A Roundel ...

... for folks who just DON'T take themselves all THAT seriously.  ;-)

From the Royal Australian Air Force ( https://www.airforce.gov.au/about-us/your-air-force/roundel ) ...

A roundel is a circular disc used as a symbol. In order to identify aircraft, the Royal Australian Air Force initially adopted the Royal Air Force's red, white and blue roundel.

During World War II, when an 11 Squadron Catalina was mistaken for a Japanese aircraft by a United States Navy Wildcat, the red inner circle was removed, but re-introduced after the war.

On 2 July 1956, the red kangaroo ‘in motion' was chosen as the most popular centrepiece from a range of other options (including the Southern Cross, a boomerang and a sprig of wattle). It has been displayed with pride, not only on aircraft, but on various promotional material since 1982.

The kangaroo within the Air Force Roundel always faces to the left except when used on aircraft or vehicles, when the kangaroo should always face the front of the aircraft or vehicle.

Copyright

Copyright restrictions apply to the use of any Royal Australian Air Force logo. They are protected nationally and internationally by the Defence Act 1903, Trade Marks Act 1995 and the Chester Herald Act 1939.

I think it takes SOME VERY COOL GUYS to adopt something like THIS to go on their warbirds; guys who just  DON'T take themselves all THAT seriously.  ;-)

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Warbirds

Incorporating videos in my posts is new to me.  I've been blogging since October 2009. on an HP computer (the "Mack truck" of computers) that I bought around the end of 2003. Being an XP machine, with limited memory and on a dial-up connection, dealing with videos was an exercise in masochism. The old machine died a few months ago (hard drive crash).

I replaced it with a refurbished Windows 7 machine (HP of course :-) and took advantage of my apartment complex having outlets installed for Comcast/Xfinity, and got a good deal for activating high-speed internet and digital phone service. Like graduating from a Volkswagen to a Porsche.

So now, I'm learning how to incorporate youtube videos, play with the HTML code to adjust the size they appear here, and how to download those videos onto my computer (as insurance against them being pulled from youtube).

I started with 2cellos, a wonderfully insane music video.

Next came Insight from The Third Man ... , about a wonderful little speech that Orson Welles added to the movie.

And, NOW, here's my latest attempts involving the subjects of the title of this post.  Hope you enjoy.

The Brits know how to put on a show. During the Falklands War (when Argentina invaded the British Falkland Islands in 1982), one of these made an EXTREMELY long range attack down there.

 On its return, it made a demo pass over an air show outside of Houston, where I got a wonderful look at it.

The only surviving Messerschmitt BF109E-4 still flying. It was shot down and belly landed in a field during the Battle of Britain in 1940. It is currently with the Russel Aviation Group, Ontario Canada.

PS - If you like the background music, it's from DAFT PUNK's soundtrack for TRON: Legacy (2010).

On 21 September 1953 a North Korean pilot defected, flying a MIG-15 jet fighter interceptor to Seoul , South Korea. In the process the pilot collected a $100000 reward which had been offered by the United States Government. The United States Air Force quickly set about conducting flight tests to determine the capabilities, and limitations, of the Russian designed aircraft



Among the three test pilots was USAF Major Charles "Chuck" Yeager, the first man to fly faster than sound in the Bell X1 in 1947.  I remember Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff" mentioning that.

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A-10 WARTHOG ... baaaaaaaaaaaad to the bone

One of my best friends and an Air Force buddy forwarded to me ...

  I thought you might be interested in this.

-------------------------------------------------------
WOW!!!

A-10 WARTHOG ... baaaaaaaaaaaad to the bone

"One shot will knock a turret off a tank. You cannot fly the airplane without the gun because of center of gravity being off too far".

----- First, there was this gun ...

It was developed by General Electric, the "We bring good things to life" people.

It's one of the modern-day Gatling guns.

It shoots very big bullets...

It shoots them very quickly...

Someone said, "Let's put it in an airplane."

Someone else said, "Better still, let's build an airplane around it."

So they did. And "they" were the Fairchild Republic airplane people.

And they had done such a good job with an airplane they developed back in WWII .....called the P-47 Thunderbolt!

They decided to call it the A10 Thunderbolt II ... AKA the Warthog

They made it so it was very good at flying low and slow and shooting things with that fabulous gun.

