Youtube hearted comments of Gort (@gort8203).

  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. Landing gear doors: That is the normal position for the doors when the gear is extended. They open fully to allow the gear to retract or extend, and then return either to this gear-down position or to fully flush when the gear is up.
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  3. Your videos are fantastic. I've never seen such clear and easily understandable explanations of the subjects you cover.
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  4. 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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  5. Where is the SECRET? Must be somewhere in the clickbait title.
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  6. Great video. Even though I already understand this material, I enjoyed and admire your most excellent and coherent explanation. I have forwarded a link to others who I know will find this video very helpful.
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  7. The F-111B would have worked fine for the Navy's original requirements. The airframe requirements for a fleet defense fighter and a fighter bomber were very similar, which is why combining the Air Force and Navy programs made sense initially. But combat experience in SEA later caused the Navy to revise what they wanted from the airplane. It now had to be an air superiority fighter as well as a fleet defense fighter, and the design could not be revised to do that.
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  8. Nah, it is quite insane.
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  9. 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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  10. It is appropriate that Star Trek is the sponsor of this video. To say this was an aircraft that was designed gives it too much reality. It was just a design study, and the study showed it was impractical. Nobody in his right mind thought it would be built for any purpose other than as a prop for a supermarionation TV show like Thunderbirds.
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