When wars were colder, planes were cooler!

We used to live near Coningsby when I was 4. We used to go and see the planes (Vulcans and Lightenings iirc) but I used to really hate the noise. My parents used to put headphones on me – old skool hifi style ones, leads and all – and there are amusing pictures of me looking seriously worried with these massive phones slipping down my head 🙂

Going back a(nother) generation, I love this clip

Spitfire

The language is not really office safe though

I’ve always liked the super-hero of warplanes, the F117 Nighthawk….

War does produce some of the best technology.

Memories of childhood holidays in Findhorn – next door to RAF Kinloss.

Shackleton

Nimrod

Shackletons. Jeez-o

10,000 rivets flying in close formation.

As a twelve year old boy I could pretend they were Lancasters off to the Rhur 🙂

I’ve been in a Shacklton. I wouldn’t like to have to get out of it in a hurry because the wing spars run right through the middle of the fuselage like pair of 3ft high walls between you and the back door. Comfy seats though.

I remember being at Mildenhall airshow a good few years back and heard the tail end of a friendly discussion between an A-10 pilot and a Harrier pilot about which of the two planes was best.

They were mentioning the usual facts (A-10 can fly with one engine missing, one tail thingy missing, half of one wing missing etc, Harrier can do the whole V/STOL thing, hide under road bridges etc). Anyway, the argument got round to the Harrier’s VIFF trick, to which the A-10 pilot said: “Yes, I can fly backwards. I just have to keep firing the Gatling”.

Apparently the recoil stalls it at 3 seconds and the plane can go backwards at about 5 seconds.

I heard that and immediately wanted one. Then I got told that you have to be really short to fit in one and that annoyed me. It’s still really cool though and Gulf War 1 must have been great fun for the plane.

Oh yes… I thought I would post up a piccy of the Russian answer to both the Harrier and the Warthog. Gentlemen, I give you the Frogfoot…

It’s still really cool though and Gulf War 1 must have been great fun for the plane.

War isn’t fun.

Although I can see their aesthetic appeal and functional beauty military aircraft aren’t toys for having fun with.

(Sorry for the downer folks)

BTW, apparently the Frogfoot was built based on the loser in the competition that eventually lead to the A10, the Northrop YA-9A,

That’s not a gun.

THIS is a gun

AC-130 Spooky II with it’s little old 105mm Howitzer poking out the left hand side.

Fat Albert gets all angry…!

I truly had no idea this thread would run like this!

Behind sootyandjim’s YA-9A is a flying banana!

The ultimate Cold War bomber HAD to be the B36.

The first bomber with true inter-continental range without air-air refuelling – it used to be in the air for a day and a half!

First bomber capable of delivering a H bomb

6 Piston engines AND 4 jets

Carried its own fighters internally in one of its bomb bays or on its wingtips (OK, only in trials, but even so)

Retractable gun turrets

…and they flew one around the continental US fitted with a nuclear raactor for tests!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker.jpg</img&gt;

Indeed it is.

Uber geek points if you can identify what this one is carrying.

Great thread.
Proper early cold war bomber – the Convair B-36 Peacemaker

6 turning and 4 burning!
Must have been quite a sight and sound.

…shame I got the image wrong, the cheats don’t appear on the work system! Amazing plane, the book “Magnesium Overcast” is well worth a look if you can find a copy.

johnners you beat me to it!

the Convair B-36 Peacemaker

Who says Americans can’t do irony, eh? 😉

amazing loving this thread,
when i was in school 8-9 years old my whole class started a “war club”
everyone drew pictures and added it to the file/folder
we used to take all the military books out of the library
after a while it got shut down by the teachers,
as it was deemed unhealthy 😥

this reminds me of the good old days,
the hind helicopter is one of my favs,

Took this while having a few cold ones after racing at Dartmouth Royal Regatta a couple of years ago. Our trimmer was ex-USAF – he loved it. The organisers ban all movement on the water during these displays – I’m not sure why exactly, but the bigger boats had ~80ft masts. 😯

Typhoon II at Dartmouth

Nothing from the cold war beats this:

OK so it’s purely fictional and you had to ‘think in Russian’ in order to fly it, but if it was good enough for Client Eastwood.

