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Nebakenezzer posted:A Cold War question: how realistic was the idea of the B-36 defending itself from enemy fighters? The P-47 had the same problem that they found during testing against the B-29, the 29 could turn inside the P-47 at the altitudes it operated.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:01
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bewbies posted:Edit: this piqued my interest a bit so I did google research and found this kind of cool article wherein some guy named "Chuck Yeager" apparently had no issues intercepting a B-36 with an early model F-86. The MiG-15 was quite a bit better at high altitude so things probably would have been even worse against the MiG. Haha, sweet. Talk about a expert witness... The lightening program was definitely a thing. The USAF called it 'featherweighting' and it had three stages. The first stage was removing the defense turrets save the tail gun. The second and third stages were removing the bunks and stove, and the fire suppression system. It did give better performance, making the B-36 slightly faster and able to climb even higher. The Recon version, the RB-36, flew over hostile territory frequently. There's some book written by a pilot of these RB-36 missions that was published in the early 1990, and he claims over China the RB-36 often saw attempted intercepts at 55,000 ft with MiG-15s, and the MiG would consistently stall about 15,000 ft below them. xthetenth posted:However I'm pretty sure the MiG-17 could deal with it fine because it had more power, and once it was vulnerable it was very vulnerable. I think this is true. The B-36 had two strategies for defense - lots 'o Cannon, and flying really high. Lots 'o cannon is dubious straight off, since it's really World War 2 thinking - that even in WW2 was kinda disproven, wot with the effectiveness of long-range escorts an' all. e: bewbies are you sure this "Chicago Tribune" is real, some of these ads are awfully suspicious: 
Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 20:08
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It's super funny how they're still cagey about actually saying how high the B-36J-IIIs could get, and I'm pretty sure that wiki literally lists the numbers for a J as being for a featherweight III J, while the Featherweight got something like 15% more ceiling, so room up to 54k feet is pretty reasonable. A lot of it is super contentious because it's tied up in early cold war service politics, and there's an interesting article on Air and Space I'd link if I weren't on my phone. A search for B-36: Bomber at the Crossroads should turn it up. I think the Brit plane was a Meteor F.8, but I can't turn that up. Edit: Haha, wiki's backed off on claiming J figures for a Featherweight III and are now claiming less than that for the J-III. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 21:06
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Here's that article, I think. It is a pretty good read. If the lightweight B-36s could really fly at 50k+ and over 450kts I bet they would have been pretty difficult if not impossible for a MiG-15 or -17 to intercept. Once you got missile-armed -17s and -19s and Su-7s things look a lot worse and I can't imagine an MiG-21 having any issues at all.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:29
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BIG HEADLINE posted:http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinister-psyops-mission-patches/ I don't know why he keeps insisting that they're all from psychological operations missions when a lot of them are blatantly not.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:30
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bewbies posted:Here's that article, I think. It is a pretty good read. Yep, that's it and I tend to agree. I'll have to poke through Magnesium Overcast when I get home.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:33
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bewbies posted:Here's that article, I think. It is a pretty good read. The article is quite good; I didn't know the first SAC commander who was initially against the B-36 changed his mind about them. Also: "the USAF considered the B-52 a place-holder until the B-70 came online." In the early 1950s, were there effective AA missile counter aside from "turn"? (And now that I'm thinking of it, what happened to the B-58 Hustler is rather ironic: once again, bleeding edge high tech is made obsolete within a decade.)
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Mar 2, 2015 22:10
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Just wait for one of the ten engines to fail and you're set.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:16
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Nebakenezzer posted:The USAF called it 'featherweighting' and it had three stages. The first stage was removing the defense turrets save the tail gun. The second and third stages were removing the bunks and stove, and the fire suppression system. "drat, #9's on fire again...Jimmy, go grab a fire extinguisher and crawl out there!"
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Mar 3, 2015 01:52
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Mortabis posted:Just wait for one of the ten engines to fail and you're set. Two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two more unaccounted for.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:02
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Still better than the B-29, which apparently turned into a powered hang glider or a one-winged plane if it lost an engine. The later jet powered B-36s could even lose three engines on the same wing.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:16
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That Chuck Yeager guy got around a lot. 
