iyaayas01 posted:

Cyrano4747 posted:

Is anyone interested on a writeup of the flying-wing dead end in cold war aviation? The YB-49 and weird poo poo like that which partially fed into the eventual B2 program?

Cyrano4747 posted:

You really have to look at their respective WW2 era experiences for this. In both cases the people who were commanding the armies through the cold war were officers in WW2. Hell, I think the last WW2 vet command rank officers didn't retire from the US military until the 80s or so, although most of those guys were junior officers when they first saw combat.

Basically, the German airforce was a constant pain in the rear end for the Red Army. Even as late as the Battle of Berlin the Germans still had the ability to wrest (very) local control of the skies away from the Red Air Force and bring in some fairly devastating tactical air support. Having something on the ground to at least make airplanes maneuver around and gently caress up their aim while they worried about return fire was a flat out necessity.

Meanwhile, the USAAF ran roughshod over the Luftwaffe after early 1944, to the point where air attacks against ground forces were a pretty loving huge exception to the general rule. THe only time when the Luftwaffe was ever really being regularly used in a tactical role against the US military was during some of the early stages of the Italian/Sicilian campaign.

Institutionally this lead to a generation of officers who had vastly different memories. For one the sound of an airplane meant you had to look up and make sure it was friendly if not just dive in a ditch on general principle, while for the other airplane motors almost universally meant that the proverbial cavalry had arrived and that bunker/tiger tank/whatever that was giving you trouble was about to get blown the gently caress up.

Really, tactical air superiority is something that the US has taken for granted ever since WW2 in a way that Russia never has.