTube should have been produced. The fact that the C-130 is still produced is evidence that this aircraft was not quite the right fit and was not really needed.
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  110.  @markhepworth  I see we are now bored with facts so it's time to play 'let's distract with hypothetical questions'. Okay: Do you think Britain would have lasted for those 2 years with support from America? Where do you think the world would be if America never got involved? Do you actually believe Britain have prevailed if Japan had not attacked and forced the American public into a war for which it had no appetite? (Winston Churchill breathed a massive sigh of relief when Hitler declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor.)
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  111.  @ivancho5854  "Without US assistance the UK probably would have made peace with the Third Reich." Exactly. That is nearly certain, and that's as far into the hypothetical I'm willing to go in this crowd. Nations always act in the own perceived interest. No one here has tried to claim sentiment as the purpose behind these events, so propping up that straw man to be slayed is just another distraction.
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  112. People need to use a little perspective when they pass judgement on the procurement decisions of the cold war era. One common narrative is that the reason USAF had to use “hand me down” A-1s in Vietnam is because it was too focused on fast jets and ‘looked down’ on the CAS role. Yet the same critics don’t fault the U.S. Navy and Marines for divesting themselves of these A-1s as fast as they could replace them with fast jets. Why were USAF and Navy BOTH focused on fast jets? Because the Eisenhower administration decided that trying to compete with the size of the Soviet conventional military forces was an unaffordable burden on the U.S. economy. Therefore the U.S. focused spending on strategic and tactical nuclear delivery systems in order to achieve deterrence. The goal was to deter a major ground war with the Soviets rather than fight one, and if it became necessary to actually fight one it would be fought with nuclear weapons, where the U.S. had superiority. Smaller conventional U.S. ground forces would remain for projection of presence and as a trip wire against the Soviets, but nobody in the U.S. was equipping to fight a protracted ground war. Equipping to fight brushfire conflicts in third world countries was also not a priority, and it was necessary leave such contingencies to the collateral capabilities of the main forces in the event such a conflict occurred. The need to conduct conventional ‘limited warfare’ operations in Vietnam was an unwelcome event in the context of this plan. USAF entered that conflict with a force designed to deter nuclear war, but rapidly adapted to the need for fixed wing CAS. USAF was way ahead of the Navy and Marines in its use of slow prop aircraft for CAS, who made no attempt to resurrect slow prop airplanes dedicated to CAS. Yet USAF receives all the criticism despite a demonstrated willingness to adapt. While the U.S. was busy in Vietnam the calculus of deterrence began to change, and nuclear weapons were no longer considered sufficiently reliable in deterring a conventional ground war. The Army developed the M-1 tank and TOW missile. Defending against both the Soviets and the U.S. Army caused USAF to acquire the A-10, which could be argued (on another day) was actually a mistaken procurement inspired by the last war rather than the next war. To this day USAF is the only U.S. service to ever procure a dedicated low and slow CAS jet aircraft. The very purpose of Marine air is to support the Marine on the ground, yet the Marines have been conducting CAS with supersonic jets since the 1960s, and have never asked for an equivalent to the A-10. They spend their limited finding on swept wing aircraft, including the inefficient S/VTOL variety. The force of fast jets that many today see as a dumb mistake was driven by the reality of the real possibility of nuclear war, and the need to avoid it.
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  113.  @emaheiwa8174  Not true. Every country "has issues" with every plane, but Germany's F-104 mishap rate was higher than any other.
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  114.  @emaheiwa8174  You don't know what you are talking about. Canada flew the plane in the same role Germany did and did not crash anywhere near as many. Germany flew the plane in the role for which they bought it, just as Canada did. That role was to provide NATO with high-speed low-level strike capability. That was an inherently difficult role, especially given weather conditions in Europe, and lack of operational experience led to a steep learning curve and high mishap rate for Germany. The F-105 would have been a better but more expensive choice, and the F-104 was a suitable substitute once equipped with the necessary systems. Stop watching videos and TV shows and do some reading.
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  115. The precursor engine was flat, but according to the video the one originally intended for this airplane was an H pattern. Multiple variations of an H engine have been tried for both aircraft and race cars, but few were very successful. They took a lot of development, but they usually did not produce enough horsepower to overcome disadvantages such more weight, more frictional losses, more complexity, and less reliability.
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  116. The main problem with combat drones will be the prodigious consumption of the rare earth minerals needed for lithium-ion batteries. The supply is already inadequate for the grandiose plans western governments are enacting to replace all internal combustion vehicles with EVs. The greenies may say Ukraine must accept a cease-fire with Russia to save the planet. . ..
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  117. A VG wing provides the ability to lift heavy loads, cruise and loiter efficiently, and still go really fast when necessary. VG was perfect for the F-111,Tornado, and B-1. But other than the possible exception of the F-14, swing wings were not used for fighters that were intended to have superior maneuverability. They were investigated for the F-15 but were discarded as too heavy and detrimental to performance, so they designed a fixed wing that prioritized maneuverability over efficiency. The F-14 had VG only because as in its fleet defense role it needed more efficiency and load carrying capability than a fixed wing would have provided.
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  118. The needs of USAF and USN were not incompatible in this case. The idea that one basic airframe could fulfill two different roles was not a dumb idea at all. History is full of examples of aircraft that were versatile enough to fly for different services and even perform different missions. Both USAF and USN were asking for a large aircraft that could lift a heavy load of fuel and weapons, with long range or loiter, plus high-speed dash or intercept. Twin engines and an innovative variable geometry wing were called for, and Macnamara logically assessed that it would be wasteful to develop two very expensive advanced airframes when a single one with minor variations could do both jobs. The reason one airframe could do both jobs was because the original USN specification was for a fleet defense fighter, not an air superior fighter. It was not originally intended to be what became the F-14, but to perform the role meant for the Douglas F6D Missileer with the addition of supersonic dash capability. The biggest difference between the airframe requirements of the two services was that USAF wanted a tandem cockpit and USN want side by side seating. Boeing tried to make both services happy, but MacNamara’s DOD thought USAF could suck it up and have the crew sit side by side. This is ironic considering that when the Navy cancelled its version USAF was stuck with the cockpit it didn’t want, which also ironically contributed to the airplane being too heavy for a fighter. The original idea wasn’t dumb -- what happened was that needs changed. USN revised its specifications for the TFX as result of combat experience in Vietnam. They realized that they also needed an air superiority fighter to replace the F-8 and F-4, but couldn’t afford that in addition to a dedicated fleet defense aircraft. Thus, the TFX would now have to be able to dogfight as well as be a missile interceptor. The F-111B could have worked as a missileer, but it was too fat and underpowered to compete as an air superiority fighter. It was proper to recognize that the needs of USN had evolved, and this was perhaps the beginning of the Navy realizing that budgets and hangar decks did not have room for so many specialized aircraft. USAF desperately needed the F-111 to replace the F-105, so they sucked it up and accepted the heavy airframe caused by the loveseat cockpit they never wanted.
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  119. A second engine might not appreciably increase top speed if it adds too much parasite drag, but it usually does increase rate of climb and payload.
