Great pilots

He set personal speed and altitude records on those flights.

 

I don't think there is that much difference between a 22 year old and an 18 year old. But it looks like the US Air Force can get someone into a T-38 in 12-14 months... and a T-38 (or it's fighter companion, the F-5) is nothing to be sneezed at. The US Air Force says about 3 years to be fully qualified in an F-22, from what I can see, but that is peacetime. I would guess in a WWII situation, they would be cranking out F-22 pilots in under 12 months from zero to hero, once the system was up and running.

In WWII, the US training program was 41 weeks from zero to hero, if there were no delays between the segments, so basically 12 months all things considered. I would think we could repeat that, if we really had to.

 

You've totally missed my point/question. I give up now.

 

If your point was, how far back in history would it be possible for an 18 year old kid to get in an airplane and fly it successfully without any training, I would say probably never.

I know some 16 year olds who were trained to solo in one day, and I think that is still possible today under the right circumstances in something like a Cessna 150, at a slow uncontrolled airport.

 

Minimal training basically on what a control stick does and why, what it actually does.
Guys back in 1910-12 picked it up somewhere.
I've never flown an aircraft, I think I could take off and fly a bi-plane, etc., LANDING one intact may be a different story, LOL

 

No offense, but you are dreaming if you think you could take off in a taildragger with just being told what the controls do. And landing? You would probably survive, but may not be able to use the airplane again.

I speak as an instructor who does tailwheel training.

In 1910 there was still dual instruction. Orville and Wilbur started with gliders, and many, maybe most of their flights ended in more of a controlled crash-- but the speeds were slow and the airplanes/gliders were easy to fix.

A tricycle gear airplane like a Cessna 150, yes, you could most likely take off without doing too much damage, and maybe even land, if you had a little bit of luck.

I would be interested in what others who know more than I do think, but I would guess you would have an easier time taking off and landing an F-22 if you had a bit of avionics training than you would just about any biplane or other taildragger.

 

From what I recall from my readings, at the drop of the hat: the Me-109 had better climbing performance, and markedly superior performance at altitudes above 20.000 feet than the FW-190A or F. Superior performance at altitude, one can object, was not necessarly relevant on the Russian front, as all aerial action took place at low to medium altitudes.

(of course, considering the number of variants for each plane, one should always be reminded that is can only be a general tendency; fair comparisons work only for contemporary variants. The Me-109G with the weight and drag of the additional cannons in underwing gondolas, for instance, was not very manoeuvrable, certainly much less as the 109F, usually considered as the better flying machine of the whole serie, etc...and it works also for adversaries: the Me-109F should be compared to the contemporay mark of Spitfire, i.e the "Spitfire V" but not to the later "Spitfire VIII or IX", etc...)

Also the very experienced "Luftwaffe" pilots always thought that, when properly flown to its limits, the '109 was as good as anything else. But the numbers of very experienced Luftwaffe pilots left at the end of the war was very small; the younger ones, less experienced, had more problems in mastering the Me-109.

Interestingly, Walter Eichhorn, mentioned in my post, and arguably the most experienced "modern" pilot on the '109, says that he thought it was a better turning aeroplane than the P-51, an opinion that is contrary to most...one contemporary norwegian pilot, which name escapes me for the time being, said also that the '109 engine bigger displacement (compared to the Merlin) can be felt and appreciated.

Rgds

 

I have flown a few things starting in 1945, tail draggers and nose draggers, mostly tail draggers. To brush off the task of flying any airplane with little or no knowledge and especially training is setting up an accident going some place to happen. Mastering control functions is the basic essential that takes a while to get embedded as an automatic response to counter what the airplane is trying to do to you. Then when larger more complex equipment is introduced , the pilot has more and more requirements that he has to conquer on top of all the other stuff. It becomes a blizzard of inputs that some humans cannot properly control. When I was in high school in 1942, my buddy and I used to go out to Sarasota Air Base to watch the operations of the P-40's and P-39's. There was never a weekend when there wasn't some spectacular 'incidents" , many of them deadly. At that time the pilots were 19 year olds just out of advanced, AT-6's, and the P-40's took a fearful toll in ground events and airborne. Compare the cockpit of a P-40 with a C-150 or C-172 and tell me that you could get into that fighter and operate it with minimal training. They were forced to try it then and 45,000 crew were killed in 4 years. Every day there were crashes in our area in 1942-43. Not so many when the P-51's showed up.

 

Read, for instance, "Roar of the Tiger" by James Howard (Medal of Honor) who was in the AVG with Boyington.
Whether we should use the word "fraudulent" is not for me to say, but there are question marks about some of his claims (only about a few, mainly those with the AVG, that the AVG records do not seem to confirm, and one or two of the latter ones). The truth is probably difficult to ascertain, let's say some "gray area". He was a "controversial" character for some; James Howard is rather scathing in his appreciation.

