The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money
On December 5, 2001, an American B-52 flying tens of thousands of feet above the ground mistakenly dropped a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb on an Army Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The aircrew had been fed the wrong coordinates, but had the plane been flying as low and slow as older generations of attack planes did, the crew might’ve realized their error simply by looking down at the ground.
It was not long after the Twin Towers fell, and American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan by an American bomb dropped by an American plane. That this mistake happened illustrates just how poorly the air campaign in the United States’ longest war was executed, and how efforts ultimately failed to make things better by going after high-tech solutions that aren’t what they’re cracked up to be compared to the old tried and true technology.
That bomber was on a 30-plus hour round trip flight from the remote island of Diego Garcia, 900 miles south of India. The plane those Green Berets really needed, the low-and-slow flying A-10 Warthog, wasn’t available yet in Afghanistan. Famously rugged and even more famously lethal, the Warthog was the first American jet to actually land at the decrepit Bagram Airfield. Soon after the runway was repaired, many dozens of F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 fighter jets—wholly different creatures—came streaming in.
According to former Defense Department official Pierre Sprey, the US Air Force could have left those other jets out, had they sent three full squadrons of A-10s—72 planes total—to Afghanistan instead. But Sprey says the Air Force “never had more than 12 Warthogs in-country at any given time during the entire war.”
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http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow
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Perhaps the author made a mistake regarding the name's origin and its return as the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Kids.
But this former Ground Pounder would feel safer if I had this nose art flying above me:
The Army was pushed out of the fixed wing business when the Army Air Corps was spun off into its own branch of the military in 1947. There are exceptions, and the Army does operate some fixed wing aircraft, but they are few and far between, just as DemoTex will attest.
When this one would work better.
Specifications (A-1H Skyraider)
Line drawings for the AD-4 Skyraider.
Data from McDonnell Douglas Aircraft since 1920[32]
General characteristics
Crew: One
Length: 38 ft 10 in (11.84 m)
Wingspan: 50 ft 0¼ in (15.25 m)
Height: 15 ft 8¼ in (4.78 m)
Wing area: 400.3 ft² (37.19 m²)
Empty weight: 11,968 lb (5,429 kg)
Loaded weight: 18,106 lb (8,213 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 25,000 lb (11,340 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Wright R-3350-26WA radial engine, 2,700 hp (2,000 kW)
Performance
Maximum speed: 322 mph (280 kn, 518 km/h) at 18,000 ft (5,500 m)
Cruise speed: 198 mph (172 kn, 319 km/h)
Range: 1,316 mi (1,144 nmi, 2,115 km)
Service ceiling: 28,500 ft (8,685 m)
Rate of climb: 2,850 ft/min (14.5 m/s)
Wing loading: 45 lb/ft² (220 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.15 hp/lb (250 W/kg)
Armament
Guns: 4 × 20 mm (0.79 in) M2 cannon
Other: Up to 8,000 lb (3,600 kg) of ordnance on 15 external hardpoints including bombs, torpedoes, mine dispensers, unguided rockets, and gun pods.[23]
F4U Corsair, used primarily by the Marines, made famous by VMF 214, commanded by Greg "Pappy" Boyington.
Also used in the Korean War.