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  120.  @johnshepherd8687  The wing of the 262 was not swept to delay compressibility effects, it was swept to adjust the relationship between the center of gravity and the aerodynamic center when the engines turned out to be heavier than planned after the design was already established. The wings on the Dougals DC-3 were swept to the same degree for the same reason, and it didn't make that airplane any faster. I think the 262 was faster than the early Meteor, but the later Meteor with more thrust was faster than the 262. The P-80C was faster than the 262 on its single engine and straight wing. I don't think the 18.5 degree sweep of the 262 was a significant factor in the performance of the airplane.
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  121.  @johnshepherd8687  So it may have increased the critical Mach by 3% (16.8 mph). That is not significant even if the top speed was limited by compressibility rather than available power, which I have no reason to believe. With the Meteor and P-80 able to go faster with straight wings I don't see why it is necessary to credit the slight sweep of the 262 wing as responsible for its top speed.
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  122. It could have been built on an episode of the "Junkyard Wars" TV show.
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  123. I believe it was General Electric rather than Allison developing the turbosuperchargers. It was the way to higher performance, but the Army didn't count on the delays GE had in development and production. It also turned out to be more difficult than expected to fit them into fighters that were not designed around them like the P-38 and P-47 were, and the P-39 really suffered for that. These turbines were state of the art at the time.
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  124. That must be why so many light aircraft are built that way today.
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  125. The idea emerged in the 1930s when the new bombers were often as fast as the short-range single-engine fighters at that time, despite being so lightly armed as to make it questionable they could destroy a bomber if they caught it. For example, the USAAC issued the specification for a twin engine fighter that led to the Lockheed P-38 because there was no existing engine that could lift the weight of armament desired to the speed and altitude desired, so it would require two engines. The heavy fighter could also hold more fuel and have longer range for offensive operations such as fighter sweeps and bomber escort. There were no expectation that a single engine fighter could achieve the range necessary to escort long range bombers. Unfortunately the German RLM gave the twin engine heavy fighter a bad name because they made the Bf-110, 210, and 410 too heavy to succeed in combat against single-engine fighters. The problem was not that the Bf-110 had too many engines, it was that it had too many crewmembers plus defensive guns and was more like a light bomber than a fighter. In the Battle of Britain it could stay with the bombers longer but failed as an escort fighter due to poor performance against single engine fighters. The heavy fighter concept had a second wind at the end of the war with designs like the North American P-82, Grumman F7F, and Dh Hornet, which unfortunately came too late to prove their capability in combat.
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  126. Moving the engine from the nose to amidships doesn't make an airplane 'better balanced'. It doesn't really matter were the engine is as long as the center of gravity is forward of the aerodynamic center. If you move the heavy engine back you also need to move the wing back to maintain this relationship. It is not better balance, but it is better visibility for the pilot and more room in the nose for armament.
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  127. I suspect the parasol wing was chosen more for its familiarly to the engineers designing the plane than to its future pilots.
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  128. "The piranha could be smaller but retain comparable combat capability to existing aircraft". Not the first to try the impossible. If you measure combat capability by a single attribute such as speed or maneuverability it's possible to build a stripped down sports car of an aircraft, but it will not be a very useful fighter in large scale real world operations. One early jet-age lightweight fighter was the F-104. Kelly Johnson wanted to buck the trend to every heavier fighters and go Mach 2 with the smallest and simplest fighter possible. As a result it had tremendous performance and was awesome to fly. But even though it got stretched after the porotype flew it was never capable enough for U.S. Air Force needs. It was successful in the export market for the same reason light fighters usually are, which is that cost outweighs capability. In other words it is more important to show the world you have a somewhat capable high performance combat aircraft than to have a more capable one that you can’t afford. The successful F-16 and F-18 both grew out of a lightweight fighter prototypes, but the operative word is grew. They ended up being enlarged to make space for the fuel and systems needed for useful combat operations. The fact that these relatively small aircraft became so useful was made possible by continued miniaturization of the electronics needed to support operations other than visual combat. Size is relative, and miniaturization has made aircraft of this size the new standard for short range fighters.
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  129. Maybe to be used as targets for US Army live-fire air defense training.
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  130. That was considered for some time but ultimately rejected. They would have to reengineer much more of the airplane to accept four larger engines. It is less expensive and time consuming to drop in eight smaller engines. The F-130 engines to be used are much more efficient and also cheaper to maintain than the TF-33 engines they will replace, so the new engines will pay for themselves. I think they are getting a good deal on these engines.
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  131. I agree, instead of modern weapons Ukraine needs more spears and battle axes that require no logistic support.
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  132.  @SakiniCZ  I didn't ask for a summary of the Ukrainian war and I don't need one. Here is the simple summary you seem to be missing: Ukraine does not have enough weapons and munitions and needs more. Just like Britain and Russia did, they will accept weapons they need from friendly countries, even when said weapons are not the perfect solution. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush when you needed that bird yesterday.
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  133. Simply because the air force might buy it. They didn't have the benefit of the hindsight that is inhibiting your imagination and would happily build any airplane the air force would order. Luckily for the taxpayer USAF decided this airplane was not needed along with the B-36 and the jets soon to follow.
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  134.  @flarvin8945  I don't see how resources being an obvious limitation on war production makes bombing of that production inefficient. One would have to believe that it is more efficient to destroy a weapon after it is in the hands of the enemy soldier trying to kill you with it.
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  135.  @flarvin8945  " but the allies could have put more effort into attacking transportation over production. Trains yards and bridge are just a couple targets, which would have also helped limit the holocaust." Huh? Trains were all over the place, a distributed target set. But they did attack marshaling yards. But you want to attack things like ball bearings after they have left on multiple trains, rather than destroy the two factories that produce them. Petroleum products were all over the place on rail cars, tanker trucks, and pipelines, but you want to attack their distributed means of transport rather than the vulnerable refineries. Your strategy is less efficient, not more efficient. You can interdict an isolated battlefield, but you can’t interdict an entire country. The U.S tried to in Vietnam with a lot more bombs than were dropped on Germany and was unable to do it. When they switched to bombing the sources of supply in North Vietnam during Linebacker II it was effective.
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  136.  @flarvin8945  You don't see the difference between isolating the battlefield for Overlord and trying to destroy all means of moving all material to all fronts? You obviously think interdiction is more effective than destruction of productive capacity, and I say experience demonstrates that you have no appreciation for reality. It seems your true motivation is to reduce the civilian causalities associated with strategic bombing rather than to actually end the war sooner. That means lose more allied troops so that more enemy civilians can avoid the effects of the war, and I vote no, as did the allied command in WWII.
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  137. You guys all fell for it. He was just throwing chumming the water to start the feeding frenzy.
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  138. It was an upgrade on their own aircraft and its competition wasn't their own aircraft, it was the Convair B-36.
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  139.  @martingenerous1678  You can say that, and if so then the B-54 would have also been obsolete when it went into production. That why it was cancelled. None of this is counter to my view that the competition for the B-54 was the B-36 rather than existing Boeing models. Neither of them was competition for the jets bomber that were soon to follow.
