This Date in Aviation History: October 2 - October 4

Kinja'd!!! "ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
10/04/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

Kinja'd!!!8 Kinja'd!!! 30

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from October 2 through October 4.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(US Air Force)

October 2, 1942 – The first flight of the Bell XP-59 Airacomet. In the period before and during WWII, American jet engine development was far behind that of Europe. Germany had flown the first jet-powered aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , in the summer of 1939, even before the war had begun, and fielded the first operational jet fighter with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Britain had flown their first jet aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , in 1941, and their first fighter, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , entered service in 1944. As part of an agreement between the US and Britian to share British technology in exchange for American help manufacturing military hardware, the US obtained plans for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engine, and a complete engine was flown back to the US in the bomb bay of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The plans were given to General Electric to manufacture the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! -designed engine under license as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Kinja'd!!!

XP-59 fitted with wooden propeller and covered with shrouds to conceal the true source of its propulsion. (US Air Force)

The US Army Air Corps then approached !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , head of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , to design a fighter around the new power plant. Secrecy was paramount. At the time, Bell was developing a twin-boom, pusher propeller fighter that the USAAF had designated the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . America’s new jet fighter received the same designation in the hopes that observers might think it was just a development of the XP-59. The piston-powered fighter never moved beyond wind tunnel mockups, and the unrelated jet-powered fighter became the XP-59. The ruse was further perpetuated when, during ground movements of the first aircraft at Muroc Army Air Field ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! today), a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was affixed to the nose and shrouds were placed over the engine nacelles to hide the true nature of the aircraft’s power plant.

Kinja'd!!!

A Bell family photo: the first production P-59A flies in formation with a Bell P-63 King Cobra (center) and a Bell P-39 Airacobra (top). (US Air Force)

Bell finalized his design for the Airacomet in January 1942, and even before the first prototype was flown, an order was placed for 13 aircraft. Unlike the Meteor and the Me 262, both of which had their two engines housed in wing-mounted pods, the Airacomet integrated its engines and intake nacelles into the fuselage, a arrangement that heavily influenced future jet aircraft design. The Airacomet’s first flight was accidental, as Bell test pilot Robert Stanley unintentionally lifted off the ground during high-speed taxi tests on October 1. The official maiden flight was made the following day, October 2. In testing, the Airacomet generally performed well, though it showed a tendency to yaw from side to side and was deemed unsuitable as a fighter.

Kinja'd!!!

Bell P-59B Airacomet. Though faster than the P-39A, the B model was still no faster than the top piston-powered fighters of its day. (US Air Force)

With a top speed of 404 mph, it was no great leap forward from contemporary propeller fighters. Even when the P-59B was given upgraded engines it’s top speed only just equaled that of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . A further development of the Airacomet, with a single engine, was considered, but that project was eventually handed off to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , where !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! developed it into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first jet fighter to be flown operationally by the US. A total of 66 Airacomets were produced and, though the aircraft saw limited service, it still proved useful for training the first generation of jet fighter pilots and mechanics, who used the P-59 to learn the characteristics of jet flight and maintenance before transitioning to more modern aircraft.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!! !!!CAPTION ERROR: MAY BE MULTI-LINE OR CONTAIN LINK!!!

October 4, 1957 – The launch of Sputnik 1 . The eighteen-month period from July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958 was celebrated as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (IGY). Sixty-seven countries (but not China, who chose not to participate in protest of the inclusion of Taiwan) attempted to transcend the political and cultural divides of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and come together in the name of science. The ideological adversaries worked on projects that covered 11 Earth sciences, including ionospheric physics and other investigations into the near space around our planet. Despite the amicable intentions of the IGY, the Soviet Union saw the event as the perfect opportunity to make a Cold War propaganda statement by launching the world’s first artificial satellite into space, Sputnik 1 ( Sputnik simply means satellite ). For a generation brought up on stories of space adventure and the marvels of science fiction, Sputnik was science reality, and the American public was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that the Russians had beaten the US into space.

Kinja'd!!!