But since it did fly low and slow, they made it bulletproof, or almost so.

A lot of bad guys have found you can shoot an A10 with anything from a pistol to a 23mm Soviet cannon and it just keeps on flying and shooting.

When they got through, it looked like this.

It's not sleek and sexy like an F18 or the stealthy Raptors and such, but I think it's such a great airplane because it does what it does better than any other plane in the world.

It kills tanks.

Not only tanks, as Sadam Hussein's boys found out to their horror, but armored personnel carriers, radar stations, locomotives, bunkers, fuel depots... just about anything the bad guys thought was bulletproof turned out to be easy pickings for this beast.

See those engines. One of them alone will fly this plane.

The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy "bathtub."

That's typical of the design.

They were smart enough to make every part the same whether mounted on the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear, for instance.

Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground debris) and the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate from a damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.

Everything is redundant.

They have two of almost everything.

Sometimes they have three of something.

Like flight controls, there's triple redundancy of those,

and even if there is a total failure of the double hydraulic system, there is a set of manual flying controls.

Capt. Kim Campbell sustained this damage over Baghdad and flew for another hour before returning to base.

But, back to that gun.

It's so hard to grasp just how powerful it is.

This is the closest I could find to showing you just what this cartridge is all about.

What the guy is holding is NOT the 30mm round, but a "little" 50 Browning machine gun round and the 20mm cannon round which has been around for a long time.

The 30mm is MUCH bigger.

Down at the bottom are the .50 BMG and 20x102 Vulcan the fellow was holding.

At the bottom right is the bad boy we're discussing.

Let's get some perspective here: The .223 Rem (M16 rifle round) is fast.

It shoots a 55 or so grain bullet at about 3300 feet/sec, give or take.

It's the fastest of all those rounds shown (except one).

When you move up to the .30 caliber rounds, the bullets jump up in weight to 160-200 grains. Speeds run from about 2600 to 3000 fps or so.

The .338 Lapua is the king of the sniper rifles these days and shoots a 350 grain bullet at 2800 fps or so.

They kill bad guys at over a mile with that one.

The 50 BMG is really big.

Everyone who picks it up thinks it's some sort of fake, unless they know big ammo.

It's really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and goes as fast the Lapua.

I don't have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your hat.

The bullet for the 30x173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket around a spent uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times as heavy as the M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which is faster than the M16 as well).

The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute. Yes, four thousand.

Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which set loose 70 to 150 rounds.

The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000 feet

OK, the best for last.

You've got a pretty good idea of how big that cartridge is, but I'll bet you're like me and you don't fully appreciate how big the GE GAU-8 Avenger really is.

Take a look.

Each of those seven barrels is 112" long.

That's almost ten feet.

The entire gun is 19-1/2 feet long.

Think how impressive it would look set up in your living room.

Oh, by the way, it doesn't eject the empty shells but runs them back into the storage drum. There's just so dang many flying out, they felt it might damage the aircraft.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they can hang those bomb and rocket things on 'em too, just in case.

After all, it is an "airplane"!

Like I said, this is a beautiful design.

-------------------------------------------------------

That's the email, which has been making the rounds with a number of people.

Feeling that it would make a wonderful post, I sent this to whom I thought to be the originator ...

Mr. ******:

****** thought (correctly) that I would be interested in this.

I'd like very much to have your permission to use this as a blog post, giving you full credit.

Beware, though. It is not great fame you will acquire. My blog (see link in my sig below) does not have a large following; probably only a few hundred people will ever see that post.


He replied ...

Mr. Gordon,

Thanks for the above message. I'm a retired Air Force fighter pilot. E-mails such as this one are frequently passed among us- and those friends that are felt to be interested in military aviation and new equipment - such as ******.

This one on the Wart Hog is not of a classified nature. As a matter of fact, nothing such as this that is classified is sent over the Internet. Don't know who originated this one so no credit or acknowledgement should be mentioned.

My airborne roles over the years were of air-to-air and air-to ground in nature. The guys driving these A-10 Wart Hogs were always doing a great job at being "down and dirty" in support of the ground troops.

This "Improved" version is just great for getting the job done with improved safety for the pilots as well. Your displaying this on your Blog Site will perhaps inform the unknowing of one of the things their Air Force has at their disposal for protecting this nation of ours.

If any questions, please feel free to ask.

