I have a lot of respect for the raw arrogance of taking a gun the size of a Volkswagen and putting it in the goddamn sky
I go back and forth on whether the A-10 engineers were the most audacious, or whatever nutbar thought to themselves "I bet if I put enough engines on it, I can make a warehouse fly" and created the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy.
A-10 is like, one of the worst planes in our arsenal, but motherfuck is it intimidating when it starts a run. It more than makes up for its capabilities with the intimation factor I think.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I feel that 90% of military planes were initially created by some guy in a uniform just manically pointing at, like, a tank, building, gun, or whatever, then frantically pointing at the sky
Modern fighter jets are pretty badass, but WW2 fighters are also cool as hell. I was a huge plane nerd as a kid, and I always had a soft spot for the P-51 Mustang and the Spitfire.
Every surviving example I've ever seen leaks oil like a sieve, and I can't tell if it's just because it's an 80-odd year old plane, or if they were assembling them so quickly that tolerances were...relaxed.
Modern fighter jets are pretty badass, but WW2 fighters are also cool as hell. I was a huge plane nerd as a kid, and I always had a soft spot for the P-51 Mustang and the Spitfire.
I've always wanted to get one of those mustang replica kits that are like 2/3 the size of the full deal and build one to fly with.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
If you are at all interested in aircraft and ever make it to Seattle, you need to check out the Museum of Flight. The collection is huge and amazing. I've only been once and it was not enough to see everything.
I have a lot of respect for the raw arrogance of taking a gun the size of a Volkswagen and putting it in the goddamn sky
I go back and forth on whether the A-10 engineers were the most audacious, or whatever nutbar thought to themselves "I bet if I put enough engines on it, I can make a warehouse fly" and created the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy.
that looks like it might be FE Warren's airfield in Cheyenne. it's one of the few runways in that part of the country that can handle a C5. in fact, the runway at Cheyenne's airport is big enough to land any currently produced aerial vehicle, likely due to FE Warren's status as a maintenance hub for nuclear warheads and missiles.
was driving past this airfield, about 150 feet from the runway or so, while one of these went out for a takeoff. it was rad, and terrifying. it was maybe a few hundred feet above the treetops at that point!
that ramp in the nose is regularly used to load M1 Abrams tanks
4 of them at a time.
edit: to see them fly is bonkers. they look fake, tbh, like they shouldn't be able to move much less fuckin careen through the air at a few hundred miles an hour. my grandpa was a naval aviator for years and years and got to see one up close and he said it felt more like standing beside a ship at port than a plane on a runway
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
I love the F-15 and I always will.
America wanted a jet that could swat anything else out of the sky, they looked at what had come before, and they saw high wing loadings - small wings mean your jet only needs to punch a small hole in the air, so it doesn't need as much power to go fast.
Problem was, small wings lead to not much surface area, which leads to high surface area loadings - in supersonic jets the more wing surface area you have, the less aerodynamic load is placed on each square foot, which enables higher maneuverability and greater carrying capacity. Just look at the F-105 - damn thing has tiny little sharp wings, so as long as the engine is running it goes real fast. If the engine stops though, you're shit out of luck - it drops out of the sky like a house brick.
So for their plans to make a jet that can swat anything else out of the sky, the idea was wing - a LOT of wing. All of the wing. Take a look:
It's basically a literally massive delta wing with a bunch of other stuff slung off it.
(this is a picture of an F-15E Strike Eagle, the later ground attack version of the airframe. Look at how tiny the pilot and B/N look!)
It's a big, BIG wing, with LOTS of surface area. An F-15 is significantly larger than say an F-16 Falcon. Only problem with a wing that big is drag - a shitload of drag, induced, surface, and parasitic. Drag sucks power, and without power, you can't go very fast.
So they took the biggest meanest engine available at the time...
And they fitted two of them to the airframe.
Now they had an airframe that was capable of outperforming anything else in the world aerobatically, and could rotate at Vr during takeoff, pull vertical, and accelerate through the speed of sound whilst climbing straight up.
In car terms, they'd built themselves a beastly street machine that could not only pull 1/4 mile times that were unparalleled, but also out-handle an F1 car at the same time. It took from 1967 until the F-22 prototype in 1991 for someone to design an aircraft that could outperform the F-15. Nearly 25 years, modern supermaterials like carbon fibre and titanium, modern manufacturing processes like electron beam welding, and the invention of microprocessor-controlled fly-by-wire, just to outdo the Eagle.
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LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
If you get the chance, stop at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center out at Dulles. It's part of the Smithsonian collection and the entrance is real strong
(not pictured are a F4U Corsair and I think a P51 Mustang directly to my left/right)
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
When I think of the blackbird I think of two things.
that it was literally the X-men's ship in the 90s cartoon
Okay, so U.N. Spacy is from something. The name popped into my head recently and I felt like it was from a thing but it was so silly that I wasn't sure if it was just some nonsense that popped into my head.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I used to have a small trainer RC helicopter, blades were about a foot long and made of balsa. I crashed it about 10 feet away from me and one of the blades j
I have a lot of respect for the raw arrogance of taking a gun the size of a Volkswagen and putting it in the goddamn sky
I go back and forth on whether the A-10 engineers were the most audacious, or whatever nutbar thought to themselves "I bet if I put enough engines on it, I can make a warehouse fly" and created the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy.