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  140. It wasn't a shock. It was an escalation. The U.S. had the F-86 in service but didn't see the need to deploy it to what was being called a police action until the communists upped the ante.
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  141. Besides the efficiency and power density of gasoline internal combustion vs external combustion to produce steam, the human efficiency of simply filling a gas tanks vs loading up both water and whatever fuel was used to heat the boiler sealed the deal for Joe Public.
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  142.  @anzaca1  I thought the video said 24,000 feet, but I guess that was referring to the cabin altitude of the Welkin. But even if the JU 86 was pressurized to 10,000 feet, each crewmember would still have their oxygen mask immediately available and don it immediately if pressurization was lost, so there was no danger of losing consciousness. This is standard practice in all pressurized aircraft flying at high altitude for obvious reasons.
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  143.  @Bakes-z4c  Every oxygen regulator every used had an on-demand setting and a full pressure setting. The discomfort I alluded to is when pressure breathing, which requires forcible exhalation against the incoming pressure forcing oxygen into your lungs.
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  144.  @anzaca1  They would not pass out if they immediately went on oxygen. At very high altitude they would probably be already wearing their masks for supplemental oxygen. BTW, people don't rapidly lose consciousness above a mere 10,000 feet. They can go quite a bit higher if acclimated, and even if not, they will suffer the onset of hypoxia but will have plenty of time to go on oxygen if they recognize what has happened.
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  145. Very interesting background information.
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  146. You can't say it was ahead of its time when its time never really arrived. Ask yourself, other than the Russian YC-14 knockoff, how common is the use of upper surface blowing in modern jet transports.
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  147. I'd like to see then numbers on that wager.
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  148. There has never been any question in my mind. Anybody who has served in an air force knows that nicknames given by those associated with operating an aircraft are usually irreverent and don't sound like advertising slogans. The name Jug was first given due to the shape of the airplane rather than its supposed prowess, which was not yet established. The name Juggernaut originated later, likely with someone penning a PR piece on the aircraft.
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  149. Don't forget the F-117.
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  150.  @Rampant16  Yes, like the long-range missiles that will overlap the deep attack role of USAF. Interesting times.
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  151. @@cancermcaids7688 The P-70 was a night fighter, like the P-61, Bf-110, Ju-88, He-219, etc. Not 'real' fighters.
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  152. @@cancermcaids7688 Not splitting a hair at all. I'd say you are braiding two different hairs into the same strand. Just because the word "fighter" is part of the term "night fighter" doesn't make the two the same thing, or even closely related. Do you really think a P-70 would have chance in air-to-air combat against a P-47, a P-38, or a P-51? Come on man.
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  153.  @jeffm68  Yes, that's the thing about social media; facts are considered pedantic but ignorant criticism seems to be the accepted standard of discourse.
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  154. It would take a lot more than tweaking, it would take a fundamental redesign.
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  155.  @ronin47-ThorstenFrank  Your typically idiotic retort in no way addresses your premise that "they will need a dedicated CAS aircraft". No, they will not. They have plenty of aircraft for CAS and do not need a dedicated one. But I can see you think you know better than USAF or the US Army: “The only thing I care about is the effect on the target, I don’t give a rat’s ass what platform brings it in,” Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “I could care less if it’s a B-52, if it’s a B-1 bomber, if it’s an F-16, an F-15, an A-10. I don’t care if the thing was delivered by carrier pigeon. I want the enemy taken care of.”
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  156. Pathologically obsession? Seriously? I think USAF general officers know more about what the USAF needs than you ever will. In any case it isn't USAF generals, but allied nations who decide which plane they want to acquire for own air forces. They preferred the F-16 and F-18 over the F-20, which the video explained quite well and without the knee-jerk bias that you seem compelled to express. The only reason to buy the F-20 would be because they were not allowed to buy the more modern planes, and the Reagan administration fixed that.. Northrop was screwed by the Carter administration, not by USAF generals.
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  157. It was not "only politics". The Lancaster was a back-up plan, but the B-29 had superior range and performance, and it was a given that it would drop the bomb unless the silverplate version was not ready.
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  158. Nah, it is quite insane.
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  159.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  No, I don't have the question backwards and you are just trying to dodge it. Your blind hostility to USAF is transparent and pathetic because it keeps you from thinking rationally. I just wanted to call out your ignorant comment for the benefit of others, and I don't have any more time for your ignorant BS. Bye.
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  160.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  I have responded to your dumb comments, you just refuse to accept the facts. You: “The Air Force hates the ground support role; they want to be fighter jocks at 30,000 feet, or transcontinental bomber jocks, or even transport jocks who can build up a resume for the airlines. The Air Force hates spending money on a plane they hate.” This is ignorant BS. USAF has done more CAS than all the other services combined, and by a wide margin. That because it is the air force, stupid. USAF is the only U.S. service to have ever procured a dedicated CAS aircraft. Show me the USMC version of the A-10. You can’t. You: “You still haven't rebutted my claim that the Air Force wanted to control all air assets when split from the Army in 1947/48 BTW” Of course the air force wanted control of all fixed wing aircraft. They are the air force, stupid. I guess the army shouldn't have all the tanks or the navy have all the submarines either. Let the U.S. Army decide if the A-10 is useful? Giving the A-10 to the Army is a dumb idea because it will still be obsolete. Besides, the Army position on the A-10 is already clear, but you refuse to accept it because I came from the Army chief of staff. Apparently, you’d rather hear official Army policy from some private in the motor pool [Insert sardonic laughter]. “The only thing I care about is the effect on the target, I don’t give a rat’s ass what platform brings it in,” Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley https://www.csis.org/events/priorities-our-nations-army-general-mark-milley in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “I could care less if it’s a B-52, if it’s a B-1 bomber, if it’s an F-16, an F-15, an A-10. I don’t care if the thing was delivered by carrier pigeon. I want the enemy taken care of.” The usefulness of the A-10 is known. Low and slow over a modern battlefield is not useful. No other air force is building an A-10 equivalent, and the closest thing to it, the SU-25 has suffered over Ukraine. You don't listen to U.S. Army generals, so you probably don't listen to the Ukrainian minister of defense who, has said he doesn't want the A-10. “We have been requesting combat aircraft from our partners for a long time now,” Yuriy Sak, adviser to Ukraine’s minister of defense, told Air Force Magazine by phone from Kyiv on July 21. “We need Western-standard fighter jets. We need Western-standard combat aircraft. … To target Russian positions in Ukrainian territory, Ukraine needs “fast and versatile” combat aircraft such as the F-16—not slow-moving ground defense platforms such as the retiring fleet of U.S. A-10s, a proposition Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall entertained in comments” You have been spewing BS that has no basis in reality, and I’m done responding to it. I’ve done all I can here to help other readers see your BS for what it is.
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  161.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  No, I'm saying the Army and the Air Force know better than you do. How do I know? I read what they say. You should learn to read too. You are a moron who can't even follow what someone is saying. Just go away.
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  162. And you can see why just by looking at it. But you always admire those who try something new even when they fail.
