The Aviation Thread [Contains Lots of Awesome Pictures]

Gotta love the Bear:

F8J_TU95_CV34.JPEG


800px-Tupolev_Tu_95_USAF.jpg


Tu-95MS_and_F-15C.jpg
 
The Tu-95: celebrating 55 years of being escorted out of US airspace.
 
I dunno... I just can't get behind the F-35 as a "pretty" fighter plane. The tails and canopy put me off a bit

Given the current rate, you may never see one to have your eyes strained.

The Tu-95: celebrating 55 years of being escorted out of US airspace.

:lol:
 
From the first pic: The A-7 has a top speed that's marginally faster than the Tu-95?
 
The Tu-95: celebrating 55 years of being escorted out of US airspace.

Indeed. I love reading the various stories of the American pilots fucking with the Bear crews. Good times.
 
Just spent most of my afternoon hooning around in this:

SportStar_ZU-DZC.jpg


So much more comfortable then the usual training fair. God I miss flying :cry:
 
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Gotta love the Bear:

I'm sorry, but how can you have pictures of the Bear without it being escorted by the fighter DESIGNED to shoot it down!?

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F-14_with_Bear.jpg



The Tu-95: celebrating 55 years of being escorted out of US airspace.
Well played! :lol:

From the first pic: The A-7 has a top speed that's marginally faster than the Tu-95?

Not A-7, but gives us a good opportunity to take a look at its cousin,


The Vought F-8 Crusader (originally F8U) was a single-engine carrier-based air superiority jet aircraft[2] built by Vought for the United States Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, replacing the Vought F7U Cutlass. The first F-8 prototype was ready for flight in February 1955, and was the last American fighter with guns as the primary weapon, principally serving in the Vietnam War.[3] The RF-8 Crusader was a photo-reconnaissance development and operated longer in U.S. service than any of the fighter versions. RF-8s played a crucial role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, providing essential low-level photographs impossible to acquire by other means.[3] US Naval Reserve units continued to operate the RF-8 until 1987.

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Uss_midway_crusaders.jpg


Vietnam service
When conflict erupted in the skies over North Vietnam, it was U.S. Navy Crusaders that first tangled with Vietnam People's Air Force (North Vietnamese Air Force) MiG-17s on 3 April 1965.[7] Although the MiGs claimed the downing of a Crusader,[8] all aircraft returned safely. At the time, the Crusader was the best dogfighter the United States had against the nimble North Vietnamese MiGs. The Navy had evolved its "night fighter" role in the air wing to an all-weather interceptor, the F-4 Phantom II, equipped to engage incoming bombers at long range with missiles such as Sparrow as their sole air-to-air weapons, and maneuverability was not emphasized in their design. Some experts believed that the era of the dogfight was over as air-to-air missiles would knock down adversaries well before they could get close enough to engage in dogfighting. As aerial combat ensued over North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968, it became apparent that the dogfight was not over and the F-8 Crusader and a community trained to prevail in air-to-air combat was a key ingredient to success.

Despite the "last gunfighter" moniker, the F-8s achieved only four victories with their cannon; the remainder were accomplished with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles,[9] partly due to the propensity of the 20 mm (.79 in) Colt Mk 12 cannons' feeding mechanism to jam under G-loading during high-speed dogfighting maneuvers.[10] Between June and July 1966, during 12 engagements over North Vietnam, Crusaders shot down four MiG-17s for two losses.[11] The Crusader would be credited with the best kill ratio of any American type in the Vietnam War, 19:3.[3] Of the 19 aircraft shot down during aerial combat, 16 were MiG-17s and three were MiG-21s.[9] But the NVAF claimed 11 F-8s were shot down.[12][13] Approximately 170 F-8 Crusaders would be lost to all causes during the war.[14]


Mishap rate


The Crusader was not an easy aircraft to fly, and often unforgiving in carrier landings where it suffered from yaw instability and the castered nose wheel. It earned a reputation as an "ensign killer" during its early service introduction.[6] The nozzle and air intake were so low when the aircraft was on the ground or the flight deck that the crews called the plane "the Gator." Not surprisingly, the Crusader's mishap rate was relatively high compared to its contemporaries, the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and the F-4 Phantom II. However, the aircraft did possess some amazing capabilities, as proved when several Crusader pilots took off with the wings folded. One of these episodes took place on 23 August 1960; a Crusader with the wings folded took off from Napoli Capodichino in full afterburner, climbed to 5,000 ft (1,500 m) and then returned to land successfully. The pilot, absent minded but evidently a good "stick man," complained that the control forces were higher than normal. The Crusader was capable of flying in this state, though the pilot would be required to reduce aircraft weight by ejecting stores and fuel prior to landing.[3]
 
While some butt-ugly airplanes made good planes, almost ALL of the pretty ones made GREAT planes!