Regards, **

Ok. I only hope I've done this justice.  I wish I had originated it. (Of course, when someone else has done your work for you, it's so much easier. :-)

BTW, there's another advantage to the engine location besides being "away from ground debris".  If you are an enemy combatant and trying to take a shot at an A-10 with a shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile, you're probably aiming from below and behind. From that position, you'll find the exhaust from the engines obscured by the horizontal tailplane and the twin rudders, making it difficult for the heat seeker in the missile to get a good lock on the target. That is not an accident.
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Living the dream ...

... as one with the Gods.

Found this on Dr. Jerry Pournelle's website,
at http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=5099:
an email beginning "A friend posted this on her Facebook page:"
and including this link https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/406950_218671828223432_168372346586714_447701_403260359_n.jpg

This is the photo it links to ...

Ok, then.  Just how real is that photo?

Peacemaker - OFTEN UPDATED

This post is about airplanes (the B-36 in particular), and is gonna have a bunch of boring photos of same.

If it's more interesting photos you seek, check out Wolf Howling's
  The Genius of Capitalism - An Alien Cathouse ...
Brothel owner Dennis Hof and famed Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss are teaming up to open the new "Area 51" brothel in Vegas, where all of the girls will be playing the roles of various vixens of Sci-Fi fame. It is capitalism at its most creative. 

No way can I compete with that.  Give it a look (it's safe). I'll wait.

03 Jan 2012 - 17:00 - I've already gotten a bit fond of this post, so naturally I just had to tweak it, play with it and add a couple of pictures.  Will I ever learn to just leave well enough alone?  Probably not. :-)

Ok, then.  Back to the subject at hand ...

Convair B-36D Peacemaker - from www.saceliteguard.com

("Peacemaker" was a proposed name from Convair
 - it was never an official name)

When I was a kid in San Antonio in the 50s, B-36s operated out of Kelly AFB (SAC) on the southwest edge of the city and flew over all the time.  It was very rare that one would be low enough to even come close to a view like this one.

More often, the experience was as my brother accurately described in a comment to my previous post ("Blogging is not writing..., which was mostly an expansion of a "To do" list of future posts, including this one) ...

"I'll never forget the sound and the FEEL of one passing over when we lived in San Antone....the damned thing would be so high you couldn't see it but that monstrous drone seemed to come from everywhere and you could feel the vibration if you were standing on hard ground!"

This plane had its genesis before we had officially entered WW2.  In 1941, we were worried that Britain would fall to the Nazis, and instead of having that "unsinkable aircraft carrier" to operate from, we would be looking at doing sorties from Gander, Newfoundland to Berlin, making a round-trip of 5700 miles (9200 km).

Absolutely nothing in our arsenal could even come close to doing that with a decent bomb load, so what was then the United States Army Air Corps (becoming the United States Army Air Forces in June 1941) opened a design competition which was won by the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (later Convair) over a Boeing* design in October 1941.

* = 20 MAR 2019 - LONG overdue correction --------------------
Commenter WagonDave noted: I would question one statement in your original post, and that is Boeing was not the unsuccessful bidder in the 1941 competition. In fact, Boeing felt the specs were not within the capability of the (then) current state of the art. The only competitor was Northrop, with their B-35 Flying Wing bomber. It was, however, deficient in range (at least 20% short, and likely more than that), and there were questions about stability and control issues. Post-war, when n-weapon dimensions and weights became known to designers, the small "Bomb Cells" inherent in the B-35s design precluded the ability to carry any nuke. Realistically, if the USAF was going to have a credible threat against the Soviet Union, it was going to be the B-36 that would be doing it. And it did.

Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing (Added 04 APR 2019)

THANK you, WagonDave. I strongly suspect you are DEAD RIGHT. I DID read SOMEWHERE, about a Boeing entry, but don't recall WHERE, and could NEVER find any confirmation of that. The B-35 designation of Northrop's Flying Wing is the best evidence for your comment. I plead GUILTY to being sloppy about that. :(
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Our entry into WW2 (courtesy of Pearl Harbor) caused the Army to order Consolidated to slow down development of the B-36 and to concentrate on production of their B-24 Liberator bomber, which (with Boeing's B-17) was sufficient for the European theater (policy being to finish off Germany first, and then deal with Japan).