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  163. The impracticality of the evaporative cooling system did not invalidate the twin engine configuration. Conventional heat exchangers could have been used (as the Do-335 did), and even though the airplane would have had more drag it would still have more speed and a greater climb rate than an airplane with a single engine.
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  164.  @dukecraig2402  Thanks for repeating all the usual narratives, but I guess you couldn't tell from my post that I have heard them all, and they don't answer the question of why the Navy suddenly wanted to explore the possibility of a liquid cooled fighter. That was the subject of this video, if you recall. But if you come up with any original thoughts that are not a repeat of the usual "liquid cooling bad" mantra it might be interesting.
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  165. Yes, they would all too quickly be dying for their country.
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  166. It has already been replaced. Every other tactical combat aircraft does close air support, as well as the B-52 and the soon to be retired B-1. The difference is these other aircraft are more survivable, and they also do other even more more critical missions before they swing to the CAS role.
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  167. Attack helicopter do not operate like fixed wing aircraft, and Army doctrine has historically used more like rapidly repositionable direct fire support assets than like traditional aircraft. On occasion the Army has tried using them like tactical aircraft and suffered for it. Attack helicopter approach while masked behind cover and only unmask when necessary to acquire and designate a target. They can even fire from cover if the target is already designated. A-10 are exposed well above the tree line, and even higher if the pilot is visually searching for targets.
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  168. True, because it's completely impractical.
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  169.  @Knight6831  You are hilarious! You mind is made up and you will not be confused by the facts. I have given you the facts about the way things actually are, and you are clinging to history and assumptions from the last century. Wake up and do a little reading on the subject.
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  170. This is an interesting period in aircraft development that passed rapidly as the power and speed of airplanes advanced. Obviously the monoplane configuration is proven to provide more speed, but the blanket statement that it provides less lift and slower climb can be misleading. A given fuselage can receive an equivalent amount of lift from two wings of shorter span or one wing of longer span. The lower drag for equivalent lift is why the monoplane configuration is superior for almost any airplane unless the wingspan must be restricted for other considerations.
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  171.  @KinoTechUSA69  Yes. Sprey was completely misguided, and wrong all along. The only reason he ever got so much attention from the media is because controversy is so easy to sell to the public.
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  172.  @coffeejelly523  Great comments.
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  173. Because it's not true.
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  174. @@cancermcaids7688 It seems the so called 'bomber mafia' gets the blame for anything. The bomber force was just a weak as the fighter force between the wars. There was only a veritable handful of B-17s in service on 7 Dec 41, so they had hardly been stealing all the funding from fighters.
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  175.  @terrybrown8539 Thanks for the recommendation.
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  176.  @givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935  You said putting the XX into the Hurricane made the Spitfire Mk V mediocre. There is no discernable logic to be seen in that statement, yet you patronize someone who doesn't understand it. Nice. Looking up supercharging isn't going to help him understand your statement.
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  177.  @givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935  There is no way that kind of information could be inferred from your original comment, and if the guy who questioned it simply looked up supercharging, he would still not find any of the information needed to make your comment meaningful. You didn't just post a comment that was less than all encompassing, you posted a comment that contained no useful information for the reader. BTW, I believe the Merlin 45 was a variant of the XX intended for low altitude use. The M version even had a smaller diameter impeller to reduce throttling losses. The actual Merlin XX was installed in the Mk III Spitfire. Due to limited supply of the XX, which was needed for bombers and the Hurricane, the Spitfire Mk III was discontinued because better versions of the Merlin like the 61 were on the way for the Spitfire.
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  178.  @wilburfinnigan2142  Why are you so excited? Time line? I did not say anything about the Merlin having a 2-stage supercharger early in the war. All I said was that the Hurricane achieved its maximum speed at a higher altitude than the P-40 achieved its maximum speed. This could imply that the Hurricane retained more of its power to higher altitudes than the P-40 did. It is not unreasonable to speculate that this may have been due to a better blower. This could be a more efficient single-stage blower, or simply one optimized for higher rather than lower altitudes; it does not imply a 2-satge blower.
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  179.  @Galil-aces  No, it clearly is not. Your emoticon indicates lack of maturity, so I'm not surprised you are unable to process new information. The relationship between the engine location and the center of gravity has little to do with making an airplane handle like a jet. The placement of the propeller has much more to do with it. For example, the P-39 had its engine near the center of gravity, but nobody thought of using it as a substitute for jet-like handling. Jet fighters have their engines well aft of the CG. The CG of any stable airplane will be in the neighborhood of 23% of wing Mean Aerodynamic Chord, regardless of where the propeller or engine are placed.
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  180.  @passantNL  Amen!
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  181. Reload? You mean from a cargo plane in mid-air? There is nowhere for the B-52 to carry weapons other than the bomb bay and under the wings, so where would these reloads come from?
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  182.  @nickdanger3802  "Tripartite Pact was a mutual defense pact, Germany and Italy had no obligation to defend Japan." Huh??? Who even mentioned the Tripartite Pact in relation to anything here?
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  183.  @nickdanger3802  I've done that before myself, no problem.
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  184. May I ask where you read that?
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  185.  @vger9084  Thanks, but even if true none of that is related to the idea that P-39 was envisioned as a ground support aircraft. The Army specification to which was a response was for a high altitude fighter for interception of incoming bombers. Most fighters were also used as ground attack aircraft, and the P-39 had no greater role in that than most other fighters even after it failed to meet the original high altitude specification.
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  186.  @vger9084  And Ben Kelsy also wrote the specification for the P-38. Of course generals have the final say, but they cannot envision a plane as a ground support aircraft after it has already been produced as a fighter. The exhaust driven supercharger was removed after the drag study Hap Arnold ordered because of the disappointing performance of the prototype. NACA thought changes such as eliminating the drag of the supercharger scoop would increase the top speed, and it was Larry Bell who proposed acting on this. It seems the supercharger was never going to work, and it was more important to have a higher top speed at best altitude if the aircraft was to be accepted for production as any kind of fighter. It would need more speed to be a fighter, not to be a ground support aircraft, which favors other attributes. I'm not saying the P-39 did not do ground attack, I'm saying the decision that it would still be useful at low altitude for ground attack was made after the turbocharger had already been removed and its performance would never meet the design intent.
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  187.  @vger9084  Having done it myself, I suspect you probably misinterpreted or are misremembering what you read as a teen many years ago. Since then, terminology and vernacular have changed as well. In this case, all tactical aircraft are there to support the ground forces. The first job of a fighter is to support friendly troops by preventing attack by enemy aircraft. Their secondary job is to attack ground targets in support of theatre objectives and specific ground operations. That doesn’t make them ground attack aircraft, they are still fighters. I suspect the argument you have been draw into is whether the command of the tactical air forces should be independent of or subordinate to the ground commander, which is a separate discussion not relevant to the design and production of the P-39. It was a fighter and used as such. It was not relegated to the ground attack role and used differently than other fighters like the P-40 just because it did was not suitable as a high-altitude interceptor. At any rate I thank you for trying to answer my original question, and no hard feelings over any disagreement.