I disagree, for example the MiG-25 is a good looking plane but ended up being damned near useless.

At least the X-32 wasn't selected... THAT was ugly.

The problem is the F35 is ugly and has low potential to be great.

Too bad all the publicly available data disagrees with you, unless you get your "facts" from idiots like APA or Wheeler.

Gotta love the Bear:

You have to love a plane that was so loud that submarines could hear it coming from miles away.
That first pic has an A-7, one of my favorite planes and probably one of the most under-rated strike planes to boot they are one of those planes that the dirtier they are the better they look.
 
I disagree, for example the MiG-25 is a good looking plane but ended up being damned near useless.

At least the X-32 wasn't selected... THAT was ugly.

I don't know what Boeing was thinking when they proposed it. Even if it were technically superior to the x-35, which wasn't the case anyway, trying to sell something that offensively ugly was always going to be a challenge.
 
I don't know what Boeing was thinking when they proposed it. Even if it were technically superior to the x-35, which wasn't the case anyway, trying to sell something that offensively ugly was always going to be a challenge.

Most of Boeings proposal was that the air frame itself would of been cheap and easy to manufacture.

NOVA had a pretty good episode on the JSF competition and the two things that killed them was that mid way through the competition they pretty much wanted to redesign and resubmit their bid and they knew they were in trouble when LockMart not only managed to not only get their lift fan to work but managed to do a supersonic dash as when they didn?t' have to.
 
Gotta love the Bear:

F8J_TU95_CV34.JPEG

Everyone :heart: The Bear.

The Tu-95: celebrating 55 years of being escorted out of US airspace.

:lol:

I was looking for the video I have seen before of the TU-95's tail gunner waving to the interceptor fighter, but found this instead:

[video=youtube;9CBRB_Wfm-k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CBRB_Wfm-k&feature=related[/video]​

Wings of the Red Star - The TU-95 the bear 1/5​

The first part is history & politics of USSR and some early Tupolev airplanes, looks good so far.

:)
 
I don't know what Boeing was thinking when they proposed it. Even if it were technically superior to the x-35, which wasn't the case anyway, trying to sell something that offensively ugly was always going to be a challenge.
But it looks so happy... :p

motivator9ad46fb2201bc6112bc46e454f42337c22955808.jpg
 
HQC2W.jpg
 
Most of Boeings proposal was that the air frame itself would of been cheap and easy to manufacture.

NOVA had a pretty good episode on the JSF competition and the two things that killed them was that mid way through the competition they pretty much wanted to redesign and resubmit their bid and they knew they were in trouble when LockMart not only managed to not only get their lift fan to work but managed to do a supersonic dash as when they didn?t' have to.

From memory the x-35 was demonstrated to take off via the lift fan, then go supersonic and then land via the lift fan in one demonstration, which probably aided their bid immensely. It's a shame the project has been a train wreck ever since.
 
Everyone :heart: The Bear.

[video=youtube;9CBRB_Wfm-k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CBRB_Wfm-k&feature=related[/video]​

Wings of the Red Star - The TU-95 the bear 1/5​

The first part is history & politics of USSR and some early Tupolev airplanes, looks good so far.

:)

More Bear stuff; we've all heard the Bear was loud, but have you actually heard what they actually sound like? Wonder no more:


Wings of the Red Star was an awesome show - I remember when I was ten years old, I'd drop everything at 7 o'clock on Wednesday nights to go watch Wings on the Discovery Channel (back when they kicked ass) - sometimes it was Wings, sometimes Sea Wings, but the series I loved the most was the Wings of the Red Star. Not only does the show cover some really neat topics, Sir Peter Ustinov's narration is a perfect match.

If the opening of this video doesn't bring back fond memories, you're dead to me:
(while you're reminiscing about your younger years, watch the other parts of this episode; it's a good one)
 
If the opening of this video doesn't bring back fond memories, you're dead to me:
(while you're reminiscing about your younger years, watch the other parts of this episode; it's a good one)

I'm very much alive and kicking but there's a big mistake in that video. 3:50-4:00 they say that the sound barrier was broken on December 9, 1946. That's when the X-1 made it's first flight, not when it broke the barrier.

Now I feel like part of my childhood was a lie. :(
 
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