"Gone a bit better for them"? We won, didn't we? ;-)
"Gone a bit better for them"? We won, didn't we? ;-)
ohhhh yes we did....and rightly so!
"Jules" wrote in news:MT2lj.237949$S37.62167 @fe3.news.blueyonder.co.uk:
I've read four very good books about the Falklands War, Max Hasting's book is one, another the name of which escapes at the moment plus 2 of the Osprey books Air and Sea. I have a fair amount of interest in this action, it was probably the last WWII style battle we will see. I have great love and admiration for the British Bulldog and the courage and determination of all involved. I even have respect for the Argentine pilots, they performed very well under the circumstances and bravely even if thier leadership was corrupt and stupid - misjudging Thatcher and though I can't remember details just now there seems a number of military missteps that nade the Brits job easier.
It has also inspired my Falklands collection - a large box of Falklands themed models - Harriers, helos, Argentine aircraft, british ships and some ground equipment.
That said, the loss of the Atlantic Conveyor with embarked equipment and aircraft (I'd love to do a diorama of the flight deck with the containers stacked around it) was a very serious setback. It could be argued that had there been a "big deck" carrier with Phantoms providing a continuous CAP with their improved radars the Mirage would never have gotten that close. The Brits were fortunate in that the Exocet was spoofed sufficiently to not engage the carrier, that loss might been crippling, certainly worse than AC's loss, from a morale perspective.
Just my opinion, Frank
My recall of the sea conditions around that time is that they were atrocious, certainly beyond the limits required for operations of F-4s. Standard practice for recovery of the Harriers had them alighting at the stern of the carrier. In view of the sea conditions that was changed to have them alight amidships where the deck movement was minimised. .
It wouldn't have mattered Enzo. The mere existence of a fixed-wing carrier would have deterred the Argies from invading in the first place. When the Argentine carrier visited Portsmouth a few years earlier their tob brass scoffed at a flight demonstration by Harrier pilots. It was a plane they never took seriously before the war.
(kim)
I don't think so. The Argentine leadership badly needed a propaganda victory to bolster their position at home. The occupation of the Falklands could have supplied just that. The Argentines were convinced that Britain didn't have the resolve to fight a war so far out of area and also thought that the US would put pressure on the UK to stop any military response.
The leadership had badly misjudged the British resolve to defend their territory and also the support of the British allies. They rightly surmised that the formation of a fleet to liberate the Falklands would have taken a lot of assets away from NATO at a time when they were badly needed, but they hadn't counted on the NATO allies to pull out all the stops to fill the places left by British forces deployed Down South. Even non-NATO allies helped. The RAF C-130s which were allocated to transport duties within the NATO area were replaced by Australian and New Zealand C-130s and crews!
You echo a view from Jay Stout, in "Hornets Over Kuwait". He flew FA-18's, and hadn't much use for the AV-8--he thought it was inferior as a shore based CAS flighter to the A-4 it replaced. All the rest was gimmicks and what he called the Harrier Mafia in the Corps. He mentioned working over a target, getting called off to let the Harriers drop their pittance, and then going back to work. He sounded a little bitter; I think he lost a friend or two in Harrier accidents.
The Air Force F-111 went on the become one heck of a bomber. ( and it still is in Australia ) Yes ... the Navy F-111B was a pig. All was not lost with the F-111B however ... Grumman just took the best parts and revamped the idea into the F-14.
How can you compare the F-111B to the F-35C ? The empty weight of the Aardvark is the same as the loaded weight of the JSF. The JSF will be a stealthy, supersonic, zippy F-16 on steroids.
Vice Admiral Tom Connolly famously responded to a Senator's question as to whether a more powerful engine would cure the F-111B's woes, " There isn't enough power in all Christendom to make that airplane what we want ! "
Chris
Sounds like the F-111 all over.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
Too well fueled. Wouldn't use up all the gas getting off the ground. ;)
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
I think the lack of airborne early warning was a significant factor also. A couple of E-2s would have shown the Argentines coming farther out.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
It's more a case of being out matched by armament.
Yeah...one of the neat things about the AK series is that they're very easy to manufacture. So you get some variety in them.
Trade is war...took me a while (and reading Sun Tzu) to figure that out...
One of the helo jocks at work told me it's heavily placarded because the basic Blackhawk airframe simply wasn't tested out to the speed it's capable of...thing like the windscreens probably wouldn't stand up to a
250+ knot bird strike, for instance. A properly engineered airframe on this concept could show some REAL stuff.
Yeah - that might have been it. I recall there was one particular flavor everyone wanted.
Enzo, yer a wealth of knowledge...and credibility.
So the Royal Navy simply strapped an inflatable radome onto the side of a Sea King! LOL
*strutt*
The problem is the rotor. Unless it's going to purely windmill at full speed or get locked in position so the wings provide all the lift, you are going to end up with a situation where the advancing blade is going supersonic and losing lift while generating a shockwave, and the retreating blade is not generating any lift because it has no relative speed to the airflow. To get full benefit out of this concept, you need a low RPM rotor, or a rotor that somehow gets out of the airstream as speed increases and the wings generate the lift. Way back in the late 1960's I saw a drawing of a helicopter concept that had what looked like a large fling saucer sitting atop its rotor mast with blades sticking out from the edge of the disk; I assume it might have worked like this concept:
Pat
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