Later, as we looked to the Pacific theater of operations, work was accelerated, but Boeing's B-29 appeared to be capable of doing the job there (which it did with a vengeance).  Did the Japanese have any concept of the wind they had sown and the whirlwind they would reap? ...

       On the morning of December 7th, 1941, when the last Japanese airplane departed Pearl Harbor, some sailors picked up several leaflets which had fluttered down on the burning wreckage of Oahu.  They read: "Goddam Americans all to go hell." Period.
       This was Japan's concept of how to wage psychological warfare against the men of our armed forces.  It proved one thing immediately:  while we knew precious little of the Japanese, they knew even less of us.
       ~Martin Caidin - "A Torch to the Enemy" - 1960

The tools at hand (B-17, B-24 and B-29) were more than sufficient, so there was no real hurry to get on with the B-36.  Indeed, the B-29 was quite horrific enough.

I have a laserdisc of a made-for-TV move Hiroshima (1995), a Canadian-Japanese co-production that is compelling and accurate.  It can be found on DVD, but the DVD does not have the commentary that the laserdisc does.

In that commentary, director Roger Spottiswoode mentions that for interior shots of the B-29, they used one operated by the Confederate Air Force (now politically corrected into the Commemorative Air Force).  They operate what may be the only surviving example of a B-29 in flying condition.

Spottiswoode commiserated with the pilot about that being the only one of the thousands of those magnificent aircraft still flying.  The pilot (a World War Two veteran) was not quite so nostalgic, telling him ...
"This thing was designed and built for just one purpose; to kill thousands of people at a time. One is more than enough."

23 AUG 2019 - ANOTHER overdue update ... The B-29 mentioned above is "Fifi". Since 17 JUN 2017, after a restoration that took over 15 years, a SECOND B-29 ("Doc") has been flying, sometimes WITH "Fifi".  See What is Doc B-29 Superfortress?
NOW, there are TWO!!! :-)

The delays (and lack of immediate need) meant that it was August of 1946 before the B-36's first flight.  The Air Force got its first delivery in 1948 at Carswell AFB ...

B-36A arrival Carswell 1948.- from www.dieselpunks

The plane on the left, the awesome B-29, almost looks like a toy next to it. 

03 Jan 2012 - 17:00 - I have to admit that picture looks a bit weird;  it looks like night at the edge of the field, while the shadows suggest high noon.  I suspect that is exactly the case.

What's beyond the edge of the field is a residential area with a lot of trees with dark foliage.  Carswell was a bit northwest of Ft. Worth, Texas, where development and production were moved to from California. The picture was taken in June 1948, apparently around noon, and the field was so brilliantly lit by sunlight (almost as if by a nuclear flash;   which, of course, is exactly what sunlight is) that adjusting the exposure to a more reasonable level resulted in that area above looking like the middle of the night.  The light objects in that area are houses peeking through the trees;  not lights.

I truly kid you not.  1'll bet this is closer to what that scene actually looked like ...

Welcome to Texas summer; now you know why pilots sport those cool sunglasses. Not as a fashion statement, but to prevent being blinded by the sunlight on a Texas airfield. :-)

For a further size comparison ...

B-36 - cropped from image at fas.org

FYI - Clicking on any of these images will get you a bigger one.

Oddly enough, the B-36 was not built with the atomic bomb in mind (because of the secrecy of the Manhattan Project), but its size made it the only plane in service, for a long time, that could handle the first-generation hydrogen bombs that were entering our arsenal.

Because of that fact it was the mainstay of our nuclear deterrence and was probably the intended tool to back up SAC General Curtis LeMay's promise to leave the Soviet Union "a smoking ruin" were they ever to attack us.  For that reason they were not used in the Korean war, as we still had plenty of B-29s available for strategic bombing there.

The B-36 served for only 10 years (1949 to 1959), primarily because it had already become obsolete as we were well into the jet age when it entered service.

You'll notice, in the Carswell picture above, that the delivered model (B-36A)  had only the six piston engines to drive it.  Six 3250 hp engines (vs the four 2200 hp engines that powered the B-29).  Beginning with the "D" model and continuing with subsequent models, four jet engines were added near the ends of the wings, in twin pods very similar to those on the Boeing B-47;  so similar in fact, I can't help wondering if they are the same pods, with only slight modifications to the pylons for mounting on a very different wing. (05 AUG 2019 - "B" and "C" models were retrofitted with them as well.)

