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Boomerjinks posted:The best part of the Tu-4 story was the part where Russian scientists visited the engine factory in the US wearing specially-designed soft sole shoes, which they used to collect metal shavings around the different lathes. SNEAKY FUCKERS! The best part of the Chinese Tu-4 AWACS story is that it happened in the loving 60s. Edit: KJ-1 Godholio fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mar 26, 2010 02:12
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Boomerjinks posted:The best part of the Tu-4 story was the part where Russian scientists visited the engine factory in the US wearing specially-designed soft sole shoes, which they used to collect metal shavings around the different lathes. SNEAKY FUCKERS! The Russians also bought TU-4 tires from the US. When the TU-4 was built, Soviet industry couldn't produce tires of that size, so they simply had people in the US purchase a bunch of surplus B-29 tires to last until Soviet versions could be produced.
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Mar 26, 2010 02:28
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You know what this thread needs? FLOATPLANES! This picture was my desktop at work for over a year. Every night I dream that this is the sort of thing I'll see every day when I'm old and retired.   This one gets double points in my book because it's a flying boat and it's ugly as poo poo!   Does anyone else absolutely adore the USCG aircraft paint stripe scheme?  You can never have too much beaver.         Boomerjinks fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mar 26, 2010 02:30
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Flying boats is it? Dornier X up in ya. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71D1S8-1kUY 12 engines, the most ever on any production aircraft, two more than the mighty B-36.   Note the ship-style anchor. The first trans-atlantic flight was delayed by engine fires, and took slightly longer than the Santa Maria to arive in the Americas, but pretty stylish in any event. Speaking of Italians and trans-atlantic voyages, the Savoia Marchetti SM.55 is the weirdest interwar seaplane. Also the best interwar seaplane.  Air Marshal Italo Balbo led a formation of 24 of them in a mass flight from Italy to to Chicago for the Columbian Exhibition in 1933. They named a street after him. And very large formation flights are still sometimes called 'Balbos'.  Seriously, 
Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mar 26, 2010 02:43
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Bulk Vanderhuge posted:My God, that is amazing. How many Mustangs are in civilian hands now? And why aren't there more full sized replicas around? One of the people in the neighborhood my parents live in has as Mustang and three engines on a rotating shift. I am not sure if he still flys the thing these days but I know he used to use it very frequently up until the time I left the Racine, WI area a few years ago. Basically to handle the rebuild/hour requirements without hanving any downtime he has one in the plane, one finished in his garage, and the other in pieces in his basement being rebuilt. When I was working on wiring their house up for LAN I remember seeing the crankshaft from that beast and being all  One of the funny stories I found out about him was how he frequently did daily/weekly flights from our hometown airport just to tour around. After 9/11 when Bush was in town he left on an unscheduled trip and when he came back to land he was escorted away by angry F16's because he was trying to land during a restricted time while Air Force One was on the field. Didn't get in trouble for that at all and from what I gather they had a big laugh when he finally landed. Probably has something to do with him being in his 70's  I need to get some pictures of that thing sometime or at least the engine parts he has filling up his HUGE basement.
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Mar 26, 2010 02:53
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VikingSkull posted:I think there's a P-40 down in the south surrounded by Migs Is that a B-25 three birds south of the crazy B-29 AWACS?