I will say for absolutely raw lifting power the Antonov An-225 Mriya is a goddamn marvel of engineering, though only one has ever flown, it is damn impressive. I was reading an article a couple months ago and apparently a 2nd airframe is sitting languishing in a russian hanger, just waiting for something like 12 million dollars worth of work to finish assembly and trials. Too damn bad.
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Airacuda!
Best name for an airplane ever devised!
mind you it should have been called the Manairtee but that's ok
Lockheed Constellation.
North American B-25 Mitchell (seen here in its C variant).
Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde.
Grumman F-14D Super Tomcat.
Boeing 787 "Dreamliner", note the characteristic dihedral angle of the wings.
Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, more commonly known as the Warthog. Is literally a gun with some wingy bits stuck on.
I go back and forth on whether the A-10 engineers were the most audacious, or whatever nutbar thought to themselves "I bet if I put enough engines on it, I can make a warehouse fly" and created the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy.
edit: the Galaxy that is
Every surviving example I've ever seen leaks oil like a sieve, and I can't tell if it's just because it's an 80-odd year old plane, or if they were assembling them so quickly that tolerances were...relaxed.
I've always wanted to get one of those mustang replica kits that are like 2/3 the size of the full deal and build one to fly with.
I'd have more respect for someone taking a gun the size of a Volkswagen and putting it on a goddamn Volkswagen:
[edit] Come to think of it, this is probably why I love planes, and machines in general.
that looks like it might be FE Warren's airfield in Cheyenne. it's one of the few runways in that part of the country that can handle a C5. in fact, the runway at Cheyenne's airport is big enough to land any currently produced aerial vehicle, likely due to FE Warren's status as a maintenance hub for nuclear warheads and missiles.
was driving past this airfield, about 150 feet from the runway or so, while one of these went out for a takeoff. it was rad, and terrifying. it was maybe a few hundred feet above the treetops at that point!
that ramp in the nose is regularly used to load M1 Abrams tanks
4 of them at a time.
edit: to see them fly is bonkers. they look fake, tbh, like they shouldn't be able to move much less fuckin careen through the air at a few hundred miles an hour. my grandpa was a naval aviator for years and years and got to see one up close and he said it felt more like standing beside a ship at port than a plane on a runway
Taking the concept further, here's a General Dynamics concept for an F-16 gunship built around the GAU-8.
Look you can't just post Macross concept art and say it's real.
The a-10 warthog is a close second. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT
no, no, macross used the F-14
Bob?
America wanted a jet that could swat anything else out of the sky, they looked at what had come before, and they saw high wing loadings - small wings mean your jet only needs to punch a small hole in the air, so it doesn't need as much power to go fast.
Problem was, small wings lead to not much surface area, which leads to high surface area loadings - in supersonic jets the more wing surface area you have, the less aerodynamic load is placed on each square foot, which enables higher maneuverability and greater carrying capacity. Just look at the F-105 - damn thing has tiny little sharp wings, so as long as the engine is running it goes real fast. If the engine stops though, you're shit out of luck - it drops out of the sky like a house brick.
So for their plans to make a jet that can swat anything else out of the sky, the idea was wing - a LOT of wing. All of the wing. Take a look:
It's basically a literally massive delta wing with a bunch of other stuff slung off it.
(this is a picture of an F-15E Strike Eagle, the later ground attack version of the airframe. Look at how tiny the pilot and B/N look!)
It's a big, BIG wing, with LOTS of surface area. An F-15 is significantly larger than say an F-16 Falcon. Only problem with a wing that big is drag - a shitload of drag, induced, surface, and parasitic. Drag sucks power, and without power, you can't go very fast.
So they took the biggest meanest engine available at the time...
And they fitted two of them to the airframe.
Now they had an airframe that was capable of outperforming anything else in the world aerobatically, and could rotate at Vr during takeoff, pull vertical, and accelerate through the speed of sound whilst climbing straight up.
In car terms, they'd built themselves a beastly street machine that could not only pull 1/4 mile times that were unparalleled, but also out-handle an F1 car at the same time. It took from 1967 until the F-22 prototype in 1991 for someone to design an aircraft that could outperform the F-15. Nearly 25 years, modern supermaterials like carbon fibre and titanium, modern manufacturing processes like electron beam welding, and the invention of microprocessor-controlled fly-by-wire, just to outdo the Eagle.
(not pictured are a F4U Corsair and I think a P51 Mustang directly to my left/right)
that it was literally the X-men's ship in the 90s cartoon
And this:
You might say
that I am
something of a fan.
I will say for absolutely raw lifting power the Antonov An-225 Mriya is a goddamn marvel of engineering, though only one has ever flown, it is damn impressive. I was reading an article a couple months ago and apparently a 2nd airframe is sitting languishing in a russian hanger, just waiting for something like 12 million dollars worth of work to finish assembly and trials. Too damn bad.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981