Sputnik 1 was launched into orbit from what is now known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Kazakhstan atop the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which the Soviets derived from the world’s first !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (ICBM), the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . At just 24 inches in diameter, the diminutive satellite trailed four antennas placed equally around the satellite so that it could transmit to Earth from any position in its axial rotation. As the satellite circled the Earth, it emitted radio pulses that could be tracked by amateur radio operators on the ground the world over, serving as a constant reminder that the Soviets were directly overhead. Sputnik 1 could also be seen from the Earth, and observers who turned their binoculars or telescopes skyward could watch the bright dot of the Russian satellite as it passed overhead.

Kinja'd!!! !!!CAPTION ERROR: MAY BE MULTI-LINE OR CONTAIN LINK!!!

As effective as Sputnik 1 was as a propaganda tool, it was more than just that. The satellite   also performed useful scientific experiments as it moved through the edge of space. The drag it experienced helped to ascertain the density of the upper atmosphere, and the radio signals sent back to Earth provided useful information about the ionosphere. These radio signals lasted for just 21 days before the three silver-zinc batteries ran out, and Sputnik 1 burned up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on January 4, 1958, just three days after the US launched their own satellite, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . However, the Americans only managed a third place finish in the first heat of the Space Race, as the Russians had launched !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   two months earlier.

Kinja'd!!! !!!CAPTION ERROR: MAY BE MULTI-LINE OR CONTAIN LINK!!!

Despite the intention of the IGY to bring nations together, the launch of Sputnik 1 marked the beginning of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , an entirely new competition between East and West, with America seemingly always one step behind. It was not until the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! put a man on the Moon on July 24, 1969 that the Americans finally gained the upper hand. In the face of this momentous achievement, the Russians simply shrugged and said they never wanted to go to the Moon anyway, though they had certainly !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Instead, the Soviet space program focused its efforts on long endurance missions in orbiting space stations.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Short Takeoff

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(Tim Shaffer)

October 2, 1981 – US President Ronald Reagan restarts the Rockwell B-1 Lancer program. The original B-1 had been developed as a supersonic nuclear and conventional bomber designed to replace both the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and first flew in 1974. But citing cost overruns, as well as the proliferation of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the project was canceled in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. By the time Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the doctrine of fighting the Soviet Union had changed, and the US was now facing regional conflicts that were seen as difficult to fight with the existing B-52. As part of his promise to rebuild the US military, President Reagan restarted the B-1 program, and the bomber was developed into the B-1B, an upgraded and more capable version of the original B-1A. Rockwell received a contract to build 100 Lancers at a cost of $2.2 billion, and production ended in 1988.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(US Army)

October 2, 1956 – The first flight of the Hughes TH-55 Osage. Development of the Osage began in 1955 when Hughes identified a market for a low-cost, lightweight two-seat helicopter and began work on the Model 269. Though the Army initially chose not to adopt the 269, they showed a renewed interest in the improved Model 269A, and adopted it in 1964 as the primary training helicopter to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . By the time the Osage was replaced by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (“Huey”) in 1988, more than 60,000 Army pilots had trained on the TH-55. The civilian Model 269/300 is used for transport, observation and agricultural spraying. A total of 2,800 were produced from 1961-1983.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(US Navy)

October 2, 1946 – The first flight of the Vought F6U Pirate, the first jet fighter built by Vought for the US Navy. In September 1944, the Navy announced a specification for a single-seat fighter built around the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engine. To save weight, the Pirate was constructed of “Metalite,” balsa wood sandwiched between layers of aluminum. But the Pirate was woefully underpowered and, even after the installation of a more powerful engine, the Navy’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! stated, “The F6U-1 had proven so sub-marginal in performance that combat utilization is not feasible.” The 30 production Pirates racked up only 945 hours of total flight time, and some had a mere six hours on the airframe, just long enough to certify the aircraft for acceptance and ferry it to its final resting place.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(Loverdet)

October 2, 1928 – The first flight of the Dewoitine D.520, a French fighter that entered service soon after the beginning of WWII. The D.520 was designed to compete with modern fighter aircraft and was fitted with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 12-cylinder engine, the most powerful engine available to the French at the time. Though slower than the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , its chief adversary, the D.520 was more maneuverable, and proved nearly a match for the German fighter. With the fall of France, the D.520 continued to be flown by both the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Air Force and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Air Force, and production was restarted in 1942 to serve the Luftwaffe and German allies. The D.520 saw combat in North Africa, Bulgaria and on the Eastern Front, and was ultimately retired in 1953 after roughly 900 had been built.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(NASA)

