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They were trying to shoot down a drone moving slowly in a circle with air to air rockets and couldn't hit it. They did manage to hit a few houses and a station wagon.
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Jul 17, 2013 18:42
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n0tqu1tesane posted:USAF is apparently having some QF-4 drone troubles. Initially read this as "RQ-4," went "WHAT IN THE gently caress THOSE COST LIKE TEN GAZILLION DOLLARS A PIEC--oh. Phantoms, right." Cyrano4747 posted:USAF/USAAF has a long and storied history of losing control of target drones. Page back in the thread far enough and I'm pretty sure there's a really loving hilarious article about the multiple, multiple attempts to shoot down a Bearcat-turned-target drone in the 50s or 60s. They were afraid it was going to crash into an inhabited part of the general area around LA and ended up accidentally starting a bunch of brush fires and I think even strafing a neighborhood or something equally hosed up, only to have it finally run out of gas and just crumple into the side of a hill with no ill effects. Pretty sure I linked that, can't remember which account I linked but this is a pretty good read on the subject from a guy who knows what he's talking about when it comes to aviation history. FWIW it was in 1956 and it was a navy F6F drone that the AF had to be called in to shootdown...which they failed miserably at.
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Jul 17, 2013 18:50
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iyaayas01 posted:Initially read this as "RQ-4," went "WHAT IN THE gently caress THOSE COST LIKE TEN GAZILLION DOLLARS A PIEC--oh. Phantoms, right." Same here. Have a some livery: 
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Jul 17, 2013 19:31
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Drone troubles? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=192_1373919092 Well, more like operator error, but still.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:USAF/USAAF has a long and storied history of losing control of target drones. Page back in the thread far enough and I'm pretty sure there's a really loving hilarious article about the multiple, multiple attempts to shoot down a Bearcat-turned-target drone in the 50s or 60s. They were afraid it was going to crash into an inhabited part of the general area around LA and ended up accidentally starting a bunch of brush fires and I think even strafing a neighborhood or something equally hosed up, only to have it finally run out of gas and just crumple into the side of a hill with no ill effects. You mean the one that also showed how ineffective our interceptors at the time were?
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Jul 17, 2013 22:08
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Flikken posted:You mean the one that also showed how ineffective our interceptors at the time were? Sometimes the ability to pump out a new fighter/interceptor every 2 years is looked on as a sign of a golden age in airplane design. Other times, it can be viewed as a total clusterfuck in the test phase before we just shoved absolute garbage into service which we abandoned almost immediately.
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Jul 17, 2013 22:14
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Doctor Grape Ape posted:Drone troubles? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=192_1373919092 As expected they pressed the autopilot button and Skynet immediately attempted to kill all humans.
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Jul 17, 2013 22:22
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mlmp08 posted:Sometimes the ability to pump out a new fighter/interceptor every 2 years is looked on as a sign of a golden age in airplane design. Other times, it can be viewed as a total clusterfuck in the test phase before we just shoved absolute garbage into service which we abandoned almost immediately. It seems less an issue with the airframes and more the weapon systems themselves. .50 cals were obviously obsolete by war's end, and even 20mm cannon are of middling use at jet intercept speeds. Plus trying to take down a bomber wing by hosing them down one by one is time consuming and dangerous. Effective air-air guided missiles were decades off. Nukes (the eventual fix) weren't small enough. So mounting a big rack of unguided rockets seemed like the best hope. And in fairness spraying a salvo of rockets into a bomber formation seems like it'd have a greater chance of killing -something- than shooting it at a lone Hellcat. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 22:34
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Snowdens Secret posted:It seems less an issue with the airframes and more the weapon systems themselves. .50 cals were obviously obsolete by war's end, and even 20mm cannon are of middling use at jet intercept speeds. Plus trying to take down a bomber wing by hosing them down one by one is time consuming and dangerous. Effective air-air guided missiles were decades off. Nukes (the eventual fix) weren't small enough. So mounting a big rack of unguided rockets seemed like the best hope. They also had the Genie rocket, for which accuracy would only be a minor concern, because its warhead was nuclear.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:13
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Glad I decided to bookmark the story last time it came up in the discussion. http://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k_accident.html I volunteer at an air museum that's got an F-86D with a rocket tray, and I never miss an opportunity to tell that story when it inevitably comes up while I'm giving tours.  Bonus picture: Washing bird crap off said Sabre. 