Rgds

 

The fighter that should have succeeded the Spitfire, but did not in the end, the Supermarine « Spiteful / Seafang » had an inward retracting undercarriage, with a wider track than the Spitfire ; one of its test pilots, Patrick Shea-Simmonds had this to say (quoted in « Aeroplane Monthly, January 2023 issue, page 103) :

« Many people complained about the Spitfire’s narrow-track undercarriage, and it certainly wasn’t ideal for deck operations. But it did have a curious sort of « bicycle stability » : once the aircraft was rolling forward, it tended to go straight in the direction in which it was pointing. The Spiteful [despite its wide-track undercarriage] was different : during taxiing and landing runs it tended to wander off course, and one had to rely on differential braking to keep it going straight »

Rgds

 

The trouble with the Spitfire and Spiteful follow-on was no range. Great for the Battle of Britain over your own fields, but a big disadvantage for anything else.

 

I was shocked how little internal fuel a Spitfire carried. Less than half a P51. Very late Spiteful carried nearly as much as P51 but had a Griffon so must have burned a frightful amount.

 

I've been listening to Jocko Wilink Podcast #364 with guest Dick Rutan. I don't know why I didn't think of him earlier, but Dick Rutan certainly deserves to be included in any discussion of great pilots. When I was a kid I got to see Voyager land at Oshkosh in 1984, piloted by Dick Rutan. This was before the record flight and I had no knowledge of the plane or even what it was supposed to look like. As it overflew Whittman Field at high altitude, I caught a glimpse and was surprised that it looked like a ling-winged P-38. I was 10 years old.

https://jockopodcast.com/2022/12/15/364-you-only-fail-if-you-quit-with-record-breaking-fighter-pilot-dick-rutan/

 

I would agree about Dick Rutan. If you go to the Palm Springs Air Museum and look at the F-100, many people who flew them signed the one that is there. Among them is Dick Rutan, "Misty 40"-- the Misty's were the "fast FAC" forward air controllers...

https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195816/misty-facs/

Gutsy group of guys.

 

Doubt they would need any more F-22 pilots, as there wouldn't be any F-22's left.

 

The whole premise of his question was absurd.

However, on a tangent, if we ended up in a WWII situation, what would be the mass produced fighter? Would we go back and make more F-16s, or crank out the F-35? Is it possible to mass produce something like the F-35 in the thousands over a short period of time?

 

That was my point. Very doubtful that any future conflict will allow for mass production of aircraft, nor will there be much replacement of lost aircraft. Lots of laughing over what Russia is experiencing, but in a peer or near peer conflict I don't see the US fairing much better. There won't be any allies re-supplying us like Ukraine is benefiting from. US stockpiles of certain munitions are already low due to the contributions we have made to Ukraine.

 

If a war went on long enough, I'm not sure that is true. I think the same arguments were made in 1937-38 as well, and look what we did.

The peacetime procurement process is completely different from a wartime process. I wonder if we would end up banging out something like the F-5 in huge numbers, and putting some advanced avionics and weaponry on it. Or, I suppose, first we would pull a bunch of airframes out of the desert-- probably F-16s or early F-15s, maybe.

 

Read a good book a few years ago about war planning for modern warfare for major combatants in a major non nuke confrontation. The interesting part to me was material. Its point was you get to use what you have got stockpiled. In a major confrontation consumables are used at a higher rate than the entire world can replace it. Modern aircraft and modern tanks just as an example are going to use fuel faster than we can make it. I know personally our national capacity for making ammo, all types is only a tiny percentage of how fast modern weapon systems are capable of using it. The Marine Corps at one point during the fighting in the Middle East nearly ran out. I am just guessing but aircraft are so complex we will not be able to replace many and spooling up production would take so long the shooting war will be over. Ammo shortages in this country are routine even without any substantial combat going on. And that was before we started giving so much to Ukraine. The state of Texas has a bill going up for vote this year to build a state ammo plant just so we can be sure our police will no longer need to worry about shortages. At one point in the last 2 years or so most of the agencies quit practicing or qualifying because they had no ammo. Then we have a national problem with lead supply. We shut most of the mining down because of environmental laws. We can reopen but again how long does that take?

 

To borrow from Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all its own"

 

And what about rare metals used in engines? The total jet engine capacity these days seems to be just barely adequate for the demand; would we stop making airliner engines in favor of fighter engines?

 

Naturally. Our build up for WW2 which is the scale we are talking about there were no civilian airplanes or cars or trucks made for several years. Gas and tires were strictly rationed. Fats from foods were collected for explosives production.

But, all that being said P51s and B17s were a whole bunch easier to build from sourcing raw materials right up to the skills required for final assembly. Mass mobilization was much easier. And there was time. Fortress America was out of reach.

If we were to find ourselves in a fight we will wish we had not left so much military equipment sitting in the desert, we are going to wish our petroluem reserves were not used up for political expediency, or shut down and failed to build a lot of oil production and a very long list of similar regrets. I am not wringing my hands but we really need to quit electing politicians who cannot see beyond today.

Neither the Russians or the Chinese are unaware of any of this. It seems only the American people are.

 

By all accounts none of the Russian equipment was the equal of the Germans but they had a lot of it.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/retired-navy-capt-royce-williams-shares-declassified-heroic-story

NAVY

Published April 28, 2023 7:45pm EDT
Retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams shares declassified heroic story