October 3, 1985 – The first flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, the fourth of five !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! built for NASA. Atlantis was also the last Shuttle to launch into orbit on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , July 8, 2011, after the cancelation of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The orbiter’s first mission, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , launched on October 3, 1987, and delivered a classified Department of Defense payload to orbit before returning to Earth four days later. Over the course of 33 flights, Atlantis racked up 4,848 orbits of the Earth, flew nearly 126 million miles, carried 156 different astronauts to space, and performed the fourth and final !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Atlantis is now on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(Author unknown)

October 3, 1943 – The first launch of the V-2 rocket, a gyroscopically guided “vengeance weapon” developed by German rocket scientist !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The test launch, and many following operational launches, took place from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea. The first rocket traveled just 118 miles, but it was the precursor to more than 1,100 rockets that were fired against England and France beginning in early September 1944. Launched from mobile launchers and reaching speeds of almost 4,000 mph, the rockets were impossible to intercept and caused the deaths of more than 2,700 Britons. Following the war, captured V-2 rockets—and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! —formed the nucleus of both the American and Russian space programs.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!!

(NASA)

October 4, 2004 – The death of Gordon Cooper. Born on March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper was an aerospace engineer, US Air Force pilot and test pilot, and the youngest of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , America’s first astronauts. Cooper flew !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Germany and served as a flight commander in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Back in the United States, Cooper met and became friends with Gus Grissom, another of America’s first astronauts. Cooper first flew in space on May 15, 1963 on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the sixth and final manned mission of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the final mission in which a single American astronaut was launched into orbit. During the flight, problems with the guidance system required Cooper to fly the Faith 7 capsule manually, and he came down in the ocean just four miles from the recovery fleet. Cooper’s 34-hour flight marked the first time an American had spent more than a day, and slept, in space. In 1965, Cooper returned to space as Command Pilot of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a 191-hour flight that proved astronauts could fly to the Moon and back. Passed over for an Apollo mission, Cooper retired from NASA in 1970, and died of Parkinson’s Disease at age 77.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!! !!!CAPTION ERROR: MAY BE MULTI-LINE OR CONTAIN LINK!!!

October 4, 1992 – The crash of El Al Flight 1862, a cargo flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. After departing from a refueling stop at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, fatigued fuse pins holding the number 3 engine on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (4X-AXG) failed, causing the engine to fall and swing into the number 4 engine. Both engines subsequently broke off the aircraft. The pilots attempted to return to Schiphol, but the asymmetric lift caused by the remaining engines on the left wing, combined with a lack of lift from damaged control surfaces on the right wing, led to an uncontrollable spin as the aircraft slowed for landing. The 747 !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , causing the deaths of the four crewmembers and 39 on the ground.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Kinja'd!!! !!!CAPTION ERROR: MAY BE MULTI-LINE OR CONTAIN LINK!!!

October 4, 1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-154, a three-engine narrow-body airliner that served as the mainstay of the Russian flag carrier airline !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and 17 other nations. Since its introduction in 1972, the Tu-154 has carried 137.5 million passengers a year, half of all civilian passengers flown by Aeroflot. Like many other Soviet aircraft, the Tu-154 was designed to operate from unpaved airfields, and provided service to otherwise unreachable Arctic regions of the Soviet Union. Aeroflot announced the retirement of the Tu-154 in 2010 after almost 40 years of service, and the last scheduled passenger flight took place in May 2015.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Connecting Flights

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!


DISCUSSION (30)


Kinja'd!!! user314 > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 13:35

Kinja'd!!!1

Planes of Fame has a YP-59A that they’re restoring to flyable status. Hope to get to see it some day.

Kinja'd!!!

Some I.G.Y. sounds:

Some other I.G.Y. sounds:


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 13:43

Kinja'd!!!0

... more than 1,100 rockets that were fired against England and France ... and caused the deaths of more than 2,700 Britons.

