I assumed the tanker had to be bearing the brunt of most of the thrust, since the F-4 pilot was able to let the one fully functional engine cool off and they managed to climb 5,000 feet.

It is my understanding that the refueling probe will automatically disengage if stressed to a certain point to prevent damaging the probe and/or the refueling aircraft. How, then, was North Star able to “tow” the Phantom? Even if that safety can be disengaged, I would think that the amount of force on the probe…

Nyet, comrad. You just don’t understand glorious invention of soviet engineering: the external combustion engine.

You don’t think it is at all possible that Russia would be willing to negotiate a change of power in Syria in order to prevent further escalation with the US? It seems like the smart play to me. Its not like they would agree to let anyone take over. They would firmly push the most pro-Russian candidate they have,…

The Iowas are competitive with most of the current fleet.

No arguments from me, those are all fair points. But at most, that just puts a Iowa-style BB at parity with anything else that exists, survivability wise.

Was that the British container ship sunk in the Falklands War? I had thought it was hit ‘accidentally’ when the exocets acquired it ater being decoyed from their original target, but that may have been a different sinking. Regardless, that’s why I also suggested a disguised version (that would operate alone, which I…

Sort of like the 747 bomb truck that Tyler wrote about a while ago. Probably not a bad idea as long as it is embedded with other ships that can protect it.

I’m not sure how well founded the vulnerability claim is. Most attacks against modern warships will be from anti-ship missiles, which intend to punch a hole through the hull as close to the waterline as feasible, or torpedoes. Those are exactly the kind of threats that battleships were armored against.

As awesome as that would be, I’m not so sure it should happen. A newer ship should be able to serve the same long range precision gun-support role with a smaller crew smaller financial footprint. Maybe this will be considered seriously if the DDG-1000 is shown to be a big success.

I’ve read before that the WWII big-gun ships (like the Iowas) were really too far ahead of their time. Their range and firepower were impressive, but they lacked the technology to really capitalize on those factors as an advantage. I think this emerged when the Iowas began shelling Iraqi fortifications with Pioneer…

None of them ‘crashed and burned during takeoff’. You are likely thinking of the unintentional grounding of a YF-22 during testing. The pilot was instructed to make a low speed, low altitude pass for observers. During the pass, the thrust vectoring system was active (IIRC this was a software bug) and caused the pilot…

It depends on what you want to achieve with your air force. Even old MiGs are still capable of course, look at the former Soviet satellites, but you will struggle to keep them in the air and struggle even more if you want them upgraded electronically. If you have access to precision guided munitions, the Scorpion is a…

That’s true, and like Tyler said its one of the things that modern computer flight controls have improved. But low speed handling/stall characteristics are very important to safe operation of aircraft and there is only so much that avionics can do to help that. The early Northrop wings had a number of design features…

It also had extremely poor stall characteristics. There was an article in Air and Space some time ago written by one of the test pilots. As I recall, he described the stall as very sudden and would cause the plane to flip nose over tail a “rolled up like a dollar bill” (or something to that effect).

The YB-49 wasn’t secret after WWII. They did a few cross-country flights to show it off and try gain support.

Not another one of these. Flying wing projects were in development concurrently in the US and Germany before and during the war. While the shape of them does give some inherent “stealth” characteristics, the major contributing factor for the Horton was that it was made mostly of wood, which could absorb a considerable…

Don’t base your knowledge on a game. Flying wing projects were in development concurrently in the US and Germany before and during the war. There were actually a number of other tailless American designs such as the XP-55 (which you should recognize from WT) and the XP-56 Black Bullet. None of these designs were…

I believe the aircraft was hoisted aboard and the pilot would dismount once inside the ship. Though I have absolutely no idea how this actually worked. I would love to see some kind of schematic that outlined the process of launch and recovery operations.

They must know the terrain exceptionally well. I was wondering why they didn’t drop back down to the deck after clearing the overpass. Then I saw the powerlines. That would make for a bad day if you didn’t know they were there.