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Mar 26, 2010 06:26
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monkeytennis posted:One of my favourite 747 pics:  This was taken three seconds before the 747 slammed tail first into the runway, right? NathanScottPhillips posted:
I thought the Shenandoah was the airship built by the Germans for the US Navy, but it turns out that was the USS Los Angeles. Speaking of which: The USS Akron / USS Macon The largest aircraft ever built by the USA The Akron / Macon twins were the last, and most interesting airships built by the US navy. In addition to being only slightly smaller then the Hindenburg, the largest aircraft ever made, the navy twins were also flying aircraft carriers, capable of launching and recovering its 5 Sparrowhawk scout planes while in mid-flight.    The reason why the navy was still interested in Airships is easy to understand: while airships were being supplanted by airplanes in several roles, airships still had a few huge advantages compared to airplanes. Specifically, they had range and endurance untouchable by planes at the time, and had lift capabilities far beyond any fixed wing craft.   While we're on the subject of capabilities, here are the stats for these giant sky honkies. The Akron was 239 m (784 ft)in length, and was 44.6 m (146 ft) high. It was powered by 8 560hp engines, producing a definitely ship like net output of 4480 hp. The crew complement was 91, and the airship included sleeping quarters, a mess, and of course a friggin' aircraft hanger to service and maintain the scout planes. The eight engines were inboard, so they could be maintained and serviced on the fly (GET IT?!?  ) Useful lift was (for the time) an epic 72 tons, and both airships could stay in the air several days without needing to be resupplied. On their range and effectiveness as scouts, here's a good quote: As historian Richard K. Smith says in his definitive study, The Airships Akron and Macon, "...consideration given to the weather, duration of flight, a track of more than 3,000 miles (4,800 km) flown, her material deficiencies, and the rudimentary character of aerial navigation at that date, the Akron's performance was remarkable. There was not a military airplane in the world in 1932 which could have given the same performance, operating from the same base."   The Sparrowhawk biplanes were originally envisioned as parasite fighters to defend the mother-airship, but this idea (in the days before radar) turned into the concept of the airplanes being used as scouts. While the planes would spot the hypothetical skulking jap fleet, the airship would wait over the horizon. As you can see from the pics, the planes were deployed and recovered by a trapeze type device. There was also behind the trapeze a second trapeze that a pilot could hook onto and wait when the crane-trapeze was busy. The fighters proved so effective in this role that the navy removed their landing gear, and replaced it with a external fuel tank, which improved the Sparrowhawk's range by 30%. While the airships were merely OK at scouting on their own, (to put it mildly, a 800 ft airship isn't the most inconspicuous thing in the world), with the addition of the scout planes, they became a stellar combo package that no other aircraft could match.      My favorite detail of these leviathans is, believe it or not, their ballast system. Airships, because they generate lift through displacement rather then aerodynamic lift, have several unique engineering problems. For one, lift in a airship varies not only by altitude, but also by barometric pressure. In other words, high and low air pressure systems can have a significant impact on how much lift the helium cells generate. Also, factors like temperature can add extra lift: heat causes the lifting cells to expand and displace more air, and cold does the opposite. (It's for this reason that both the Akron and the Macon were doped with a silvery paint, to reflect as much light as possible.) To make matters worse, airships, like submarines, are built with a generous plus factor to their buoyancy, so a airship commander can deal with extreme weather conditions or damage to the lifting cells. But when actually flying, it's best to have your airship at least at neutral buoyancy, if not slightly heavier then that, especially for the tricky job of landing. (More on this in a bit.) All this equals a big headache for your potential areonaut, since in addition to having ballast for trim purposes, it also means constantly adjusting things to keep your airship under control. The WW1 German airship fliers dealt with this problem by just bleeding their hydrogen into the atmosphere. This of course begs the question why you wouldn't just light yourself on fire on the ground, instead of going to all that trouble to do it 20,000 feet up. (The WW1 German airship fliers deserve their own megapost, because if you couldn't tell already they were suicidally brave.) Anyway, to deal with this problem, late model airships like the Akron / Macon had an ingenious solution. The engines were gas based, and the main byproduct of combustion aside from CO2 is water vapor. So, they condensed the vapor from the exhaust, and use the water as ballast. They could then condense more as needed, or bleed off ballast, as conditions dictated.     