Cool airplane photo thread

Colorized delivery photo of P38's at the USAAF Depot and Lockheed Assembly at Langford Lodge done by [email protected]. Just at the beginning of the natural metal changeover.

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Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak at Muroc Army Airfield (later Edwards Air Force Base) in California (USA). Both Carl and Caldwell established world speed records in D-558-1 type aircraft in 1947 (Photo Source: US Navy)

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Another cool shot from Jets and Props, US Air Force/Convair shot.

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Another shot from Jets and Props. B35's at Northrop. The fact that all were scrapped shows how crooked the USAF procurement program was in the late 1940's to early 1950's, making sure the program would not continue. Convair and Boeing got all the heavy bomber contracts.

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Did they bring the P-38s over on ships rather than flying them?

 

Yes, on ships.

 

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The B-35 was canned just like the B-49 because the technology to make flying wings stable enough to be safe did not exist.

 

General Cardena was one of the programs test pilots and maintained that precise yaw control was required in a good bombing platform and the Wing had crummy yaw control. He said for many years there was no conspiracy, the plane was not up to the job. It took computers to give the shape the yaw control it needed.

 

Someone please give me a history/geography lesson. Wasnt Langford Lodge in Ireland? Wasn't Ireland neutral? Wasn't Ireland troubled with a great deal of spy activity during the war? How does any of that square with a Lockheed final assembly point?

 

It's in Northern Ireland, which was (and still is) part of the United Kingdom:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Langford_Lodge

The rest of Ireland was neutral, but not Northern Ireland.

 

Yaw wasn't the only problem. The early flying wing can imperceptibly ossolates (spl) in the pitch axis as it goes from a near stall back to stabile flight. I was told that the computer solved that problem as well as yaw issues.

 

Could you expand on this? Trying to understand how this could happen except on the very edge of the maneuvering envelope.

 

That explains it. The source I used did not differentiate NORTHERN Ireland

 

According to Cardenas it rotated backwards in a stall. He warned another test pilot about it and he was killed in a crash. Jack Northrup claimed it was impossible for that to happen. Cardenas was head test pilot for the program and didn't like it. Probably the one who killed it. He was also as I recall the pilot of the one on a coast to coast flight ran out of oil and lost 4 engines. Did emergency landing in Arizona.

 

That would be consistent with an airfoil losing lift. The airfoil pitching moment is nose down, thus a stall would reduce the nose down pitching moment causing the wing to rotate 'backwards'. This should not have been a surprise, and every test pilot would understand that. Also, in my reply to Bob this could only happen on the edge of the envelope when approaching stall, thus I'm trying to understand the comment about oscillation as I don't see how that could occur during normal 1g flight (e.g. during a bomb run).

 

This was explained to me by an engineer in aerodynamics, A Jarvis. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "stall" but "increased angle of attack". He explained the purpose of having a reflex airfoil or elevons to counter nose down pitching moment and it produced small continuous up and down oscillations that made the bomb sights at that time unworkable. I'm not smart enough or educated enough to make this stuff up. This is what I was told by someone who was smart and educated.

 

My dad was a sailor during the war and told me about delivering P38 Lightnings and P39 Airacobras, which I think is exactly what's shown here. He could be in that photo!!!

 

Those Jeep carriers were used to haul aircraft all over the world. That one had a mixture of P-38s (dark) and F-5s (light) Lightnings and early razorback P-47s. Likely going to England.

 

When i was stationed at Langley Field we saw quite a few ships being towed by tugs or limping into the Portsmouth River on their way to the Navy yard to be repaired. It made you think about the sailors or crew members who were in the middle of the terrible damage that some of them received. One of my high school buddies was on a Corvette escorting cargo ships in the north sea. They came in for repairs not from explosives but from the north sea. There wasn't a smooth hull plate from stem to stern from the battering of the waves and ice. All life boats, life rafts, and other devices had been swept away. He said that they took a roll that went so far over that they had "green water" pouring into the crew's quarters because it stayed there so long. He said that he thought that they were going down and then the ship finally righted itself. It was in port for quite a while getting repaired and then went right back to the north sea. I don't think that any of the crew was over 30 except for some of the officers.

 

What an engine, the Allison W-3420!!! Alot of bugs to work out but still amazing. They still have a P75 on display in the Air Force museum. It used this motor along with the B29(39) and the Lockheed XP 58 I posted a photo of.

Allison V-3420 - Wikipedia

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Another colorized photo from Howdi.



A group of P-400's, the closest being BW167, #6, of the 67th FS at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, 1942.

A critical and, indeed, pivotal moment in the fighting for Guadalcanal was the Battle of Bloody Ridge. On 12th September '42, Japanese reinforcements under the command of General Kawaguchi, which had only just landed on the island, launched another attack – the most powerful yet – towards Henderson Field. On the night of 13–14th September, they assaulted the hill that was later named 'Bloody Ridge' and soon reached the airfield boundary. On the morning of 14th September, the P-400s launched three furious attacks against the Japanese soldiers deployed in the open. This caused such losses and confusion among the Japanese infantry that the decimated survivors fled into the jungle. General Geiger later declared that these three Airacobra attacks had saved the entire Guadalcanal campaign.

General Vandegrift also remarked, “You won’t read about this in any of the newspapers, but you and your flight of P-400s just saved Guadalcanal."

Photo: Jack Cook Collection - With Kind Permission.

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There's another guy that helped. He shot down 14 Japanese airplanes (4 Zeros if I remember) with an F4-F. Marine Capt. i drew this when I was 16 in 1942. Image Unavailable, Please Login John L. Smith.

 

Remember that the P-400s only had 20mm cannons firing thru the prop, not 37s as in most other Airacobras. Obviously, it was still enough!