Twin Boom Aircraft Of WWII

Fw 189

P-38

But we did it better. Both planes were first flown within a year of each other. The Fw-189 in 1938 and the P-38 in 1939.

The Focke-Wulf Fw 189 Uhu ("Eagle Owl") was a very successful Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft used extensively in the Eastern Front. It was unarmed, could carry a 3 man crew, had a combat radius of 420 miles and top speed of less than 250 mph but was extremely maneuverable. It could avoid being shot down by Soviet fighters simply by flying in very tight circles. The Soviets called it "The Frame" because of it's box like silhouette in the sky. About 850 of these aircraft were produced. There is only one in existence today.

Lockheed's P-38 "Lightning" was a heavily armed, 400+ mph fighter. It could also carry two 1,000 bombs and with drop tanks it could be flown across the Atlantic, eliminating the need for transport by ocean born freight.The German Luftwaffe called it "Der Gabelschwanz Teufel" (The Fork-Tailed Devil). It was that good. It was the first USAAF fighter to be delivered to the RAF under its own power. With a range of 2,500 miles, it was the most important fighter in the Pacific Theater.

Japanese mastermind Adm. Yamamoto was killed by a P-38 that shot down his transport plane. Of course the US Navy had broken the Japanese military cypher codes by then so the P-38's had a good idea where he would be. Lockheed manufactured over 1,000  of these fighters in variants up to the P-38L. The Air Force retired the Lightning in 1949.

Look! Up In The Sky!

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" ~ Chicken Littovich

Relax, it's just the Russian air force.

From The Week:

The flights began last year. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to send a message, began flying nuclear bombers on training missions near the United States and its allies around the world.

The message was one of intimidation and defiance: Russia is still a power to be reckoned with, and meddling in the Ukraine, Syria, and Russia itself — particularly on human rights issues — is not appreciated.

Now, after months of aggressive flying, Russia's overworked air force is falling out of the sky. On July 5, a Su-24M tactical bomber crashed during takeoff at Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. The plane banked sharply after takeoff and hit the ground. Both pilots were killed.

Five Russian combat planes have crashed in the past month. Russia's attempt to demonstrate strength has backfired spectacularly and demonstrated weakness instead.

[...]The vast majority of Russia's Air Force was built and operated by the Soviet Union, making the youngest of these planes 24 years old. The Tu-95 "Bear", MiG-29 "Fulcrum," and Su-24 "Fencer" fighters and bombers that crashed in the last month were all inherited from the Soviet Union.

More here and here and here.

The Ukraine Is In An Unenviable Position

Su-25 Frogfoot
The UAF had 36 of these jets.

Designed for close air support, the Sukhoi Su-25 "Frogfoot" was first deployed by the Soviet  Union
in 1978. It is still used by the Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and North Korean Air Forces. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Air Force deployed the Su-25 only once. Both jets were shot down.

At least three of these aircraft have been downed by pro-Russian separatists. 

The Ukraine military was armed by the Russians and trained by the Russians. It's tough fighting a war when your enemy knows your tactics, your equipment, your comms and has heavily penetrated your ranks. This is what Ukraine is facing in its struggle with Russian backed separatists.

It's like trying to fight with your right hand while your left hand is punching you in the face.

The Ukrainian government has been requesting military assistance from the US for months. Finally, aid was authorized but restricted to non-lethal equipment in order to appease Putin - and it was slow in coming (I suspect that Obama would only send a few bottles of Listerine, tubes of  KY jelly and condoms). Then last month (June) Obama upped the ante:

After initially denying Ukrainian military requests for key nonlethal aid, the White House on Wednesday approved urgently needed equipment for troops battling pro-Russian insurgents.

The new military assistance includes body armor, night vision goggles, and communications equipment requested by the Ukrainians, but initially rejected by the Obama administration as part of its efforts to avoid upsetting Moscow.

“The United States is working to bolster Ukraine’s ability to secure its borders and preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty in the face of Russian occupation of Crimea and a concerted effort by Russian-backed separatists to destabilize eastern Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement announcing the aid.