I don't know if you can make it out, but the Insignia of the squadron is a small trapeze artist being caught by a giant, fat trapeze artist.   Of course, even an huge airship geek like myself can't pretend they were perfect. They had several problems, one of which was to be fatal for both. First: landings. Airships at the time faced several unique problems when landing. The biggest is that at low speeds, their control surfaces don't work, since there is no airflow over them. (Airplanes have this too, but typically they are on the ground by then.) The Navy twins tried to tackle this with variable angle propellers: both airships could face their eight props in any direction along a vertical plane, which I guess also makes them the world's largest VTOL aircraft. Unfortunately having total control in one dimension is not good enough for a aircraft, so the preferred method of getting these airships docked with their mooring masts was 100 stout sailors, plus a couple ropes. This is not only not cost-effective, it proved spectacularly fatal to ground crew on two occasions.  Both times, the airship was caught by a gust of wind, which caused a rapid assent with men still hanging by the ropes. In the first case, the unlucky sailor fell to his death, and in the second case, two sailors were hauled up. One fell to his death and the second amazingly held on long enough to be hauled aboard by the airship's crew. The main flaw, though was this:  Unlike the German Zeppelin designs which had the tails structurally connected to each other, the Akron / Macon had their tails attached to the secondary support structure, which was a series of rings which attached to the three keels. This was especially important for the leading edges of the vertical fins, as they were the part that was always under the most aerodynamic stress. Unfortunately, as designs were being drawn up, it was insisted that the tail be modified so that the Captain could see it from the control gondola. This was because experience had shown large airships often had accidents with their lower fin when taking off and landing, especially in a scary incident in Graf Zeppelin's round the world journey: when taking off from LA the airship was overloaded with fuel, and just barely cleared some high voltage power lines. As you can see in the picture, this change also had the unfortunate side effect of taking the most stressed part of the tail, and attaching it to only the secondary superstructure, and not the much stronger support rings. This meant that the ships were vulnerable to high winds. Akron flew only three years before her fatal crash. She experienced several minor accidents involving ground handling and the bottom fin of her tail, and was often in for repairs. The fatal crash was caused by a violent storm, which in addition to buffeting winds caused a rapid drop in barometric pressure, which in turn caused a sudden loss of lift. The captain responded by dumping all the ballast while angling the ship upward in a desperate attempt to gain altitude. Unfortunately when he did this, he was several hundred feet lower then he thought he was. In a smaller craft this might not have mattered, but as covered, these airships were nearly 800 feet in length, so the Captain inadvertently dashed Akron tail on the stormy sea, which all but wrecked his controls. The Macon had a much longer and more successful career. The end came in 1935, after a accident while crossing the mountians weakened the tail section. I think I'll just cut and paste the wiki entry, since it weirdly reinforces what safe and durable things airships can be: quote:n February 12, 1935 the repair process was still incomplete when, returning to Sunnyvale from fleet maneuvers, Macon ran into a storm off Point Sur, California. During the storm, it was caught in a wind shear which caused structural failure of the unstrengthened ring (17.5) to which the upper tailfin was attached. The fin failed to the side and was carried away. Pieces of structure punctured the rear gas cells and caused gas leakage. Acting rapidly and on fragmentary information an immediate and massive discharge of ballast was ordered. Control was lost and, tail heavy and with engines running full speed ahead, the Macon rose past the pressure height and kept going until enough helium was vented to cancel the lift. It took her 20 minutes to descend from 4,850 ft (1,480 m) and, settling gently into the sea, Macon sank off Monterey Bay. Only two crewmembers died from her complement of 76, thanks to the warm conditions and the introduction of life jackets and inflatable rafts after the Akron tragedy. The two that perished did so needlessly: Radioman 1 class Ernest Edwin Dailey jumped ship after it had lost most of its altitude but was still high above the ocean surface; Mess Attendant 1 class Florentino Edquiba drowned while swimming back into the wreckage to try to retrieve personal belongings. The cause of the loss was operator error following the structural failure and loss of the fin. Had the ship not been driven over pressure height (where the cells were expanded fully and lifting gas released) Macon could have made it back to Moffett Field. Four F9C-2 scoutplanes carried aboard were lost with the airship. So, anyway, I love these airships. While they were in some ways flawed machines, in some very special ways to me they are also magical ones. 
Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mar 26, 2010 06:40
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VikingSkull posted:I think there's a P-40 down in the south surrounded by Migs Think that is actually a Spitfire. Though they do have a P-51 that was part of a squadron that was captured from the KMT. http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK---Air/Supermarine-361-Spitfire/1623045/M/ Imp Boy posted:Is that a B-25 three birds south of the crazy B-29 AWACS? Pretty sure that is a TU-2, though they've moved everything around and added to the collection since I was there. More flying boats: The Saunders Roe SR.A1 'Squirt' Flying Boat Jet Fighter. (those words don't usually go together)  Seawind  [edit] Woah nice Zeppelin post. Here is the Los Angeles having a bad day.  The LA and the Graf Zeppelin were sister ships, and unlike many of their kin on both sides of the ocean, both turned in successful careers and survived to be retired and scrapped. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 26, 2010 |
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Mar 26, 2010 06:46
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Nebakenezzer posted:
The idea of a Navy plane with its home ship painted on the side, but the name referring to another airplane, is absolutely 
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Mar 26, 2010 06:52
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Nebakenezzer posted:
The newest lift capacity designs-- http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/23/new.airships/ Only can handle a payload of 60 tons.
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Mar 26, 2010 16:53
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I was at JFK last week on a layover and flew in on a regional jet so we disembarked on the tarmac. There was a 747 right there and I just in awe. I don't think I've ever seen one in person and have always wanted to fly one. Here is the crappy cell phone picture. When we were taxiing to the runway, I caught a glimpse of an Air France A380. Jesus that thing is a boat. .jpg)
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Mar 26, 2010 17:56
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orinth posted:I was at JFK last week on a layover and flew in on a regional jet so we disembarked on the tarmac. There was a 747 right there and I just in awe. I don't think I've ever seen one in person and have always wanted to fly one. Here is the crappy cell phone picture. How have you never seen a 747? They're everywhere unless you live in the middle of nowhere.
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Mar 26, 2010 19:07
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Flying boat? VTOL? Kaman K-16B Tilt-wing. Project was cancelled before it flew.  Click here for the full 1479x999 image.
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Mar 26, 2010 19:28
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Tetraptous posted:Flying boat? VTOL? In the same vein of "wild poo poo that got cancelled," may I present the Vought Flying Flapjack:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfpTDOAfj7Y This is easily one of my favorite unbuilt aircraft, despite its horrendously ugly shape. Born of an effort to build an optimal wing that is efficient at all airspeeds, this, uh, majestic aircraft pulled one of the neatest tricks of the prop age: its two outboard-mounted props counteract the wingtip vortices of the flat wing, allowing it very very VSTOL capabilities combined with high-speed cruising efficiency. This is wicked-awesome aerodynamic kung fu that has yet to be improved upon. It could also hover (as demonstrated with the model in the video) and land on a carrier deck without tail hooks. If I were building an ultralight from scratch, it would be a pancake wing with outboard engines. It's one of those "ugly to the eye but lovely to the engineer" kinds of designs.
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Mar 26, 2010 20:20
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When they first tested the Flying Pancake they couldnt get the thing to loving land.
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Mar 26, 2010 20:55
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Pretty Little Rainbow posted:When they first tested the Flying Pancake they couldnt get the thing to loving land. I could imagine that causing some operational difficulties.
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Mar 26, 2010 21:01
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I'd bet it would land pretty well once the fuel ran out.
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Mar 26, 2010 22:29
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The newest lift capacity designs-- http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/23/new.airships/ Only can handle a payload of 60 tons. "Dirigible" literally means "steerable," as in any craft you can pilot instead of simply ride. What Mr. Snodgrass there meant to say is that there are two types of dirigibles (not airships), and those are blimps and zeppelins. I wish the sky was full of them.
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Mar 26, 2010 23:53
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Slung Blade posted:I'd bet it would land pretty well once the fuel ran out. It would then land, not necessarily well.
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Mar 27, 2010 01:17
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Which Tank-Busting aircraft has: An armored bathtub for the pilot Twin engines A big-rear end gun that will lay to waste anything it hits? The Henschel 129b, of course:   3 inch thick glass, 1/2 inch plate on the front and bottom, 1/4 inch on the sides. (The cockpit was so cramped the gun sights were mounted on the outside) The armor weighed 2000+ lbs. The plane's empty weight was 9000 lbs. It started out with two 20mm cannons and two 7.92mm machine guns. Then it got a 30 mm cannon pod:  And then a 37mm cannon. Unfortunately for the Germans, the 37 mm cannon was still not enough to reliably take out the newer Russian T-34 tanks. But this was:  The 3000 lb., 75mm PaK 40 anti-tank gun. So they added an autoloader and put it in the 129b.   Firing at 40 rounds per minute, a pilot could get off 3-4 of his 12 rounds in one run at a tank.  Penetration at 500 meters? 5 inches of armor. (The GAU-8 on the A-10? 2 1/2 inches) BONUS Aeronautical Insanity:  See that dorsal turret-looking thingy? See the T-shaped antenna stuck to the plane's chin? Inside the turret thingy were six 77mm tubes extending through the fuselage and angled slightly to the rear. When the antenna detected the metal of a tank below the aircraft, the tubes fired saboted, explosive 45mm shells downwards into the tank. The recoil was counteracted by 77mm steel slugs that shot upward when the tubes fired. However, the antennas weren't very reliable and it was hard to fly the correct height above the tank, so the idea never made it to the field.