04 Jan 2012 - 12:27 - A little more research ( Castle Air Museum RB-36H Peacemaker 51-13730 ) discloses that is exactly the case about the jet pods.  I actually get something right once in a while.  Cool :-) ...

B-36 Jet Pod - from www.air-and-space.com - added 04 Jan 2012 13:20

That essentially is the same jet pod as used by early models of Boeing's B-47, probably without the outrigger landing gear of the B-47 (although the pod retains the fairing to enclose it). Convair bought some from Boeing, and used a modified pylon to attach them to the B-36's wing.  Biggest difference is the metal petals that expand to close off the inlet when the engine is not running (which is most of the time) to keep said engine from windmilling in the windstream while the bomber is cruising.  They retract when you need to fire up those engines.

Those jets were mainly used to assist take-off (the earlier models used a lot of runway getting airborne with a maximum load) and for extra dash speed over the target after releasing the bomb and trying to get the Hell out of Dodge before it went off.  Otherwise, they normally weren't running. 

14 JUN 2019 - Those jets ran on the same aviation gasoline used for the piston engines. A commenter on the B-36 Interest Group on facebook noted, "Jet engines don’t care what they eat! Gasoline burns hotter & is dirty, but engine will live. More maintenance." 

B-36 formation - from www.456fis.org - added 03 Jan 2012 - 17:00

Added 23 NOV 2019 - from film shot at Carswell AFB for the
1955 James Stewart movie Strategic Air Command

In the short span of its service, its replacements were already being developed.  To try and extend the life of the design, Convair made a version with swept wings and tail surfaces, powered by eight jet engines of the same type as used on its ultimate successor, the Boeing B-52.

This version was ...

Convair YB-60 - from jetpilotoverseas.files.wordpress.com

... designated YB-60 and was in competition with the B-52, ultimately losing because, while quite beautiful, it was outperformed by the B-52 in every parameter.  Not all that surprising as Convair was trying to evolve a ten-year old design while Boeing started with a clean slate.

Did the Air Force make the right choice there?  The B-52 first flew in 1952 (same year as the YB-60;  I remember seeing the first YB-60 flights in newsreels in theaters at that time) and went into service in 1955.  So, its service life is nearing 57 years now, and it just might have another decade or two left in it.

All in all, the B-36 was a pretty awesome airplane.  Even though it never saw action.

Anything else out there that's just as awe-inspiring?

Well, the B-52 ain't exactly a shrinking-violet.

But, I'd be tempted to go with a Russian model from that era ...

Tupolev Tu-95 Bear - from globalsecurity.org

A contemporary of the B-52, it was the Soviet Union's premier long range heavy bomber.  A monster of similar size, it's powered by four 15000 hp turboprop engines:  each driving a pair of contra-rotating (turning in opposite directions) propellers.

Possibly one of the fastest propeller-driven aircraft ever, its engines drive those huge propellers (at least their tips) faster than sound, making it arguably the loudest airplane on the planet.

Because of its long range it has been (and currently still is) used as a reconnaissance aircraft operating along our eastern coast and therefore attracting some of our fighters to escort it and show them that we care.

Added 08 APR 2018

Blogger Frank Martin (Varifrank) noted in a post about one of those enounters ...

I once had an F-4 Pilot tell me that the Bear was the only aircraft that could be found in the air by sound alone, that they only had to turn off the radar and stick their helmets against the canopy and listen for the sound of those huge turboprops.  The noise from the Bear's engines is supposed to be enough to stun a small animal into a coma at 50 yards.

There is a naval version of this plane, designated Tu-142.  Instead of being outfitted to carry H-bombs, it's loaded with electronics for hunting submarines and also with aerial-dropped torpedoes and anti-ship missiles for dealing with them.

The Indian Navy has some of these, and several are tasked with patrolling the waters off of Somalia to help with anti-piracy efforts there.  In May 2011, a Chinese freighter was attacked by Somali pirates and called for help.  An Indian Tu-142M was in the area and buzzed them at low level.

Those pirates probably got this view of it ...

Tu-142M2 - from acig.org

I have no idea if the Indian pilot decided to have a bit of fun and fire-walled the throttles when he passed over them, but considering the noise described above, I'll sure bet he got their attention.

Bottom line:  they left.

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