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Jul 17, 2013 23:36
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StandardVC10 posted:They also had the Genie rocket, for which accuracy would only be a minor concern, because its warhead was nuclear. That's what I was referring to when I said nukes (the eventual solution)
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Jul 17, 2013 23:55
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Snowdens Secret posted:And in fairness spraying a salvo of rockets into a bomber formation seems like it'd have a greater chance of killing -something- than shooting it at a lone Hellcat. poo poo, the Germans were moving in this direction by the end of WW2. They had some pretty decent success with under-wing mounted rocket pods, especially the R/4M. They were pretty small but didn't affect the aerodynamics of the wing too much as the platform they were mounted on was really narrow. THe best analogue I can think of is the modern Hydra rocket (although that's significantly bigger) if they were mounted in rows of 8 on a single horizontal rack rather than in a pod. The ballistics of them were really similar to 30mm cannon, so they could more or less just use the gunsight for aiming without doing any specialty calibration. I forget the payload. It was small, but significant for WW2 era air to air combat. Something in the half-kilo range. One rocket was usually enough to take down a bomber, so they would salvo entire formations and count on the natural dispersion to spread them out enough to hopefully get more than one of them. They were never deployed in huge numbers due to the war ending, but did get some use and were pretty successful. Of course B17s are both a hell of a lot bigger than a Hellcat and a hell of a lot slower than a 50s era Soviet bomber.
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Jul 18, 2013 00:47
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Snowdens Secret posted:That's what I was referring to when I said nukes (the eventual solution) Oh, oops, somehow I skipped over that word. 
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Jul 18, 2013 00:56
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priznat posted:In In 2008 Harper signed an agreement to spend 1.5 to keep up the subs, even though that's literally enough money to replace the subs with new, functioning ones. This would be horrible on it's own; but when talking about the ex-Upholder class subs, it's merely par for the course. It's still frankly less stupid than - * buying some used subs from the Brits * discovering that surprise surprise British subs use British torpedoes * Instead of just buying some British torpedoes, decide that the best thing to do is to re-engineer the goddamn submarine so it can fire the 40 or so old American torpedoes you already have * Oh and these changes mean you can't fire harpoon missiles anymore so even when they can fire your old torpedoes you've significantly gimped your sub's versatility read all about the horrible string of failures that is Canada's submarines Seriously, if there are Australians in this thread, we need to have some sort of failure-off regarding Canada's and Australia's submarines, I think Canada can win hands-down.
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Jul 18, 2013 01:33
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Like Cyrano said, early 50s interceptors carrying a few dozen unguided rockets makes much more sense when you understand they were meant to be fired into a big formation of enemy bombers.
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Jul 18, 2013 01:42
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Like Cyrano said, early 50s interceptors carrying a few dozen unguided rockets makes much more sense when you understand they were meant to be fired into a big formation of enemy bombers. Sure, which makes it ludicrous that they sent up rocket pod planes to shoot down a single F6F. You know what else shot down F6Fs? Zeros.
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Jul 18, 2013 02:24
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mlmp08 posted:Sure, which makes it ludicrous that they sent up rocket pod planes to shoot down a single F6F. You know what else shot down F6Fs? Zeros. That's what they had as far as interceptors go. Sure, maybe some Guard units were still flying Mustangs and poo poo, but why would you call up the Guard when you have guys in our brand new whiz-bang interceptors whose job is to go up and shoot poo poo down? Never mind that our brand new whiz-bang interceptors aren't really for shooting down individual fighters.
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Jul 18, 2013 02:27
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It probably is what they had nearby, but even an F-86 would have been so much better.
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Jul 18, 2013 02:42
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Nebakenezzer posted:In 2008 Harper signed an agreement to spend 1.5 to keep up the subs, even though that's literally enough money to replace the subs with new, functioning ones. This would be horrible on it's own; but when talking about the ex-Upholder class subs, it's merely par for the course. It's still frankly less stupid than - Buy German? Scandinavian countries seem to be happy with them. Canada's ground forces already use a bunch of German poo poo, right?
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Jul 18, 2013 03:04
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What were the National Guard air units flying in the 50's and into the 60s? Did they get hand-me-downs or were they kept current?
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Jul 18, 2013 03:06
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McNally posted:That's what they had as far as interceptors go. Sure, maybe some Guard units were still flying Mustangs and poo poo, but why would you call up the Guard when you have guys in our brand new whiz-bang interceptors whose job is to go up and shoot poo poo down? Presumably the best way to knock down an errant F6F drone is the old technique against V-1s, get your wingtip under its wingtip and pull up and flip it over till it crashes. Also sub-launched Harpoons suck, old-rear end American torps were probably a better kill solution for whatever fantasy foe an ancient diesel-electric Canadian submarine would ever go up against
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Jul 18, 2013 03:40
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davecrazy posted:What were the National Guard air units flying in the 50's and into the 60s? Did they get hand-me-downs or were they kept current? Hand-me-downs. I don't think the Guard units got current until the 90s. The last F-105 flight was in 1984, for example. I remember reading a story about F-106 pilots doing some training flights against F-16s that same year, too.
