The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

What were some of the first combat-capable aircraft? How fast could they travel, and how far, including a return journey?

Technicly the first ones used were combat capable, they may not have been weaponized for some time during the 10 years between there invention and WWI..... but here is the thing.

Back then armies used horses, quite a lot of horses.... it turns out flying a noisy airplane over an animal has a tendancy to spook it. >.>

I think the first fighter was made in like 1915 by the English but before then you just had the pilots bring a handgun up with them and shoot at other planes from the cockpit.

Or throw bricks at ground forces. Really.

edited 21st Feb '17 10:37:53 AM by LeGarcon

Some times if they were really into it, they would be issued grenades to throw out the window instead of bricks.

....

Agian, serious here.

edited 21st Feb '17 10:39:23 AM by Imca

They can and do put torpedoes on bombers. I think the Russians have a maritime variant of the Bear bomber which does just that for anti-sub work, and the Navy also operates a few multi-engine patrol bombers which can carry torpedoes for similar reasons. Off the top of my head, the P-3 Orion (four-engine turboprop) and the P-8 Poseidon (basically an up-armed Boeing 737).

Back in WWII, it was pretty common for multi-engine planes to do torpedo bombing, mostly twin-engine planes like the Japanese G 4 M Betty and the American B-26 Marauder, but occasionally four-engined planes like the German Condor would get used for that. As an alternative, many American bombers would instead drop a bomb at a couple hundred miles an hour while flying a hundred feet or so off the water, with the effect that the bomb would skip like a stone and slam into the side of the ship.

The tradeoff of using multi-engine vs single-engined planes for torpedo bombing mainly was that the multi-engined bomber had longer range. I don't get the impression that the US Army Air Forces ever saw much need for single-engined bombers in WWII, when any fighter jock could be trained to drop heavy stuff on people they didn't like.

Washington Post: Terrorists are building drones. France is destroying them with eagles.

Insert obligatory Alfred Hitchcock pun here.

I think the B1 Lancer can also cary anti-ship missiles

So... The Eagles are coming?

Yeah, I think maritime patrol has been part of strategic bombers' mission set since they were a thing, due to the similar mission requirements. Pretty much any plane that would a good strategic bomber is going to make an at least acceptable maritime bomber due to the endurance alone. Throw in a proper radar set and they can at least scan the sea for surface intruders, if not the more specialized work of sub hunting.

edited 21st Feb '17 3:40:46 PM by AFP

Pretty much. In WW 2 basically "one plane, one niche" was horrendously inefficient logistically and given the technology of the time early-to-mid war wasn't very effective either. In the Pacific, attacking land bases with carriers meant you had a whole wing of torpedo bombers just sitting pretty or ineffectually being used.

Plus you had the problem of Crippling Overspecialization. Torpedo bombers that could really only use torpedoes. Dive bombers that could really only dive bomb fortifications. And so on.

Take the Stuka dive bomber. Seemingly a terror of the Nazis able to quell the mightiest of tanks with a single pass and durable enough to survive what limited AA fire it might find being thrown back by enemy trucks and infantry. Yeah dive bombing was pretty much it's only real schtick and a lot of battle reports I've seen suggest a lot of its missions could have also been piggybacked onto fighter bombers or otherwise multi-role stuff. Likewise if the enemy had any sort of fighter presence in the area or competent Anti-Air, it would meet a very short lifespan.

The US Army wanted something that would fulfill its needs without needing a separate production line. Hence of the dive bomber ideas fielded and experimented with, a lot of them were of existing airframes like the A-36 Apache (derived from the P-51). But ultimately and most frequently they figured just slap some bombs and/or rockets on a fighter such as happened with the P-47. Good and durable dive bomber, good and durable fighter, what was not to like?

That thinking also shows elsewhere. A lot of late war Navy and Marine Corps aircraft were multi-role and the stuff rolled out right at the end like the A-1 Skyraider combined everything from previous dive bombers, torpedo bombers and general attack craft into one package thus freeing up space and logistics.

Jack: Actually I think the Harpoon is one of the weapons the B-1 can't carry because of treaty limitations on external pylon mountings. But it can carry air dropped naval mines including the quick strike mine.

In 2018 though it may soon be capable of carrying the LRASM.

edited 21st Feb '17 4:20:40 PM by TuefelHundenIV

This seems fitting.◊ Wrong flag, but I'm too lazy to Photoshop it.

edited 21st Feb '17 4:14:03 PM by math792d

Tom: First nearly all the Torpedo Bombers of WWII US, UK, and Japanese could carry bombs. Several could also carry air droppable sea mines and depth charges as well. Second there were very few targets a dive bomber couldn't possibly attack and they had a higher degree of accuracy then other bombers. The down side was they vulnerable in dive and limited in their maneuvering.