I knew the things were ineffective as toos l of war , but I didn’t realize just how ineffective. That has got to be the lousiest cost/benefit ratio I’ve ever seen.


Kinja'd!!! MonkeePuzzle > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 14:33

Kinja'd!!!2

I love how boaty this generation of planes were. aerodynamics were I think just assumed to be akin to aqua-dynamics

Kinja'd!!!


Kinja'd!!! facw > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 15:09

Kinja'd!!!1

I mean you did have the advantage of a population that was sheltering to some extent, but yeah these things were terrible from a payload per dollar (Deutsche Mark I guess?) standpoint. Long-range b allistic missiles aren’t really useful unless you can put a nuke on them.


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > facw
10/04/2019 at 15:19

Kinja'd!!!0

Quite.  It took cruise missiles to make strategic use practical, didn’t it?  And that’s an entirely different animal.


Kinja'd!!! facw > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 15:34

Kinja'd!!!1

The Nazis also had the V-1:

Kinja'd!!!

T he V-1 was the first operational weapon that could be called a cruise missile, and was much more effective for the Germans. A large number were intercepted or otherwise failed to do damage, but they were cheap enough that it didn’t matter, they were much more effective than the V-2, and probably significantly more effective than the Blitz.


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > facw
10/04/2019 at 16:00

Kinja'd!!!0

Yes, although without proper targeting, they probably weren’t the best bang for the buck either, I suspect.


Kinja'd!!! InFierority Complex > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 16:04

Kinja'd!!!0

The Airacomet is a good looking plane but there just wasn’t anything about that screams “fighter” to me. I know that aesthetics are pretty secondary to the process but it just looks like some sort of civilian weekend toy than a combat aircraft.


Kinja'd!!! facw > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 16:19

Kinja'd!!!1

They did have an autopilot (IIRC, basically you specified a heading, altitude, and distance to be traveled before it dove ). As you can imagine though, a 1940s autopilot was a bit limited, so the V-1s rarely hit their targets. I think the Germans originally wanted to do a more accurate radio guidance system, but ultimately decided that as long as they were targeting London, they’d hit something even if they missed what they were aiming at. So not great, but then of course regular bombers weren’t particularly good at hitting their targets either.

They also experimented with (and built nearly 200 of) a manned version, which could be more accurate:

Kinja'd!!!

Ultimately though Hitler was convinced that suicide weapons were unbecoming of the mighty Germany warrior (the plan called for the pilot to parachute out at the last minute, but given proximity to the target, and having the pulse jet intake right behind the cockpit, there’s really no way that would have worked beyond pure luck).


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > facw
10/04/2019 at 16:27

Kinja'd!!!1

Yeah, I think it was just a gyro. And it was too easy for Allied pilots to tip them.  They couldn’t regain target after that.


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > InFierority Complex
10/04/2019 at 17:46

Kinja'd!!!0

When you consider that the first idea they had was to put a jet engine in a P-47, you can see that the US’s design language was very much rooted in what they knew, and all they knew was prop fighters.

Kinja'd!!!

It wasn't until Kelly Johnson got his hands on the Airacomet that he transformed it into our first truly modern jet fighter. 


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > MonkeePuzzle
10/04/2019 at 17:48

Kinja'd!!!2

And then there was the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1.

Kinja'd!!!


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > facw
10/04/2019 at 17:50

Kinja'd!!!0

The V-1 was sent in a particular direction, and had a wind-powered timer that simply shut off the engine when it got near the target. It then nosed over and dived on the target. If you got to within a city block or so, it was probably considered a success. But of course, when your target is the entire city of London, it’s hard to miss.


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 17:51

Kinja'd!!!1

The V-1 was sent in a particular direction, and had a wind-powered timer that simply shut off the engine when it got near the target. It then nosed over and dived on the target. If you got to within a city block or so, it was probably considered a success. But of course, when your target is the entire city of London, it’s hard to miss.


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 17:52

Kinja'd!!!1

The V-2  was much more of a terror weapon than a tactical weapon. The RAF could stop the V-1's, but there was nothing they could do against the V-2. 


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > user314
10/04/2019 at 17:53

Kinja'd!!!0

Would love to the YP-59 in the air. I would imagine they would put more modern engines in it, though.