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Jul 18, 2013 03:54
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madeintaipei posted:Buy German? Scandinavian countries seem to be happy with them. Canada's ground forces already use a bunch of German poo poo, right? If we got German subs in the RCN they would have to fight me off with a stick at the recruiting offices. Or arrest me for being dressed as a U-boat sailor on the day I show up for duty. Seroiusly though the German diesel/electrics are loving awesome.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:07
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Type 212 unnngghhhhhh
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Jul 18, 2013 04:10
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mikerock posted:If we got German subs in the RCN they would have to fight me off with a stick at the recruiting offices. The Dutch Walrus-class are also pretty competent, although I have no idea if the Dutch would offer them for export
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Jul 18, 2013 04:14
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The Netherlands loves Canada because we booted the Nazis out in 1945, also we hosted the Royal family from 1940-1945.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:14
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mikerock posted:The Netherlands loves Canada because we booted the Nazis out in 1945, also we hosted the Royal family from 1940-1945. Hence the gigantic tulip festival in Ottawa every year, and probably one of the cheesiest heritage moment ever.  (I can't find the heritage moment on youtube, maybe I imagined it.)
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Jul 18, 2013 04:22
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Sea Wolves are the best wolves. Still. Also apparently predated by polar bears.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:22
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mikerock posted:The Netherlands loves Canada because we booted the Nazis out in 1945, also we hosted the Royal family from 1940-1945. Unfortunately it'll only get mentioned exactly once per year. They do decent battlefield tours here in Groningen about the Canadian 2nd Infantry though. McNally posted:I remember reading a story about F-106 pilots doing some training flights against F-16s that same year, too. S. Michael Townsend, LTC, USAF Ret. posted:The fun began as they lifted off and saw us on the edge of the ramp, “communicating”, with a raised
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Jul 18, 2013 04:22
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They keep sending tulips no matter how many times we tell them to stop! No more tulips! They're everywhere!!! I'm waiting for the US to fob off some retired/retiring 688 SSNs on Canada now and watch the refit costs go through the roooooooooof.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:24
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priznat posted:I'm waiting for the US to fob off some retired/retiring 688 SSNs on Canada now and watch the refit costs go through the roooooooooof. I'd be very, very, very, very surprised if the Canadian fleet got nuclear boats, especially on the West Coast. Although it might make people forget about the pipelines for a while...
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Jul 18, 2013 04:26
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FrozenVent posted:I'd be very, very, very, very surprised if the Canadian fleet got nuclear boats, especially on the West Coast. Although it might make people forget about the pipelines for a while... I also would be surprised but I don't think it's an impossibility. Just very remote chance. It bugs me that we have to give our guys these barely functional cast-offs and then spend millions just to bring them up to a semi-useable state. Although it helps if they don't get rammed into the seafloor I guess 
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Jul 18, 2013 04:34
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The 688s that are getting / have been decommed are tired boats, and the ones that go are cannibalized extensively to keep the rest sailing. With the sub force already shrinking despite the increasing mission, the Navy isn't going to sell a boat remotely capable of warfighting. There was some theorycraft about selling new-com Virginia class boats to the Aussies, it'd probably be cheaper even short-term to buy one of those than to deal with a raggedy Los Angeles.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:41
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Yes, well, the Upholders were in pretty lovely shape and yet that didn't stop oh god it's going to happen again!! You know the phrase "buy quality, buy once?" Apparently no one in the Canadian Gov't ever has.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:42
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Snowdens Secret posted:Presumably the best way to knock down an errant F6F drone is the old technique against V-1s, get your wingtip under its wingtip and pull up and flip it over till it crashes. Why is this? Is it because they fail to lock on after launching or something?
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Jul 18, 2013 05:16
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The Aussie subs, aren't those designed by our  shipyard Kockums? Is this my fault? Can someone explain what's wrong with the bloody boats?!(It's gonna be that I pay to little in tax, I just know it...)
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Jul 18, 2013 08:41
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Snowdens Secret posted:The Dutch Walrus-class are also pretty competent, although I have no idea if the Dutch would offer them for export Company that built them doesn't exist anymore and the knowledge is basically gone afaik. If (and that's a reasonably sized if) we're going to replace them in the future we will at the least need outside help, or in light of the proposed increased Dutch/German cooperation just buy German, though their designs tend to smaller/shorter ranged than we like, having holdings in the Caribbean and all. Here's 3 out of 4 actually being at sea, which is pretty rare: 
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Jul 18, 2013 10:06
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priznat posted:I also would be surprised but I don't think it's an impossibility. Just very remote chance.
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Jul 18, 2013 10:40
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Koesj posted:Unfortunately it'll only get mentioned exactly once per year. Are those bullet holes on the base of the Martinitoren?
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Jul 18, 2013 11:02
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Groda posted:Are those bullet holes on the base of the Martinitoren? Probably. 
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Jul 18, 2013 11:46
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