Happy Birthday: Aircraft

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

63 years ago, the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the four-engine turboprop ASW and maritime surveillance aircraft, made its maiden flight (Nov 26, 1959).

[M.Becker]

P-3, C-130, Buffy (the Commie Slayer)...good things last.

[Craiglxviii]

Happy birthday to:

63 years ago, the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the four-engine turboprop ASW and maritime surveillance aircraft, made its maiden flight (Nov 26, 1959).

Ahh. The number of these I’ve disassembled brake units off of at Davis-Mothan!

[jemhouston]

P-3, C-130, Buffy (the Commie Slayer)...good things last.

Got a question, the above are iconic aircraft still in use, at one is still in production. What's the most iconic aircraft designed post 1970?

The only one I can think of is the F-117, which is still in limited use despite being retired.

[M.Becker]

F-16.

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

27 years ago, company test pilot Fred Madenwald made the first flight of the then McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E Super Hornet, at the company’s plant in St. Louis, Missouri (November 29, 1995). The might Rhino was born.

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

43 years ago, company pilot Bill Park made the first flight of the Lockheed Have Blue "proof of concept” aircraft at Area 51, Nevada (December 1, 1979). A technology demonstrator that preceded the F-117 Nighthawk.

The dart-shaped Have Blue was the first fixed-wing aircraft designed from an electrical engineering (rather than an aerospace engineering) perspective!

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

34 years ago, company test pilot Stig Holmström made the first flight of the @saab JAS 39 Gripen (Dec 9, 1988). Akin to the F-16 and the MiG-29, the Gripen is considered by many to be one of the best and most cost-efficient 4th Gen fighters in the world.

[M.Becker]

Happy belated birthday to the by far most* successful fighter of WW2 that flew 85 years and 7 days ago for the first time.

*

Spoiler!

Provided the pilot was Finnish

[MikeKozlowski]

Happy belated birthday to the by far most* successful fighter of WW2 that flew 85 years and 7 days ago for the first time.

*

Spoiler!

Provided the pilot was Finnish

...M. Becker,

Indeed - it's my understanding that the Finnish-built variant - much lighter than the Brewster built aircraft - was a real screamer.

Mike

[M.Becker]

It wasn't as heavy* as the later ones but the pilots were the BIG difference.

The Finns were just good. Experienced pilots and tactically on the cutting edge. The Russians were neither. Just like almost all of the British and American pilots. Green as grass or worse.

Geoff Fisken and a buddy weren't and they managed to ace the Buffalo in Malaya. Against a very capable opposition.



*Wildcats suffered from just as bad weight growth.

[M.Becker]

Both the Wildcat and the Buffalo were designed without any protection and minimal armament. Both had it retrofitted and both suffered many hundred pounds weight increases. And after all of that an F2A-3 and an F4F-4 were pretty much equal on paper in performance

The latter was having two more guns than the Buffalo, though. What killed the Buffalo was one design feature. The wing spar ran through the wing tanks and that made up internal self sealing so tricky it was never done. Instead more fuel tanks, pipes and thus weight were added. And the inability of Brewster to deliver on time, in large quantities and do quality control.

Btw, not all allied Buffalo untis sucked. The one squadron stationed in Burma did ok. They operated with one rather great and very popular US fighter unit and initially benefited from Japan concentrating on Malaya. That left the observer network intact until it was Burma's time to be invaded.

With early warning gone things went south. And that brings me back to Finnland. The Soviets were on the backfoot on the ground too when the racked up record kills.

[Philistine]

Happy belated birthday to the by far most* successful fighter of WW2 that flew 85 years and 7 days ago for the first time.

*

Spoiler!

Provided the pilot was Finnish

...M. Becker,

Indeed - it's my understanding that the Finnish-built variant - much lighter than the Brewster built aircraft - was a real screamer.

Mike

All* Buffalos were Brewster-built. The Finns did modify theirs somewhat, though, stripping out a fair amount of equipment that simply wasn't relevant outside of a USN carrier fighter context - and it helped that they started out with early-model aircraft that were lighter (and had better engines) to begin with.

The nature of air combat in the theater made a difference, too. Both the Buffalo and Airacobra ran out of steam very quickly above about 12,000' or so and were all but useless above 15,000', but they were hell on wheels down on the deck. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise that these two aircraft met with very limited success in theaters where enemies regularly appeared at 20,000' or higher, but did a whole lot better in a theater where >90% of air combat took place below 5,000'.

* The Finns did try to set up to produce (unlicensed?) copies of the aircraft, but AIUI only 3 prototypes of the locally-built aircraft were ever built and none were ever flown operationally. By the time the prototypes were flying the Finns were getting aircraft from Germany, and they would soon be knocked out of the war anyway.

[M.Becker]

A few points of order:

The F2A-3 reached her top speed at around 16k feet and still made 310 at 20k feet. Climb time to 20k feet was a bit over eight minutes. However that is for the 6,300lb loading, IRL 6,900 would have been realistic.

The F4F-4 reacher her top speed at 19k feet and made just under 320mph at 20k feet. Climb time to 20k feet was 12 minutes. The F4F-3 did it in under 8. Weights are 8,000 lb and 7,150.

The early P-39 were garbage above 12k feet, the later ones were good up to 20k.

[The Bushranger]

* The Finns did try to set up to produce (unlicensed?) copies of the aircraft, but AIUI only 3 prototypes of the locally-built aircraft were ever built and none were ever flown operationally. By the time the prototypes were flying the Finns were getting aircraft from Germany, and they would soon be knocked out of the war anyway.

The VL Humu. The project started in 1942 (when Brewster was heading down the drain...) and the aircraft - they built one only; the major design modifications wer a wooden wing and a M-63 engine (as the plan was to power them with motors salvaged from downed Russian planes!) - flew in 1944. It turned out overweight and underpowered.

It actually still exists and is on display in the Finnish Air Force Museum.

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

38 years ago, the dazzling Grumman X-29, featuring forward-swept wing, canard controls, and a host of novel aircraft technologies made its maiden flight at Edwards AFB (Dec 14, 1984).

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

16 years ago, company test pilot Jon Beesley took the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II into the air for the first time (Dec 15, 2006). Thus started the most expensive, comprehensive and controversial, flight-testing program in military aviation history.

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

75 years ago, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet made its first flight (Dec 17, 1947). With a maximum speed of 600 mph, a range of 4,000 miles, and aerial refuelling capability, it was a marvel of 50s technology and a became darling of Gen.Curtis LeMay.

[M.Becker]

Happy birthday to:

75 years ago, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet made its first flight (Dec 17, 1947). With a maximum speed of 600 mph,

...it was twice as fast as a top of the line fighter from ten years before.

[Lordroel]

Happy birthday to:

52 years ago, Company Test Pilot Robert Smyth and Project Test Pilot William Miller made the first flight of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat at Grumman Aerospace Corporation plant, Calverton, Long Island, NY (Dec 21, 1970).