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  188.  @ronjon7942  The uneducated will continue to adhere to the first story they hear on any subject and refuse to accept new information. Holding on to what they assume is settled knowledge takes much less effort than learning. That is sad enough, but they are also allowed to vote and reproduce.
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  189.  @altoncastile5233  SAMs would eat this airplane for breakfast. It's only hope is in the countermeasures.
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  190. There is a lot of airframe life left in these airplanes. They are the youngest B-52s to begin with, and they have spent much of their years on the ground standing by for war rather than flying.
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  191. It's an idea that keeps coming up, and getting shot down. The problem with such aircraft is that they have very low survivability against an enemy with any meaningful air defense capability. If you are doing COIN against goat herding insurgents they can be effective and economical, but not in operations against a properly equipped enemy force. The USAF learned this as far back as Vietnam. They had low and slow prop planes that could spot the enemy and deliver ordnance accurately, but they had to withdraw them from higher threat areas as the enemy air defense capabilities continued to increase. In these areas they replaced aircraft like the A-1 and the O-2 with fast movers in both the CAS and FAC roles. The SEA environment was relative begin in comparison with today's air defense systems. So yeah, USAF considered the likes of Tucano or OV-10 for the new Afghan or Iraqi air force, but not for USAF itself.
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  192. People trying to pigeonhole historical aircraft into narrow categories to which they attach unwarranted meaning generates more controversy on the internet than there ever was back when these aircraft flew. This video should attract a virtual feeding frenzy.
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  193.  @bigblue6917  Exactly. It almost has the proportions of a race plane where the pilot sits near the tail.
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  194.  @Rampant16  Your fundamental premise is in error. They don't need a dedicated CAS aircraft. Other aircraft can do it as well as the A-10 can over a modern battlefield, with more survivability. The A-10 is now a waste of criticial resources and as such degrades readiness.
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  195.  @Rampant16  Oh, I read it as you thought they were making a mistake. You are absolutely right they cannot afford a new CAS jet, and they cannot even afford to keep the A-10s they already have. They need to shift those funds to more capable and versatile aircraft.
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  196. Agreed that 3 crewmembers is too many. In the long the military did away with the the rear facing guns and kept the observer. I'm thinking O-1 Mohawk, OV-10 Bronco and the like. Slow observation aircraft can only operate used under conditions of local air superiority anyway, because a rear gunner is a feel-good measure that can't really protect a singleton observation aircraft from fighter attack.
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  197.  @thekinginyellow1744  I don't consider the Me-163 to have a delta wing, which is a sharply swept triangular wing like that of the F-106 or MiG-21, but simply a mild sweep angle. I can't find a reference for that angle, but I'm guessing it is not much more than 20 degrees. You don't see appreciable increases in the speed for critical Mach and peak drag Mach until around 25 degrees of sweep. A 30 degree sweep will increase those numbers by 8 and 15 percent respectively. I'm extrapolating a guess that the 18.5 degree sweep of the Me-262 would only provide improvements of 3 and 5 percent. I would be interested to see any hard numbers anyone may have. So I'm just guessing here, but I suspect that the wing sweep angle chosen for the 163 was the minimum necessary to provide the stability and control sufficient for good maneuverability. Increasing the sweep angle would have provided even more, but would also have reduced the climb rate of the aircraft, which was a critical performance parameter due to its design mission profile and limited fuel. Again, I would be interested in seeing any hard info on this.
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  198.  @johnshepherd8687  I don't see the evidence that the slight sweep of the 262 wing provided the dramatic effect you claim for it. The effect was slight, and the main point is that it was *inadvertant*. Happy holidays.
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  199. Is there something documented about its fugoid or are you making some sort of assumption based on its looks?
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  200.  @Chuck_Hooks  Because its a silly idea.
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  201.  @Chuck_Hooks  No it was Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Look it up. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has asked the United States and international partners for Western combat jets and the training to fly them. U.S. officials have weighed in, but they may not be suggesting the right aircraft, a Ukrainian defense official told Air Force Magazine. To target Russian positions in Ukrainian territory, Ukraine needs “fast and versatile” combat aircraft such as the F-16—not slow-moving ground defense platforms such as the retiring fleet of U.S. A-10s, a proposition Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall entertained in comments July 20.
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  202. Western civilization is rotting from within. Its competitors can smell that rot and are talking advantage. This is just the beginning.
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  203.  @GoSlash27  I can see your mind is made up and will not be confused by the facts, so I shall waste no more time.
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  204. The fact that the Navy accepted the dorsal mounted intakes is unsurprising in light of the fact that its original requirement was for a heavy fleet defense aircraft, not an air superiority fighter. A dorsal intake had also been used by the proposed North American F-107 for USAF. That one severely restricted reward visibility, but again it didn't matter because the F-107 was to be fighter bomber, not a dogfighter. The F-111 design also had poor reward visibility, as well as side-by-side seating at the insistence of the Navy, both indications that it was not meant to be a dogfighter. The Navy eventually realized it also needed to develop an air superiority fighter. But the budgetary environment could not support two new aircraft, so they had to develop one aircraft to perform both the fleet defense and air superiority roles. By then the F-111design was unsuitable, so the Navy withdrew from the program and initiated development of a new new aircraft that would become the F-14. One of first things they ditched was the side by side seating, in favor of the tandem seating which USAF had wanted all along. None is this is an indication that McNamara's goal was unreasonable--it was reasonable for the initial requirements presented by both services, but the needs of the Navy evolved.
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  205.  @joshuarebennack68  This is makes me chuckle. You are defending an old design idea for which there has been no demand because it is simply not an improvement. I don't know what a facetmobile is, so I am talking about the wing that is the subject of this video. There is a reason we don't see airplanes with this wing, and it has nothing to do with resistance to new ideas.
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  206.  @JFrazer4303  Yes, people are stupid, and there is a sucker born every nanosecond on the internet. You don't even understand what my "theory" is, so I'll state it more clearly for you: there has obviously been no demand for this wing design in any application, to include low speed aircraft.
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  207.  @joshuarebennack68  I don't believe for a minute that this is a useful STOL configuration. I don't need to waste time trying to explain the reasons to you, because the empirical reality is that if it was useful it would be in use. People should not believe everything they see on the internet..
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  208.  @JFrazer4303  I have already given one basis but you must have missed it: If it really was an improvement it would be in use today. As to some of the specific performance claims you mention, you are a fool to believe such fantasies.
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  209.  @JFrazer4303  LOL. That not a red herring, that goes to the heart of the issue. By your definition you are a fool, blindly accepting false claims for performance and utility. If you knew anything about airplanes you would know this thing is just another circus sideshow. Have a nice day. Maybe think about where you get your 'information'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D86_ptqd8I
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  210. What a moron.