Now after the downing of Flight MH17, more missile action from the Russkies as reported by USA Today:

Russian-backed separatists shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets Wednesday in the eastern regions of the country, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

The ministry said on its Facebook page that the jets were among four Russian-built fighters that were returning to base after providing air support for Ukrainian troops near the border.

The pilots of both jets ejected from the aircraft, the ministry said. Their condition was not immediately reported.

Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky said the Sukhoi-25 fighters were downed in an area called Savur Mogila in the Shaktersky region near the Russian border.

Su-24 Fencer 
The UAF had 36 of these aircraft. One has been been reported lost to the conflict.

Wow. If the Su-24 isn't a twin of the USAF F-111 Aardvark. Judge for yourself.
Both aircraft have variable-sweep wings. The F-111 entered service in 1967, the Su-24 in 1971.

F-111

The site is only a few miles from where a Malaysia Airlines jetliner crashed last week after apparently being shot down by a surface-to-air missile with 298 people aboard.

The latest shootdowns are the first reported downing of a plane over eastern Ukraine since the Malaysia Airlines incident.

Now Ukraine is requesting radar jamming equipment from the US.

According to a former senior U.S. defense official who has worked closely with Ukraine’s military and a former head of state who has consulted with the government there, Kiev last month requested the radar jamming and detection equipment necessary to evade and counter the anti-aircraft systems Moscow was providing the country’s separatists.

Those anti-aircraft systems were almost certainly used to shoot down MH17, the Malaysian air passenger jet shot out of the sky last Thursday. U.S. officials have pointed the finger at Russia for providing that equipment, though no final assessment has been made of culpability for the incident.

Philip Karber, a former strategy adviser to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, has conducted detailed assessments of the country’s military since the crisis began this year. Karber returned from the Ukrainian front earlier this month. He told The Daily Beast, “I was told in June by the Ukrainians that one of their top five priorities that they had conveyed to the United States and NATO that month was to get help in electronic warfare,” which gives a military the ability to detect, spoof and jam the radars of enemy anti-aircraft missile batteries.

The Ukraine Air Force inherited hundreds of Russian aircraft when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Many, mostly strategic bombers, were sold back to Russia. Unable to provide the funding to maintain these planes, many are now useless and were mothballed or scrapped.

Ukraine military resources as listed by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Defense Analysis blog, dated March 2014:

SU-27 Flanker

Mig-29 Fulcrum

The A-10 Warthog Will Fight On For Awhile Longer

This photo taken above the holy city of  Shiite Ur Pantz, Iraq

From the Arizona Daily Star:

The U.S. House on Thursday overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the 2015 defense appropriation bill that would prohibit the Pentagon from spending any money to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II jet — a mainstay of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

But the fate of the venerated “Warthog” close-air-support jet remains far from certain, as the Senate still must act, and the issue will likely be hammered out in conference committee.

The amendment’s bipartisan adoption was a victory for Rep. Ron Barber, a Tucson Democrat, and other A-10 supporters, who were chagrined when the House Appropriations Committee left A-10 funding out of its version of the defense spending bill.

“This is a victory for those brave men and women in our armed forces and engaged in ground combat who depend on the A-10,” Barber said in prepared remarks after the late-evening vote. “I am fighting for the A-10 to remain in service because there is no better and more effective aircraft for close air support of our soldiers and Marines on the ground.”

There is no other craft proven to be better at what the A-10 does than the A-10. It is a marvel of Close Air Support (CAS) and to throw it away without replacing it (the F-35 is yet unproven) is a crime. The A-10 has a dry weight of 12 tons, yet it can carry 13 tons of weapons into combat.

We can throw a quarter billion dollars of international welfare at Central America without batting an eye ... how about protecting our troops until a new weapons system is ready to replace a tried and proven one?

ODE TO A WARTHOG

I think that I shall never see

A plane so deadly, so ugly

A plane that's built around a gun

A plane that excels at a bombing run

A plane that's designed as a flying club

That surrounds its pilot with a titanium tub

He's safe as a babe in his mother's arms

Shielded from the enemy's deadly harms

A plane that sets the Hellcat loose

Like a thunderbolt hurled from Olympus by Zeus

Stupid poems are created every now and then

But only Fairchild Republic made the A-10

More here.

