The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

The problem with using a Pan Am clipper is that that only goes to Miami and I still need to get them to the Keys.

You might be wondering why I don't just use a boat.

That's because boats are for losers.

Because transferring from the Clipper to a floatplane to go the rest of the way won't work?

THAT'S TOO SIMPLE

Fine. Transfer from the Clipper to a Floatplane... IN MID AIR.

AW YEAH

If I can be serious for a moment, this is actually for an RP which has at least four player characters.

So, I'll need a plane with at least five seats.

Fairchild 82. 1935-vintage floatplane, nine seats. Done.

Oh, cool.

Sorry for being so difficult.

I think there's even a suitable operator — Chalk's International Airlines. I'm not sure what they operated in the 1930s, though.

Sikorsky S-38 and Fairchild 71.

Why Is Area 51 Building A Mysterious New Hangar And What Will It Hide? — There's something (or somethings) big on the way...

Is it a version of the F-35 that won't suck?

I think the new bird may be Aurora 2.0 - this time you might actually see the thing.

Whatever was the first Aurora? Was that ever actually a thing that people just misidentified or was it just one of those Area-51 legends?

Oh it existed, alright. But unlike the other black projects, like the F-117 and B-2, it was a really black project. Clue NSA. The writer Bill Sweetman, (and his reputation in the aircraft journalist and author community is stellar, so he's putting a lot of his credibility on the line if he is wrong on this one) did some digging and found a black hole in the defence budget big enough to have built and used the thing operationally.

Plus it's an open secret that the thing flew from RAF Machrihanish. It's just never going to be officially confirmed at this late date.

Wikipedia has more on it here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)

Having the jet available kinda/sorta explains why the Blackbird went out of service even though it was still needed for war reconnaissance back in the Nineties, as it did missions satellites couldn't match.

Interesting. What's it's role supposed to be though? I've heard everything from spy plane to hypersonic bomber.

And on a completely unrelated note The X-32 is making me laugh much more than it ought to.

If it exists, whatever has replaced it won't be landing at Macrihanish. I hear the runway's in pretty poor nick - not to mention, the place is too damn famous now.

And it's entirely possible they were pouring money into something that just didn't pan out and never saw widespread use. The military has gone into a lot of weird projects in the past.

As for the Aurora's wide spread of suggested missions, it's worth noting that the A-12 and SR-71 did have a number of variants proposed, including a hypersonic interceptor. That all got phased back when it became apparent that even the Blackbird couldn't shoot down an ICBM.

I'd heard Aurora fell victim to Technology Marches On like how the Comanche got binned owing to it being basically an intended successor to the U-2 and SR-71. UAV's and satellites obsoleted ultra fast craft like that in the recon world. (Plus I think they came to the realization that those craft wouldn't be very effective given the S-300 and S-400 missiles.)

Not sure, did I link this here before? And the image◊ that originally came with it. An interesting read to be sure, I am almost inclined to believe it.

Speaking of black projects, didn't we get some hints and grainy photos of a bomber-sized stealth aircraft a while back?

And was sold into private hands two years ago.

Well, I did say Aurora "flew" from Machrihanish, didn't I? Not "still flies from" It is probably out of service now or in limited use elsewhere but I would pretty much bet David Cameron's tweed undies that it was a real plane at one point, and may well still be.

The folks with the most vested interest in denying it existed probably work for NSA, NRO or any of the other TLA agencies that infest the USA at the moment.

OH yeah, what was it? Well, some of the wilder speculation was that it was a manned, first-strike, hypersonic aircraft, loaded with nuke, size mediums. That even formed the basis for a book that I read decades or so ago. This one in fact.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-Winters-Shadow-Robin-White/dp/0449147916

Though personally I think it may have been a hypersonic manned recce plane, on similar lines to the Blackbird but with a much bigger hair in its ass as per the speed it flew at. And at higher altitudes and stuff.

edited 7th Aug '14 5:39:30 PM by TamH70

Or could have been axed due to sharply escalating costs. That killed quite a few projects even in the Cold War era.

I recall a couple of techno-thriller movies based around the plane. One involved bad guys with a secret base in the middle east hacking the GPS network to force the planes to crash (Somehow.) The climax had the Femme Fatale villain racing to bomb the White House while various US military assets tried and failed to knock her down (two F-16s from Hawaii, Patriot batteries in CONUS) before the hero caught up with her in the other Aurora and cooked her with his afterburner.

The 80's and 90's were a great time for bad movies.

6 to 1 odds that the Aurora was an F-35 prototype.

It'd explain the cost at least