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  211. SA is relative. If the general's ass is in the bush his SA will be as low as that of the infantryman in that bush who can see only a small part of the overall picture. Situational awareness is built by synthesizing information from multiple sources with different points of view. If an unmanned vehicle increases the ability of a mechanized unit to see and place fire on the enemy, it does double duty by increasing both SA and firepower. It may even soak up some enemy counterfire. If it can carry more than foot mobile troops, as well as provide observation and fire support, maybe it would be a good thing to have in support. It's not the answer to all situations, but could be a force multiplier for many. Given the declining birth rates and soft cultures of post industrial societies, it seems a natural desire to have machines to do more heavy lifting to augment ever more valuable soldiers.
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  212. @Cancer McAids You're dreaming if you think it would have had most of the capability of the F-4. But that alone is not the reason to cancel the super tiger. The basic F-11 significantly under-performed compared to the F-100. I mean, Mach 1.1 isn't a real supersonic airplane. If you wanted to upgrade an existing fighter instead of buying the F-4 or F-104, a better choice would be to upgrade the F-8 Crusader, which was already a good performer. It would then have eaten the Super Tiger for lunch. There are many more F-8 fanboys than F-11 fanboys on the internet, but maybe you can convince them the F-11 would have been a better choice for upgrade.
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  213.  @ronjon7942  Hey, don't sell yourself short. 😉
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  214.  @AudieHolland  The JU-87 couldn't defend itself against fighters and required air superiority or escort, but it still faced fire from the ground. Image how much ground fire Hans Ulrich Rudel must have faced killing all those Russian tanks with his liquid cooled JU-87. The Sturmovik did have good armor for an airplane but it was no tank, and the Typhoon was not armored in the same way to my recollection. I'm not saying that the P-51 was the best choice for ground attack sorties, but I think the perpetual legend that it was uniquely vulnerable because it was liquid cooled is one of those self perpetuating narratives that proliferates through sheer repetition.
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  215.  @AudieHolland  Any aircraft can be brought down by a single bullet in the right place. The legend that the P-51 was more susceptible than most WWII fighters employed for ground attack attack is so illogical that even a child should be able to dismiss it.
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  216.  @AudieHolland  LOL. I fed you back the BS line you slung at me to make a point, and I'm the bad guy. You're one of those guys that always has to get personal when you have nothing convincing to say about the point of the discussion, and I surely find that depressing, so I'm done here.
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  217. External evidence of the Lincoln's rapid development is that it managed to be even less handsome than the Lancaster. A good looking offshoot of the Lancaster was the Shackleton.
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  218. A "mere" ten years later? 10 years was a lifetime in aeronautic development during this era.
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  219. They always had a plane to supplement the C-5, it was the C-141, which the C-17 eventually replaced. It would be more accurate to say the C-5 supplemented these airplanes, as there are fewer C-5s and they can carry larger items than the smaller airlifters.
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  220.  @Sacto1654  I can't tell what you are trying to say or if the number 222 is somehow significant. My point is that USAF did not "finally figure out" they needed a plane in addition to the C-5. They had always had one, and when it wore out they replaced it with a new and better one.
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  221.  @Judges2Cecot  Kind of expensive for that, but I think they would make good fire bombers for fighting forest fires.
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  222. Nah, the F-15 was already under development, and it was a better airplane for the USAF than the F-14. Here we are with everybody pontificating about how joint fighter program are doomed to fail, and you want to hobble USAF with a fighter that would underperform what they needed.
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  223.  @starga-fr7qx  If I had a nickel from everyone who thinks John Boyd or his biography are the Oracle of truth, I would be rich. I’ve read the book, and much more over the many years. I don’t worship the man or the book, because I’ve read more than one book. I don’t care if the F-14 was ahead in flight testing, it was not the right fighter for USAF. Your attempt to characterize the considered judgment of the USAF as “panic” is misleading and parochial. Two spurious non-arguments there. You may not like to hear this, but the F-15 was better at what it was designed to do than the F-14 would have been. The fact that you can find a web article by a former F-14 pilot who actually claims the F-14 was not meant to dogfight should interest you. He’s wrong of course, but that should tell you something about his estimation of the comparative virtues of the F-14 and F-15. And which airplane is still flying today because it remains relevant to the needs of the service? Case closed.
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  224. If I had a nickel from everyone who thinks John Boyd or his biography are the Oracle of truth, I would be rich. I’ve read the book, and much more over the many years. I don’t worship the man or the book, because I’ve read more than one book. I don’t care if the F-14 was ahead in flight testing, it was not the right fighter for USAF. Your attempt to characterize the considered judgment of the USAF as “panic” is misleading and parochial. Two spurious non-arguments there. You may not like to hear this, but the F-15 was better at what it was designed to do than the F-14 would have been. The fact that you can find a web article by a former F-14 pilot who actually claims the F-14 was not meant to dogfight should interest you. He’s wrong of course, but that should tell you something about his estimation of the comparative virtues of the F-14 and F-15. And which airplane is still flying today because it remains relevant to the needs of the service? Case closed.
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  225.  @starga-fr7qx  You are simply wrong in so many ways. There is no point in trying to argue with a fan who is so misinformed, so go ahead and hold on to your fantasies.
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  226.  @starga-fr7qx  There's no arguing with somebody who makes up his own facts. You can say the F-14 was the better fighter all day long but that does not make it so, and certainly does not make it the better airplane for USAF. AIMVAL/ACEVAL did not prove the F-14 was the better fighter. You are clearly an F-14 fan who can't follow the reality and it's a waste of time to try to convince you.
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  227.  @starga-fr7qx  Repeating your mistaken opinions does not make them facts. You don't understand AIMVAL/ACEVAL, or why the F-14 was unsuitable for USAF, and I'm not interested in trying to educate you. Have a nice day.
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  228. The original requirements presented by the Navy and USAF were not incompatible, but the requirements changed. The lessons of the TFX program are commonly misinterpreted, but repeat a narrative for decades and it becomes "truth". The idea that one basic airframe could fulfill two different roles was not a dumb idea at all. History is full of examples of aircraft that were versatile enough to fly for different services and even perform different missions. Initially the TFX program was reasonable because USAF and USN were both asking for a large aircraft that could lift a heavy load of fuel and weapons, with long range or long loiter, plus high-speed dash or intercept. Twin engines and an innovative variable geometry wing were called for, and DOD logically assessed that it would be wasteful to develop two very expensive advanced airframes when a single one with some variations could do both jobs. The reason one basic airframe could do both jobs was because original USN specification was for a fleet defense fighter, not an air superiority fighter. It was not originally intended to be what later became the F-14, but to perform the role meant for the Douglas F6D Missileer, with the addition of supersonic dash capability. The biggest difference between the airframe requirements of the two services was that USAF wanted a tandem cockpit and USN want side by side seating. Boeing tried to make both services happy, but MacNamara’s DOD thought USAF could suck it up and have the crew sit side by side. This is ironic considering that when the Navy cancelled its version USAF was stuck with the cockpit it didn’t want, which also ironically contributed to the airplane being too ungainly for a dogfighter. The original idea wasn’t dumb -- what happened was that needs changed. USN revised its specifications for the TFX as result of combat experience in Vietnam, and realized they also needed an air superiority fighter to replace the F-8 and F-4, but couldn’t afford that in addition to a dedicated fleet defense aircraft. Thus, the TFX would now have to be able to dogfight as well as be a missile interceptor. The F-111B could have worked as a missileer, but it was too fat and underpowered to compete as an air superiority fighter. It was proper of the Navy to recognize that its needs had evolved. This was perhaps the beginning of the Navy realizing that budgets and hangar decks did not have room for so many specialized aircraft. USAF desperately needed the F-111 to replace the F-105, so they sucked it up and accepted the heavy airframe caused by the loveseat cockpit they never wanted.