Flight MH370 Mystery Still A Mystery

From the UK Guardian:

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have been deliberately flown west towards the Andaman Islands after it last made contact with air traffic control nearly one week ago, military radar-trafficking evidence now suggests, in a twist that Malay officials have said supports theories the plane might have been hijacked or sabotaged.

Sources told Reuters that the flight path of an unidentified aircraft, which investigators believe was MH370, followed a route with specific navigational waypoints, suggesting someone with aviation training was at the helm.

Separately the Wall Street Journal reported that the missing jet had transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites in the five hours after its last contact with air traffic control before abruptly shutting off, according to US military and industrial sources. It said it did not know the flight path to this point but noted that the US had moved surveillance planes into an area of the Indian Ocean 1,000 miles (1,600km) west of the Malayasian peninsula.

There are theories/rumors/speculations by the truckload showing up on the Professional Pilots Rumor Network, 200 pages of them. Here's a sample:

Sensitive cargo? Where's the manifest?
Okay, due to the lack of a publicly released cargo manifest...

If the flight was carrying a consigned gold cargo:
50pax * (75kg + 23kg) = 4900kg
Gold is approx US$13xx/oz,
4900kg = 172842oz, therefore,
172842 * 1300 = US$224.7mil

One could agree that this could provide ample motivation, and enough to buy inside help and some media whitewashing too. Valuable or sensitive cargo needs to be ruled out publicly. The aforementioned figures are for example only, and intended just to highlight the scope of wealth that can be transported on such an aircraft.

Apparently the flight was short of full capacity by 50 passengers, allowing for an increase in the amount of cargo transported. The above pilot speculates based on the fact that the cargo manifest has yet to be released.

Or this one:

Quote:
"Only the Indian Ocean (64E) INMARSAT was involved in the last ping(s) and so they have ruled out areas (on the 40 degree circle) that overlap with coverage by POR in the Pacific and AOR-E over the Atlantic to the West."

I'm intrigued by the gap between the northern and southern corridors. The coverage maps clearly show this gap exists due to the overlap with POR. However the area of the gap would be at the very edge of coverage with POR, with the satellite very close to the horizon. It is not inconceivable transmissions in this region would only be picked up by IOR. In particular a ditched aircraft in the water may well have difficulty transmitting to a satellite close to the horizon.

From what I see there is a distinct case to make for joining the northern and southern arcs which would once again raise the possibility of the plane being in the South China Sea area. It may have flown a tortuous route to get back to the area it first started - but thats no more unlikely then it ending up over China.

So are the Malaysian SAR authorities being too quick to cease the search to the East of Malaysia?

NB I would love to see similar 'corridors' for the various pings between 1.30-8.11am. This would help rule in/out various flight paths being speculated.

And there's charts of radar coverage to show where the aircraft could have avoided detection:

SITA ACARS ground station coverage:

ARINC ACARS ground station coverage:

And of course there's also this on a "rumor" network:

"As a Professional Pilots forum, these fanciful posts are embarassing. Heists, gold bullion, conspiracies. If you haven't anything sensible to post may I request you desist or join a different forum for fictional creative writing. 200 pages of posts, mostly drivel. Thanks to those few who have the expertise to elaborate on the facts."

Whatever the truth is, obviously it does not bode well for the passengers and crew.

ME-262

It's been six years ago this month that my father-in-law passed away. His picture in Army uniform sits on the mantle next to the picture of our daughter's  graduation from boot camp.

His generation never talked much about the The War, but stumbling across the above video made me think of him and one of his war stories.

Dad's armored unit was stopped along side a large stream in Germany (April 1945) when something screamed by close overhead. He wasn't sure what it was but he was certain "it sure as hell didn't belong to us."

In the event of an air assault his motto was to get clear of the armor if he could - Sherman tanks weren't called "Zippos" for nothing.

Just in time he dove into the stream and the German jet returned and blew a half track to pieces. The Me-262 carried four 30 mm cannons in the nose and could raise quite a ruckus. Starting in 1941, almost 1,500 of these jets were built but less than 300 actually saw combat. It was far too little too late by time they entered the war.

Still, they scared the crap out of an 19 year old corporal.

And they are flying again.