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Mar 27, 2010 02:08
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joat mon posted:So they added an autoloader and put it in the 129b. JESUS CHRIST how have I never heard of this before 
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Mar 27, 2010 02:30
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Slo-Tek posted:The LA and the Graf Zeppelin were sister ships, and unlike many of their kin on both sides of the ocean, both turned in successful careers and survived to be retired and scrapped. Wow, I had no idea those two were sister ships. Also I have to ask about the 'Squirt' jet fighter: did it not get all sorts of water in it's jet intake while landing?
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Mar 27, 2010 03:17
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Nebakenezzer posted:Wow, I had no idea those two were sister ships. Turns out I was wrong. The USS Los Angeles was originally built in Germany as the LZ-126, the Graf Zeppelin was LZ-127, but was considerably larger than the LA. They do have a lot in common design wise though. If it looks right, it flies right...which may explain why the soviet Il-40 jet ground attack aircraft didn't get put into production  And also why the Il-102 follow on project also didn't get the job 
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Mar 27, 2010 03:36
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[img]https://wi.somethingawful.com/a0/a059bf8eaad415b72b0ec5978f3ad5efa9e61c7a.jpg[/url][/img]Strabo4 posted:JESUS CHRIST how have I never heard of this before But allow me to introduce you to the Mitchell B-25H:  One 75mm cannon in the nose Four .50 cal. machine guns in the nose Four .50s in the 'cheeks' (two per side). two .50s in the dorsal turret two .50s in the waist (one per side) two .50s in the tail turret plus bombs. I still like the Hs-129, which is less than 1/2 the size of the B-25, more.
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Mar 27, 2010 04:20
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joat mon posted:One 75mm cannon in the nose  The solution to all problems: PUT MORE GUNS ON IT!
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Mar 27, 2010 04:38
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Fucknag posted:
Well duh!
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Mar 27, 2010 05:52
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Slo-Tek posted:If it looks right, it flies right...which may explain why the soviet Il-40 jet ground attack aircraft didn't get put into production If the Tu-22 was a spaceship off a flash Gordon type serial, then this thing is one of those background craft that you never see clearly
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Mar 27, 2010 06:04
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Fucknag posted:
Which leads me to the airplane so cold-blooded, so frightening, its pilots are obliged to carry the "Bad Motherfucker" wallet as The Big Gun In The Sky for the forseeable future. The AC-130:    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4639921789181083769 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H1uvmdAPoM GET OFF MY NUTS, SON.
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Mar 27, 2010 08:02
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joat mon posted:[timg]https://wi.somethingawful.com/a0/a059bf8eaad415b72b0ec5978f3ad5efa9e61c7a.jpg[/url][/timg] Wasn't there a B-25 that they fitted with a 5" gun? Seems like I remember seeing that on Wings growing up, they were trying to use it for anti-shipping or somesuch.
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Mar 27, 2010 14:28
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joat mon posted:Which Tank-Busting aircraft has: Can I have one for Christmas if I'm extra-specially good?
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Mar 27, 2010 16:22
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Breaky posted:Wasn't there a B-25 that they fitted with a 5" gun? Seems like I remember seeing that on Wings growing up, they were trying to use it for anti-shipping or somesuch. That was the Piaggio P.108, the Italian B-17.  They experimented with a 102mm cannon in the P.108 for use in an anti-shipping role, but that version (P.108A) was never put into production. In addition to nose, waist and ventral machine gun points, it also had:  twin .50 cal. machine guns in remote controlled turrets in the outer engine nacelles. The AC-130 has a 105mm gun, but it's a howitzer (low[er] muzzle velocity, lower[er] recoil), not a cannon.
