Watching Mr Martin in the Tin Triangle, I find myself musing on the fact that there are many bringers of death that are also rather beautiful.

Examples;

and….bear with me on this one….

If you didn’t know what it was, and what it was bringing, you’d think it was beautiful.

A touch morbid, for which I can only apologise. Any other examples, though?

Functional is often beautiful IMO

Can’t match your scale cfh but this looks like death and beauty to me https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+eiger&client=ms-android-sonymobile&prmd=imvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilmMKTwrbJAhUKtBoKHfc6BRYQ_AUIBygB#imgrc=Txkcl2I0Y1NT6M%3A

Switch over and watch The Hunt on BBC1

Brigitte Lahaie. In the 1970s. With a scythe.

Ohhh Mr OAAB, Niiiiice choice. Looks like Velux in the Southern Ocean??? Classic…

Always had me wondering… just why the fek would you…?

If you didn’t know what it was, and what it was bringing, you’d think it was beautiful

I feel the same about Cauliflower.

Deadly in many ways

Driven to it by the Dane.

Never was Jim Carrey’s impersonation of Jimmy Stewart more a propos.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0syLFyuiHE[/video]

Watching Mr Martin in the Tin Triangle, I find myself musing on the fact that there are many bringers of death that are also rather beautiful.

Absolutely

Deadly in many ways

How do you obtain a Starfighter? Buy a patch of ground and wait…

How do you obtain a Starfighter? Buy a patch of ground and wait…

Wasn’t called ‘The Widowmaker’ for nothing. Killed a lot of pilots. (open to conjecture)

Largactil…..5 miligrammes……

If the WHO are to be believed…

[/quote]How do you obtain a Starfighter?

From the same page as the first image.

@ Drac. AH64 Apache Longbow.

‘Don’t bother running, you’ll only die tired’

[url=https://flic.kr/p/y6A6Bn]Goshawk 003[/url] by jimmyg352, on Flickr

It has 2 brain cells. One says ‘fly fast’ the other says ‘kill everything in sight’.

& on the other hand…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/oX6i9G]AWM L115A3[/url] by jimmyg352, on Flickr

The Starfighter was a good safe aircraft, until it was altered from its original spec for roles it was never intended. That’s when things went wrong, sadly for the pilots.

esselgruntfuttock – Member
How do you obtain a Starfighter? Buy a patch of ground and wait…
Wasn’t called ‘The Widowmaker’ for nothing. Killed a lot of pilots. (open to conjecture)

IIRC, the biggest problem was with the ones flown by the Luftwaffe, due to poor maintenance; I read of things like tools left in jet intakes and suchlike. ‘Course, with a plane like the 104, it’s not got much in the way of glide characteristics if things go tits up!
I mean, just look at the bloody thing, it’s little more than a guided missile with the guidance system one poor bugger sat at the pointy end, with a sodding great jet engine behind him and the smallest wings they could get away with to get it airborne.

I nearly said about the German ones but don’t have facts to hand, didn’t they lose more than anyone?

I remember seeing (& hearing) The Vikings display team at RAF Leuchars waay back, 2 x 104’s, Dutch IIR. Fast, loud & bloody impressive!

If we’re talking beautiful V-bombers, this carried more, further, and looked better doing it.
[/url]Handley-Page, H.P. 80, Victor by SDASM Archives, on Flickr[/img]

I always knew the star fighter as the Flying Coffin.

There’s definitely something about mushroom clouds – there’s a book, 100 Suns, with lots of stunning pictures. And of course there’s the film of the Tsar Bomba:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNPhn64TA[/video]

The F104 is the reason that I have to do a yearly course on corruption in business. From legend, the manufacturers bribed the shit out of NATO to buy it.

I, personally, don’t think that the AI AWM is a nice looking rifle. It’s very, very functional. Depending on your skills, this can be quite deadly (to smaller animals)

I had to really

Edit. Ah beaten to the snake.

weirdly, also the U2 is only a couple of steps removed from the F104. the original Lockheed design for the U2 (the CL282) was a 104 with a shorter fuselage and longer (natch) wings…

from one of the fastest planes at the time, to one of the slowest!

I nearly said about the German ones but don’t have facts to hand, didn’t they lose more than anyone?
I remember seeing (& hearing) The Vikings display team at RAF Leuchars waay back, 2 x 104’s, Dutch IIR. Fast, loud & bloody impressive!

I have some sort of recollection from back then that the Luftwaffe ones had a terrible safety record.
Re the display team, I remember going up to the RIAT on a truly vile day, July 21, my birthday, very low cloud, windy, bloody cold, (I bought, and wore, a sheepskin flying jacket as a birthday pressy to myself I was so cold), and I remember watching a 104 display team, which I think were Turkish, they were just about the last airforce flying them.
Considering the dreadful conditions they put on a pretty good show, cloud ceiling was less than 1000′, and they were doing high speed low-level passes with one upside down below the other, ‘mirroring’ it, with a grey shock cloud of compressed moisture practically enveloping both planes, then doing the same with them top to top, bloody impressive, all things considered.
Terrifying, too; I kept expecting things to go very horribly sideways.
The ‘Century series’ American jets all had issues of one sort or another, if memory serves.

For Northwind:

😆