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Mar 3, 2015 02:19
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There are a few people that just seem to pop up everywhere in that era. In addition to holding the record for highest skydiver for half a century Joseph Kittinger was also the original Vomit Comet pilot and was a chase pilot for those insane manned rocket sled experiments.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:39
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Hunterhr posted:That Chuck Yeager guy got around a lot. And he dove(!) in a MiG(!).
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Mar 3, 2015 02:58
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Thief posted:That is some spooky stuff. God, these are gorgeous when polished up.
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Mar 3, 2015 05:16
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Ruse posted:I took a bunch of pictures of zappers around KAF if you guys are interested. Definitely, depending on the timeframe chances are at least a couple of them will be units I worked with.
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Mar 3, 2015 06:00
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Godholio posted:God, these are gorgeous when polished up. You were saying?  
wkarma fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 06:29
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Mar 3, 2015 07:56
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Got dang did North American design some beautiful, dominant planes
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Mar 3, 2015 08:09
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ManifunkDestiny posted:Got dang did North American design some beautiful, dominant planes Counterpoint:  
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Mar 3, 2015 13:37
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MrYenko posted:Counterpoint: It was testing swept wings on a Fury that got us the Sabre, though.
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Mar 3, 2015 16:01
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Did the Valkyrie have tires with aluminum in them like the SR-71 did? I was out to Wright-Patterson last weekend and the tires seemed very grey. I can't wait for the new hangar to be completed because the current R&D gallery is so comically packed with planes you can barely get a good sense of what any of them look like. The XB-70 in particular is both overwhelming and underwhelming: it towers above everything else but there's no angle where you can get a great look at it.
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Mar 3, 2015 16:53
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Question about F-35 block 50 update for the internal bays. One of the hardpoints there should be able to hold two AMRAAMs. What about Sidewinders? Could the internal bays be made to hold 4 AMRAAMs and 4 Sidewinders? Without compromising the stealth factor by using external hardpoints.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:40
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wkarma posted:You were saying?  339
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Mar 3, 2015 18:02
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OhYeah posted:Question about F-35 block 50 update for the internal bays. One of the hardpoints there should be able to hold two AMRAAMs. What about Sidewinders? Could the internal bays be made to hold 4 AMRAAMs and 4 Sidewinders? Without compromising the stealth factor by using external hardpoints. Sidewinder isn't really any smaller, a couple feet shorter but it has pretty large fins. It's also 3 feet longer then the SDB. You could probably work out a similiar rearrangement for 3 in each bay, totaling a mix of 6 missiles internally. There's no internal layout that will exceed 6 AAMs unless they design a much smaller missile or something.
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Mar 3, 2015 19:30
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What's with the super shiny American fighter styling anyway? Wouldn't that be a lot easier to spot than a drab paint?
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Mar 3, 2015 19:51
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:What's with the super shiny American fighter styling anyway? Wouldn't that be a lot easier to spot than a drab paint? Yeah but the opposing fighter will be blinded going to the merge 
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Mar 3, 2015 19:53
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PittTheElder posted:What's with the super shiny American fighter styling anyway? Wouldn't that be a lot easier to spot than a drab paint? Originally it was to save weight I think.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:06
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PittTheElder posted:What's with the super shiny American fighter styling anyway? Wouldn't that be a lot easier to spot than a drab paint? Yes and no. At the altitudes most of those planes were fighting at it didn't make a lot of difference and it was probably easier to spot a OD plane against clouds or blue sky than a silver one. Where it did make a huge difference was on the ground, but US planes weren't under any real threat while on the ground during the latter half of WWII or Korea. Dropping the paint saved between 100 and 300 lbs of weight; that plus polishing the metal added a good 10 mph to a P-51 or P-47s top speed. It also reduced production time by a few days and reduced the logistical footprint of the line units since they didn't have to worry about maintaining the paint. Corrosion wasn't a big issue as the life expectancy of these planes was so short as to make it pretty much irrelevant except for naval aircraft, which is why the USN always painted everything. The Luftwaffe was getting so constantly pasted on the ground they had to camo the hell out of everything; their patterns by 1944 were all brown/green/purple to hide better on the ground. Since they couldn't drop the paint they started filling in seams and sanding down rivets and gloss coating everything.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:23
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david_a posted:Did the Valkyrie have tires with aluminum in them like the SR-71 did? I was out to Wright-Patterson last weekend and the tires seemed very grey.