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Mar 27, 2010 16:49
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Ah, the B-25H had a 75mm cannon in the nose at some point. http://www.historyflight.com/aircraft_b25mitchell.htm
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Mar 27, 2010 17:30
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^^^ Smokey Yunick blew up an elephant with one, no joke.joat mon posted:I still like the Hs-129, which is less than 1/2 the size of the B-25, more. It's my favorite ground attack plane of the war, and the first of the 3 great tank busters in history. Not as successful or as plentiful as the other two, but it laid the framework for them. One is the A-10 which we all love, the other is the Su-25 Frogfoot.  This thing doesn't get nearly enough love. 30mm cannon, can carry a ton of poo poo, and has a great Soviet charm. They can do the same things as the A-10, maybe not as well, but it's still maybe the second best CAS aircraft out there. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Mar 27, 2010 |
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Mar 27, 2010 17:53
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/\ /\ My favorite plane in Desert Combat, I would fly super-low and kill my friends by hitting them with the wings. gently caress I loved that game.
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Mar 27, 2010 18:10
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I still have my old copy of the EA Su-25 sim somewhere. DOS sucks rear end.
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Mar 27, 2010 18:13
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You can fly a great rendition of the Su-25 in Lock On. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p18rcs7nJF8 Before you complain about the music, consider that this is one of the least retarded Lock On videos on youtube. Just look for yourself. Also:  http://pissoffbiggles.com/
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Mar 27, 2010 19:33
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Strabo4 posted:JESUS CHRIST how have I never heard of this before You can fly it in IL-2. It's really loving hard to hit airplanes with the big gun (and it's really slow), but man is it great hearing a single KABOOOOOM and then the bomber in front of you explodes all at once. Also fun to watch the gun recoil into the pod and poop a shell the size of your arm out the back.joat mon posted:One 75mm cannon in the nose That sounds to me like a maximum of ten guns that could fire at that ground simultaneously. How about eighty-eight?  Or rather, 88 PPSh submachine guns pointed downwards in the bomb bay of a Tu-2, rigged up to a single trigger. I love the disc magazines -- it's like something that a crazy mafia don would come up with and fly around in.
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Mar 27, 2010 21:09
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Strabo4 posted:JESUS CHRIST how have I never heard of this before Because it was a raging underpowered piece of garbage that wasn't as good for 70% of ground attack missions as the FW-190 and the other 30% (big cannon time) was amply handled by the Stuka. Basically, the Armored Bathtub idea only really works when you get to modern turbofan engines. Without air superiority, slow fighter bombers get hosed up (like the Stuka) and so the FW-190 was really a way more useful aircraft. Anyway, we learn from pretty much every WWII design with anything bigger than maybe 30mm facing forward that it is REALLY loving HARD to hit something going at 300MPH and 100 feet AGL with a cannon. Which is why we've moved to either the great big forward firing autocannon model (A-10, SU attack aircraft, etc) so that you can actually get rounds on target in your pass, or the Orbit Around with a Great Big Howitzery thing like the AC-130. Big cannons in the front of an aircraft are fundamentally a huge waste of time. decahedron fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Mar 28, 2010 |
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Mar 28, 2010 00:02
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RE: Hs 129bdecahedron posted:...it was a raging underpowered piece of garbage. and YOU posted the Boulton-Paul Defiant !?!?!? ...But you're absolutely right. Both had significant weaknesses, (mostly in too much weight and too weak engines) but they are both AI in their own ways. The Defiant is one of my favorites, too. I was surprised to see that somebody else mentioned it.
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Mar 28, 2010 02:03
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decahedron posted:Because it was a raging underpowered piece of garbage... The Chance-Vought Cutlass!      "The Cutlass could be made into a pretty good flying machine with a few modifications, like adding a conventional tail, at least three times the thrust, cutting the nose-wheel in half, completely redoing the flight control system and getting someone else to fly it."
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Mar 28, 2010 02:43
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