The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

The first air to air kill was done via a German (scout!) pilot shooting down a Japanese (scout!) pilot in 1914 with his P08 pistol.

Edited by MajorTom on May 11th 2021 at 6:23:04 AM

Did he hit the pilot or the plane?

Question: Is Lockheed Blackbird retired?

It's been retired for quite a long time. Wikipedia says it was retired by the USAF in 1998, and NASA in 1999. Though it was retired before in 1989, reactivated in the 90s, but they finally retired it in 1998. I remember reading that Lockheed offered to reactivate it for either Desert Storm or the war in Bosnia, but the USAF turned the offer down.

Edited by minseok42 on May 11th 2021 at 11:50:27 PM

Has she ever flyed after that?

No. The last flight was in 1999, by NASA.

I was surfing around Stack Exchange, and one question linked NTSB records of operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner. Some gems:

• A pilot got in trouble for buzzing a nude beach at an altitude of 50ft.
• A helicopter pilot joined the Mile-High Club with a passenger while in flight.

• A airline pilot did a barrel roll on a scheduled flight with passengers on board.

Edited by minseok42 on May 12th 2021 at 12:44:41 AM

Me, I still think the prize goes to the pilots of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 who spent the final approach to the airport discussing things like used cars and politics to the point of not noticing that they were sinking below the minimum altitude, resulting in a crash that killed 72 of the 82 people aboard.

A little of both if I remember correctly. There's not a lot of pilot exposed even in WW 1 era planes. At least some of his shots would've hit the plane and given that WW 1 planes were by and large Made of Plasticine aka wood and canvas, even pistol rounds could cause significant damage.

Now mind you, this is the first air to air kill that also had the stipulation of one side surviving the encounter as shortly before this moment Pyotr Nestorov accomplished the first air to air kill by ramming the other plane with his. (Both planes crashed, both pilots died.)

Barger Awarded Antarctica Medal for 1956-57 Mission as Civil Air Patrol Cadet

Just a really interesting story all-around. He went on to be a college professor, and just retired from Notre Dame.

So what happens if some one forgets to remove the ground safe pin and you try to drop a bomb with it still in?

Presumably you make some EOD guy's day really annoying when that sucker buries itself somewhere beneath the target.

Anyone here have heard of Gardemoen, right?

A bit more context would be useful.

Gardemoen, aren't they weak against ground type Pokemon?

BBC: Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', says opposition.

The Drive article on "doomsday planes", the airborne command posts built to carry the US president when a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day comes up.

Gardemoen is the airport in Oslo, Norway.

Edited by Delibirda on May 25th 2021 at 3:57:21 PM

A silly question for my alternate history fiction:

What are some WWII-era planes that could've been somewhat plausibly produced during WWI?

The main character is a naval officer (USNA class of 1905) who is also an aviator and businessman by proxy. Due to him understanding the value of aircraft very early (he attended the Wright Brothers' first flight and predicted the emergence and effectiveness of flat-deck aircraft carriers all the way in 1904), he almost aggressively promotes and invests in the development of aircraft, pushing the development of fighter planes by a couple of decades.

Of course, he did that without pissing off too many higher-ups, with the help of flattery, a few bribes, and several connections to politicians, such as Californian senator Thomas Bard).

I'm looking for planes that are cheap, easy to build, operate, and otherwise suited for mass production. Durability and speed are completely optional: it could be a wooden plane that can instantly set on fire if hit even once, for all I care. Then again, inflammability describes much of the planes during WWI, but hey.

Ones that come up to my mind are Polikarpov Po-2 and De Havilland Mosquito.

Edited by dRoy on May 26th 2021 at 11:02:05 PM

I think you might see some of the interwar biplanes sooner if people really started investing in aircraft as a combat platform earlier.

Like the Swordfish and so on.

Not sure about the Mosquito, maybe with an underpowered engine or something but a lot of WW2 aircraft and closed canopy monoplanes in general became the new standard due to a revolution in engine design near the beginning of the war which affected everything from tanks to trucks to aircraft to civilian motoring.

Edited by LeGarcon on May 26th 2021 at 10:11:34 AM

...(facepalms)

Oh God, why did I forget about engine developments...it's such a crucial element in aircraft! Thanks for pointing that out. XP

Either I should go with planes with a less advanced engines or perhaps have the MC somehow involve in kickstarting engine development as well.

EDIT: Hmm...perhaps I could have Ford produce aircraft engines earlier.

Edited by dRoy on May 26th 2021 at 11:17:45 PM

Yeah, WWI aircraft mainly used rotary engines, which offered good power-to-weight ratio for the era but were quickly regarded as obsolete after the end of the war. The basic designs of in-line/V engines that would lead to the Merlin and its peers were already there during the war, and I think that turbocharger technology was tested (non-operationally) a few times throughout. But the development for both was spread out across many countries and would only really reach maturity in the interwar period. Plus the "fast bomber" concept that the Mosquito was built for wasn't really a thing in WWI, and neither was much of the cutting-edge tech it was equipped with (like the Gee radio navigation system).

Welp, scratching Havilland off the list, or at least the full version of it.

You're probably better off drawing from the interwar air race designs than any of the WWII fighters.

The R3C in particular as a high preformance radial biplane could believably have been achieved if a bunch of money had been poured into aeroengine development during WWI and would've torn basically anything that was actually in the sky at the time to shreds.

If you want to push believability to the limits there's nothing that would've truly prevented something like an early model hurricane being built if someone pushed supercharged inline engines and the resultant horsepower driven shift to metal framed monoplanes a couple decades early. Though machining capabilities of the time would likely leave it at least somewhat underpowered compared to the real thing.

The gladiator is a fun idea, like at least a version of it.

Nothing will ever cease to be amusing about a bi-plane with a canopy.