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  229.  @johnshepherd8687  Yes, the Navy version of the TFX had originally been intended to fulfill the role of the cancelled F6D Missileer with an added supersonic dash capability. Combat experience in Vietnam convinced the Navy that it also need a new air superiority fighter. They knew they could not get two new fighter aircraft at the same time, so they pulled out of the TFX program to develop an airplane for air superiority as well as fleet defense. The irony is that the the side-by-side crew seating that the Navy insisted on over USAF wishes helped make the F-111 unsuitable as a fighter. If they had allowed a tandem cockpit it might have made the design more like the F-14 from the beginning, which we now know could also carry bombs.
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  230.  @johnshepherd8687  As far as I can tell we are saying the same thing about the original intent of the F-111B. Then the Navy requirement changed, quite justifiably. As far as the F-4 vs the F-8 that is separate subject, and in any case the F-14 replaced them both.
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  231.  @johnshepherd8687  I do separate it becuse I'm discussing what was, not what might have been if the planets had aligned differently. YouTube is awash with videos and comments claiming this or that superior airplane was down-selected for production in favor of an inferior plane. You obviously believe the Crusader III would have been far superior to and longer lived than the F-4. I say maybe, maybe not, but the F-4 is what we had.
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  232.  @johnshepherd8687  I am not interested in talking about an airplane that never was, I'm the one trying to NOT talk about the Crusader III. I am not saying it's not an interesting topic in its own right, and I'm not saying you opinion on that airplane is wrong. I'm just saying that it's not relevant to the point I was making. These YouTube discussion always seem to drift off topic, so I will summarize mine for you. The TFX goal of a single basic airframe for both USAF and Navy was not unreasonable. Both missions called for an airplane with good cruise/loiter fuel economy as well as high as high speed dash. A large airplane with a high fuel fraction and variable geometry wings was need for both, and it made sense for DOD to try to develop one rather than two such expensive projects. The common narrative that the airplane was expected to do all things or vastly different things is a myth. Nobody expected the airframe to be a dogfighter, and it would have worked well as a Missileer as well as a strike aircraft. One need only look at the Panavia Tornado for an example of a similar project that succeeded. The F-111B did not fail to meet the requirement; the Navy (wisely) changed it's mind about what it required.
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  233.  @johnshepherd8687  What airplane was a piece of paper? There were more F-111Bs built than F8U-3s. I don't know what you are talking about, but whatever, it doesn't matter. Nice chatting with you.
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  234.  @johnshepherd8687  You're not listening. The F-111 IS mentioned in the video, but the F-4 and F-8 are not, but you just don't want to give up talking about them. The only thing I addressed was the common misconception that the TFX project was a dumb idea and that the F-111 could never have fulfilled both roles. You are raising a different subject, and I'm done with it.
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  235. Nobody who knows anything about the war forgets the B-24. The B-17 is more well known by non-enthusiasts because it was prettier and starred in multiple movies and TV shows, starting with William Wyler's Memphis Bell film.
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  236.  @WALTERBROADDUS  You agreeing with me or disagreeing with me?
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  237.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I have found that to be true more often than not.
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  238.  @SakiniCZ  It's increased number of useful systems that require more support vs fewer numbers of useful system that are easier to support. Considering their operational needs I think Ukraine is wise to chose more systems even if they come with the inconvenience of multiple supply chains. You know, like the British and Soviets did in WWII?
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  239. That's funny, considering the US has been much criticized for always assuming the leadership role. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
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  240. Kevin _12 are you here? It appears you deleted the comment thread you started, and I have to suspect it was because you did not like my response so you're censoring it.
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  241.  @CH-pv2rz  What do you know? You don't even know what was in my comment if you think it was whining. I presented him with facts to counter the opinion he presented to me and you want to call it whining. What are you, just another login for the same person? You're certainly pointless enough.
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  242. Which radar would that be? They are picking one of the more advanced and versatile existing radars in service. They don't need to spend money to develop a new radar for the planned uses of this airplane.
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  243. @llerhalf1968 The original commenter was not serious. He believes the opposite of what he said and is just trying to instigate pro-Brit responses. Who can really think the "RAF was slow doing jets" when it had one in combat in WWII?
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  244.  @TyrannoJoris_Rex  Yeah, as if professional fighter pilots were unaware that swept wing fighters existed. It was simply unexpected to see them in what was hoped would be a limited war in Korea. It was an escalation in weaponry that didn't take long to match.
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  245.  @rooseveltbrentwood9654  From what i’ve seen (on youtube) the “widowmaker” reputation of the early 104s in German service was not exaggerated, although this was not entirely the fault of the aircraft. The very moniker "widow maker" is applied in order to attach fault to the aircraft. That is not deserved. As you point out yourself, the initial accident rate experienced in German service was due factors related to training and operations rather than the airplane itself. It was not a widow maker; but you if you have to use that term you could say the service operating it was, a for a time, a widow maker.
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  246.  @rooseveltbrentwood9654  I think you are agreeing with my point that the aircraft was not to blame for its unusually high accident rate in service with Germany.
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  247.  @atillanagy-balo6493  I commend you for stating these compelling facts, but I expect they will not make it past the locked door of the A-10 fanboy mind. They can't let go of a past where low and slow was both necessary and survivable. Low and slow is now neither of those things. There is no need to replace the A-10 because it brings nothing necessary to the battlefield.
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  248. This video made me notice that nearly all variable geometry aircraft had shoulder mounted wings, even before that arrangement became fashionable for fighters. I'm thinking it has to be more than coincidence. Structurally, it seems to me that a low mounted wing would be more efficient, especially for a carrier based aircraft, so perhaps this has an aerodynamic purpose. If anyone has any info please comment. All I can speculate is that the high wing with zero or negative dihedral makes the airplane less susceptible to variations in lateral stability as the wing angle changes.
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  249.  @KB4QAA  Asking a question is not providing insight. What an asshole.
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  250. David Rees Good question. With some variation, why not roughly the same place they go in an F-14 or F-111? Gear retracts into a different place than the wing pivot box, although if you could have the same basic structure carry both loads that would probably be efficient. Ordnance goes under the belly and fixed portion of the wing, and you can even have pivoting pylons on the swinging portion of the wing like the F-111 if you really need more pylons. This is all just speculation, which is why I'm just asking if anybody has any actual information about whether such a configuration was ever considered, and I'm especially interested in whether there are any lateral stability implications to a swinging low mounted wing.
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  251.  @davidrees7978  Yeah, I was not asking about this specific airplane, I'm interested in the general principles.