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Mar 3, 2015 22:37
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david_a posted:I've managed to find a somewhat questionable source that says they were indeed 48-ply aluminum impregnated rubber tires filled to 500 psi. Hey, don't question the "truthiness" of a guy who knows so much about "Macnamera."
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Mar 4, 2015 00:06
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bewbies posted:The Luftwaffe was getting so constantly pasted on the ground they had to camo the hell out of everything; their patterns by 1944 were all brown/green/purple to hide better on the ground. Since they couldn't drop the paint they started filling in seams and sanding down rivets and gloss coating everything. I'm not sure if you could actually prove it, but sometimes I wonder if advances in camouflage actually correlate to losses. I mention this because the Luftwaffe actually had some (if you can excuse the oxymoron) brilliant camo designs, as did the late war army.
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Mar 4, 2015 00:18
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I've read that the shiny aluminum finish on 50's Air Force jets was also supposed to reduce damage from the flash of a nuclear explosion (reflecting rather than absorbing some of the energy). I don't know how truthful that actually is; it has a strong urban legend flavor to it. In any case, it definitely looked  . I'm also a big fan of the two-tone paint pattern that's lighter on the bottom, like a fish or something. I know there's an official term for it that I can't remember at the moment, and it seemed to be popular in the 60's and 70's. I would absolutely love to have a plane done up retro-style like this.  Because if you're going to be big, fat, and slow, you might as well paint it like a whale as well.
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Mar 4, 2015 02:07
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Wingnut Ninja posted:I've read that the shiny aluminum finish on 50's Air Force jets was also supposed to reduce damage from the flash of a nuclear explosion (reflecting rather than absorbing some of the energy). I don't know how truthful that actually is; it has a strong urban legend flavor to it. In any case, it definitely looked It's called countershading. In nature, you expect to see lit objects as lighter on top and darker on the bottom - it's a visual cue that helps in determining the size and speed of an object. Countershading is when you do the opposite - make yourself dark on top and light on the bottom to screw up those visual cues. Human camouflagers got the idea from nature, where penguins and whales use that sort of color scheme.
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Mar 4, 2015 02:11
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's called countershading. It happens all over the place. Frogs are a great example: green backs so that they blend in with algae and dirty water to hide from birds, white bellies to blend in with the sky to hide from predatory fish. Of course, plenty of them still get eaten by both but enough survive to make it a useful evolutionary adaptation. And when you're a fat bastard in blue water...  Love the Catalina. 
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Mar 4, 2015 02:41
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Wingnut Ninja posted:I've read that the shiny aluminum finish on 50's Air Force jets was also supposed to reduce damage from the flash of a nuclear explosion (reflecting rather than absorbing some of the energy). I don't know how truthful that actually is; it has a strong urban legend flavor to it. In any case, it definitely looked Nuclear bombers tended to have their bellies painted in what was called anti-flash white for a while. Maybe the bare metal had a similar effect but if they were that concerned about it I'd expect the white to turn up in more places.
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Mar 4, 2015 03:13
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Img dump, KAF stickers                Loved the Fox News sticker on the last one. So random.
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Mar 4, 2015 03:18
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that's cool, I drive by columbia helicopters weekly
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Mar 4, 2015 03:21
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lol my unit made it into not one but two different areas Of course we've been there continuously for over four years so I'd hope that entire place is covered with our zaps by now. Were the semi-outdoor/wooden rafter pictures taken at TLS? \/ Makes sense because the WB-57 guys were some rad dudes \/ e: While I'm talking up NASA their Ikhana (MQ-9) guys are pretty cool dudes as well. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 05:05
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Those WB-57F stickers are rad
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Mar 4, 2015 05:11
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