...Sixty-nine Years Ago....

[MikeKozlowski]

...The Battle of Palmdale. Two F-89 Scorpions versus a single F6F Hellcat drone. Didn't end the way the USAF thought it would.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale

Mike

[Poohbah]

One of my projects on the someday list is to do this in Command: Modern Operations.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Early warning that drones are surprisingly hard targets...
snark:
I'm surprised didn't get to stage of back-seater opening canopy and letting fly with service pistol...
/
After=action report: "Guys, can we re-fit those old gun-pods ??"

[MikeKozlowski]

Early warning that drones are surprisingly hard targets...
snark:
I'm surprised didn't get to stage of back-seater opening canopy and letting fly with service pistol...
/
After=action report: "Guys, can we re-fit those old gun-pods ??"

Nik,

The Scorpion was originally designed for a unique Martin-built turret with 4 20mm cannon that could swivel....





It was actually tested and apparently worked pretty well, but was extremely complex and hideously expensive,
so to the trash heap it went.

Mike

[Drunknsubmrnr]

Doesn’t that look a lot like the B-52G’s tail mount?

[Johnnie Lyle]

Early warning that drones are surprisingly hard targets...
snark:
I'm surprised didn't get to stage of back-seater opening canopy and letting fly with service pistol...
/
After=action report: "Guys, can we re-fit those old gun-pods ??"

Nik,

The Scorpion was originally designed for a unique Martin-built turret with 4 20mm cannon that could swivel....





It was actually tested and apparently worked pretty well, but was extremely complex and hideously expensive,
so to the trash heap it went.

Mike

Something on that plane actually worked?

I remember Stuart describing it as a question of whether the wings fell off, the engines failed or the rockets exploded before the pilot could RTB.