On a serious note, my wife, who is a pilot, said that about 5 years ago she overheard a radio transmission from another plane while flying her 737 over Scotland. The transmission was a request from that plane to ‘descend to 58-zero from 78-zero’, which means, 78,000ft down to 58,000ft. To put that in context, a 737 typically flies at around 27,000ft and Concorde might have gone up to 55,000ft. What the **** was up at 78,000ft to begin with could only have been military.

Here’s a plane that did go to war and kicked ar$e in the S. Atlantic.

CaptainFlashheart – Member

the Convair B-36 Peacemaker

Who says Americans can’t do irony, eh? [:wink:]

Named after the Colt 45…

Me very first pistol was a cap and ball Colt
Shoots as fast as lightnin’ but it loads a mite slow
It loads a mite slow, and soon I found out
It’ll get you into trouble but it can’t get you out

So about a year later I bought a Colt 45
Called a Peacemaker but I never knew why

Of the planes that officially exist, it could have only been a U-2 at 78,000 ft.

willard – Member

I remember being at Mildenhall airshow a good few years back and heard the tail end of a friendly discussion between an A-10 pilot and a Harrier pilot about which of the two planes was best.

They were mentioning the usual facts (A-10 can fly with one engine missing, one tail thingy missing, half of one wing missing etc, Harrier can do the whole V/STOL thing, hide under road bridges etc). Anyway, the argument got round to the Harrier’s VIFF trick, to which the A-10 pilot said: “Yes, I can fly backwards. I just have to keep firing the Gatling”.

Apparently the recoil stalls it at 3 seconds and the plane can go backwards at about 5 seconds.

That’s a nice story, but it’s sadly not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger

Great thread!

SU-30 at an airshow, it actually briefly flies backwards at one point!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY0t_mPv6I4

Jimmers – That version didn’t officially go to the Falklands, though the basic airframe contained within may well have.

You’ll be wanting one of these,

On the high altitude thing apparently in the good old days an RAF Lightning taking part an exercise with the US ‘bounced’ a U2 at extremely high altitude from above! A purely ballistic flight path was used and only one pass was possible but it proved the U2’s weren’t completely safe from manned interceptors.

I stand corrected!

I read this book

Sharkey (the author) said that they used to beat F-15s in mock dog fights during exercises like Red Flag because they could turn inside any of the large and more powerful fighters, a great aircraft IMO.

Sharkey Ward is widely considered an @rse, especially by those who had the misfortune of working directly with him.

A far better book on the exploits of Harriers in the Falklands is,

Sitting near the end of the runway at Charleston AFB as 3 C-5s took off during Spring Break in ’92 was quite impressive, noisy too.
As were the A-10s in ’85 doing stuff up and down the Wye at about zero altitude.

Pook? I though he was a younger lad than that….! 😀

I know, I was quite confused too. Perhaps he had a face lift or something.

Raf phantoms with another favourite, the Jaguar,

And where they should have been left, in the days when we had proper carrier aviation.

Feel a bit of RAF/FAA rivalry going on there sooty. This isn’t the PPrune forum you know.

Sonor – Its mainly WAFU personnel who have such a low opinion of Sharkey, seeing as its them who had to work with him.

I agree with you though about proper carriers. Their flight decks are well-suited to the kind of cocktail parties the RN excels at throwing.

😉

The Squadrons Are Coming (RN flight deck ops, scroll down a bit).

The Phantom. Proof of the theory that if you gave a brick enough power, it would fly. A classic from VietNam though. Many an hour spent playing Flight of the Intruder on the old 386 at Uni…

Speakign of which, spare a thought for the role of the prop plane in that war. Anyone else remember the Skyraider?

How about the Bronco?

They have two of these at Duxford and, for some reason, I really quite like the design.

A few years ago during gulf war 2 I was riding in the Cotswolds when a B52 flew overhead at approx 6,000 feet with a full load of ordnance (JDAMs?) on its pylons. I guess it was off to Iraq to spread the good news.

Was proper scary – wish I’d had a camera.

The Squadrons Are Coming (RN flight deck ops, scroll down a bit).

I was looking for that link for my post.

I agree with you though about proper carriers. Their flight decks are well-suited to the kind of cocktail parties the RN excels at throwing.

😆

Actually, listening to the cockpit chatter on that clip reminds me of this:

Dambusters

Another bit of rotary action, folks….