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  252.  @davidrees7978  Either I don't see the point you are trying to make, or it is not a logical one. You point to the Panther, a particular airplane, and state that its small size in comparison to others is a factor. I agree and say I'm not interested in that particular aircraft but in a general principle which may apply to others. Now you are trying to say what, that if that arrangement doesn't work in one particular instances it must hold for all others?
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  253.  @richardvernon317  Thanks. I knew there had been at least one with a low mounted wing but couldn't think of it at the time.
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  254.  @davidrees7978  Well, your last comment did seem to lead nowhere. But thanks for the well wishes and same to you.
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  255.  @richardvernon317  So it looks like my initial impression was incorrect. The shoulder mounted wings were all that came to mind at the time, but it seems VG wings have indeed been set at all heights. Thanks for clearing up the fact that there is actually no mystery here at all.
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  256.  @richardvernon317  Agree with all your comments, but perhaps it's not completely fair to characterize aircraft designers as lazy. I think most would love to start with a clean sheet of paper, but derivative designs are often proposed with a primary consideration of minimum cost or time to develop, so substantial changes to what came before have to earn their way on to the new model. I appreciate your comments.
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  257. And the L-19 wasn't too slow to survive? It was much slower and more flimsy than the O-47, which was hardly too fast to get a close look. You go low and slow you take hits, in any airplane.
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  258. It does look British, which may be one reason the U.S. Army passed on it in favor of the A-20.
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  259. They are dancing around us because of the senile fool in the office whose polices have been crippling.
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  260.  @maxwellq6891  I'm not going to waste my time trying to have a discussion with someone who begins with name calling.
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  261.  @givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935  Or comments that can't be deciphered.
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  262. Gee, I'm surprised to not see any comments claiming this was the great granddaddy of the F-14.
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  263.  @derrickstorm6976  Yes it does, but that usually doesn't stop people.
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  264.  @ronin47-ThorstenFrank  Typical ad hominem attack from someone who cannot support his position with facts or logic. More anecdotal evidence in support of the study claiming that IQs have been dropping over the last three decades.
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  265. From it's looks they could have sold it to the Royal Navy! ;-)
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  266.  @geordiedog1749  If the B-29 hadn't been ready they would have used the Lancaster backup plan. But it was only a backup plan in case the B-29 wasn't ready, not the more sensible thing to do. The Lancaster did not have the range of the B-29 and couldn't even fly that mission round trip from Tinian and would have had to stage from a closer base. Your statement that the "US brass" wanted it to be a US-only show seems to imply that was unreasonable or some sort of character flaw. Despite giving the UK and Russia billions in equipment and supplies over the course of the war, the US also invested 2 billion in the the A-bomb and another 2 billion or so in the B-29. It was It was perfectly natural to assign the job to the B-29, which was ready in time and was the superior airplane for the mission. Trying to characterize this as some sort of mistake or inequity is absolutely ridiculous. It was the entirely sensible thing to do.
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  267.  @geordiedog1749  I didn't intend any affront or appeal to patriotism, and I don't know how sentiment affected Martlet pilots, so let's try to stick to the facts under discussion here. Of course, the possibility that anti-Anglo sentiment could affected somebody's judgment is no more ridiculous in principle than the possibility that anti-American sentiment could do the same, or is now affecting the very narrative you seem to be invested in here. But what I actually said is ridiculous is any attempt to characterize selection of the B-29 to drop the A-bomb as a mistake or inequity. If you think that decision was "only politics" you need to reexamine the technical, operational, and organizational factors you are overlooking. Revisionist history is fine when it corrects factual errors, but not when it is driven by sentiment to reinterpret events in creation of a narrative that supports that sentiment.
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  268. Most amazing thing related to the YA-9 is how it managed to be so ugly even when designed by the same company that penned the beautiful T-38 and F-5. Way uglier than the A-10, which really isn't ugly, just different.
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  269.  @grizwoldphantasia5005  I thought you said bye. Now you're back still grinding the axe on your dumb idea. Bye.
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  270.  @Rampant16  Yes, the F-111 killed more tanks than the A-10 ever did, but that was not actually CAS, which is the role I thought was at issue here. But it does illustrate the point that the A-10s mythical prowess is more myth than prowess. It would have been great if we'd had in South Vietnam, which is the war it was designed to fight, but it is no good for CAS over a battlefield populated with numerous GBAD systems.
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  271. Well actually that is not a point of order, it is an opinion. One I suspect you got from Greg’s P-39 video. I am a Patreon supporter of Greg, but I do not buy that opinion, which is based on a magazine article written by a Bell executive. I think the writer was trying to present the aircraft as relevant even though it had failed to meet its original design intent, while burnishing the reputation of Bell as an innovator. However, the nose is not really more streamlined in terms of the ideal shape in subsonic flow. The airplane was clean in its use of buried heat exchangers, but even so the overall drag was found to be high in reality, which disproves the supposed benefit of the pointy nose. The specification called for a 37mm gun (to kill bombers) which would have been very difficult to install alongside an engine, a problem solved by the then unconventional aft mounted engine. Considering the extra weight of the drive shaft along with the dubious aerodynamic advantages, the 37mm gun remains the most reasonable primary purpose behind the configuration of this aircraft, one that a single magazine article cannot disprove.
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  272. The party official who cancelled this ugly abomination was a true hero of the Soviet Union! I completely appreciate the goal of improving pilot visibility, but it might have been better to move the engine aft as in the P-39 and free up the nose for a forward placed cockpit. They may have also had room for mounting guns with magazines aft of the cockpit and the barrels underneath like the Mosquito fighter bomber variants.
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  273. Why was the cooling system of the P-40 less vulnerable than the cooling system of the P-51?
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  274.  @SmedleyDouwright  So it seems your assumption is 100% speculation and not based on facts of any kind. My contrary assumption is that the cooling system of the P-51 was not significantly more vulnerable than the cooling system of the P-40 or most other liquid-cooled fighters. Like the P-51, most liquid-cooled fighters positioned the radiator under the fuselage near the wings or under the wings. In gunnery training pilots and gunners were taught to lead the target and aim for the engine, the fuel tanks, and the pilot, starting from the front and working back. I don't see how placing the radiator near the engine would make it less likely to be hit. As to you other assumption, that the P-47 would have been a better choice for operations in Korea, USAF obviously did not agree you. Maybe you should look into the reason(s) for that.
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  275.  @givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935  I know that not that many were retained. I think the assumption that this was due to the higher cost of maintenance and operations is a rational one, but I have yet to see anything official on that. This theory does fly in the face of the common narrative that one reason the Navy insisted on radial engines for its aircraft is that they were more reliable and simpler to maintain. But I have yet to see anything official on that either.
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  276. There is a reason there is nothing beyond illustrations for this concept. Seems it would have been as much prey as a hunter.
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  277. Agreed that 3 crewmembers is too many. In the long the military did away with the the rear facing guns and kept the observer. I'm thinking O-1 Mohawk, OV-10 Bronco and the like. Slow observation aircraft can only operate used under conditions of local air superiority anyway, because a rear gunner is a feel-good measure that can't really protect a singleton observation aircraft from fighter attack.
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