Nightfly is one of my all-time favorite albums. 


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 18:06

Kinja'd!!!0

Yes, and I suppose you could consider it a success that it even worked on a regular basis. As a strategic option though, if you can’t hit a specific target, how useful can it actually be?


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 18:08

Kinja'd!!!2

Yes, and  terror tactics are notoriously unreliable.


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 18:26

Kinja'd!!!2

You could ask the same question of the entire Allied strategic bombing campaign. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the results were, at best, mixed. And even though the report officially claimed success, most members of the review panel were civilians who had a vested interest in the outcome of the study. While the bombing had its successes, much of German production of wartime materiel actually increased until the end of the war. And the main proponents of strategic bombing in the US, who espoused the theories of Douhet and said that the bombing of cities would lead to a collapse of morale, were found to be completely wrong. Unless, of course, you factor in the atomic bombs which finally brought the capitulation of Japan. (An interesting aside, the atomic bomb was originally intended for Berlin, but it wasn’t ready when VE Day came. I still wonder if America had fewer qualms about dropping the bomb on “the yellow bastards” than they would have had about dropping it on their European ancestors.)

You do need to separate strategic from tactical bombing, though. Strategic bombing functions to carry out a long-term goal, such as crippling aircraft production, or oil refining, while tactical bombing aims to take out a specific target as it relates to battlefield objectives. Due to their inaccuracy, the V-1 and V-2 could only be considered strategic weapons, launched in an effort to affect Allied morale. Tactically, they were useless.


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 18:27

Kinja'd!!!0

You could make an argument that the carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities was an act of terror meant to make the Axis governments capitulate. It didn’t work, even when Dresden was burned to oblivion and Japanese cities were incinerated by firebombing raids. By the time the atom bombs were dropped, the Japanese were already done. However, any invasion of the Japanese homeland would have been an absolute bloodbath. 


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 18:51

Kinja'd!!!0

This is what I mean.  Without the big bomb, we probably would have had to invade Japan.


Kinja'd!!! Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 18:59

Kinja'd!!!0

I haven’t looked at any statistics, but my hypothesis is that the efficacy of strategic bombing has increased with accuracy of targeting technology. For sure the Allied bombers had limited accuracy. That’s why, I assume, they had to fly in squadrons to blanket an area (and also to increase tonnage, of course). Today, we can hit single buildings with a single guided missile.

If German war production increased over the war, I wonder yet if strategic bombing didn’t have a damping effect on the quality of materials produced and a delaying effect on specific programs and items . For example, if you hit one of their factories where a heavily relied upon fighter is being built, a ll the specific tooling has to be reconstituted in another location before production can begin again. Even if your production is decentralized, that still has to be a setback, unless you were well over capacity to begin with.


Kinja'd!!! user314 > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 20:36

Kinja'd!!!0

S upposedly they’re using the original J31s.


Kinja'd!!! gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 21:32

Kinja'd!!!1

when you’re dropping 1 ton of high explosive at 450mph into a dense city, very distructive.


Kinja'd!!! gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 21:45

Kinja'd!!!0

i recommend logical insanity

https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/


Kinja'd!!! gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Chariotoflove
10/04/2019 at 21:59

Kinja'd!!!1

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK09g6gYGMvU-0x1VCF1hgA/videos

I’m failing to find the video but there was an interesting section on wartime production how the slightest siruption to rail lines, would have cascading effect, which is why railyards were so often targeted, and trains by straffing fighters .


Kinja'd!!! gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > ttyymmnn
10/04/2019 at 22:02

Kinja'd!!!0

Kinja'd!!!

well the jug certainly had a lot of tubing in its belly


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
10/04/2019 at 22:10

Kinja'd!!!0

MOAR POWAH!!


Kinja'd!!! ttyymmnn > user314
10/04/2019 at 22:17

Kinja'd!!!0

Hmmm. Considering recent history, I’d hope they’d go with something more reliable. Resto mod is fine. 


Kinja'd!!! SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > user314
10/06/2019 at 17:56

Kinja'd!!!0

I could spend a week in Chino... at the Museums, NOT the State Correctional Facilities across the street.  Which I’m sure are wonderful, but have fewer classic aircraft.