Which was problematic if you the dive bomber were facing off against somewhere with competent Anti-Air. Especially if you went up against stuff with AA guns more capable than a pintle mounted machine gun.

And don't even think about going flying in one if the enemy has fighters. Well, not unless you feel like today is good day to die.

It wasn't the AA so much as the fighters that would take advantage for the easy shot on a target that is now locked into it's trajectory. This was one of the big things that got Stutka Pilots shot down was a fighter waiting for the dive then pouncing on them. The Stutka also had a big tell before the dive. Standard Op was to roll inverted and start the dive. The complicate matters during pull up most Stutka pilots started to suffer momentary grey out and were unable to do more then keep course which also left them vulnerable.

As was already mentioned, torpedo bombers carried regular bombs all the time. The battleship Arizona was infamously destroyed by torpedo bombers dropping armor-piercing bombs from high altitude. You can also find some pretty neat photos of American Avenger torpedo bombers and Helldiver dive bombers performing horizontal bombing raids over the Japanese home islands. Dive bombing was very accurate, especially against small or evading targets, but for saturation raids against area targets such as airfields, dropping a bunch of smaller bombs from higher up works just fine.

Also, the A-36 Apache wasn't so much the Army needing a dive bomber which could also dogfight as it was a bit of Loophole Abuse. The budget for that year still had some money left for attack planes, but all of the fighter plane funds were spoken for, so they slapped some dive brakes on a Mustang and put them into service as a dual-role fighter bomber. They stopped ordering Apaches the next year when they were able to budget for purebred Mustangs instead.

That said, the Army had fielded dive bombers in limited numbers, such as the Vultee Vengeance, and largely just didn't find a role for them in their air doctrine. The Navy went for the types of aircraft that they did due to size limitations (you could launch twin-engine bombers from a Yorktown class carrier, but only barely), and even those saw use in multiple roles (the Dauntless dive bomber was sometimes pressed into use as an interceptor, being more than capable of running down torpedo bombers and having a decent forward armament, and the Avenger occasionally saw use as a night fighter, being big and powerful enough to hoist a radar set).

As a trade-off for the size limitations of carrier aircraft, the Navy also had a lot more flexibility in basing giving that aircraft carriers could move around as needed. The Army never did figure out how to make an airfield that could do 30 knots in good weather, so for them it made more sense to invest in bigger bombers with longer range and greater payloads than their single-engine cousins in the Navy.

See also the German strategy on Adlertag.

Really the observation about dive bombers being vulnerable to enemy fighters applies to just about every type of bomber out there. Torpedo bombers? Low and slow. Heavy bombers? High and slow. Even fighters are vulnerable to enemy fighters when carrying bombs due to the performance penalty.

Even when carrying external fuel tanks for extended range, they were vulnerable to enemy fighters.

I recall reading something about P-51 Mustang squadrons in WWII. When on a mission escorting long-range bombers, they would begin drawing from the fuselage fuel tank, because the extra weight behind the pilot's seat would mess up the plane's handling due to an altered center of gravity. When they spotted enemy fighters, they would immediately jettison their wing-mounted drop tanks, to reduce drag. So a lot of fuel got wasted, and the brass complained, but that's simply the nature of combat flying.

That would be the -D model, I think (first one to be able to make it to Berlin and back and whatnot). I do remember hearing that the rudder fillet it had helped mitigate the effects of the CG shift, though.

They would mostly use the wing tanks to get to the fight, but yeah, they'd burn off some of the fuel in the aft fuselage tank in the P-51D on the way because it fucked up the center of gravity if they didn't. The P-51C didn't have the aft fuselage tank at all, and as a result they'd lose a lot of their range due to the German tactic of pouncing the fighter escort as early as possible to force them to lose the external fuel tanks.

A computerised WSO is now a part of the JASDF's F-2 upgrade package.

So how long will it be until some JASDF flyboy decides to program his computerized WSO with the voice of Miku Hatsune?

Don't Buy Into China's Stealth Defeating Quantum Radar Hype. (War Is Boring.)

Theoretically, this type of detection may make all forms of stealth that we know of obsolete. Especially on aircraft.

Personally, I don't buy it. I don't think they have anything workable yet. Of course were I planning military operations against China, I'd rather assume it works and plan accordingly only to find out it doesn't than assume it doesn't work and find out it does and we've lost half our stealth aircraft (or more) to all-seeing SAM site radars.

While I'm normally obligated to ignore you on principle for citing War is Boring again, I'll actually agree that quantum radar is bunk.

It is questionable if they have a working example and are not exactly the first nation to work on it. Give you a hint who they likely stole it from.