Reading, PA airshow

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Tim15856, Jun 14, 2019.

  1. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    The CFA is in Baltimore this week, last weekend they were in Reading and I took two of the grandson's.

    P-51
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    Now, what is an SS officer doing with a Mustang?
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    B-17
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    B-25
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    AT-6 formation flying and acrobatics.
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    B-29
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    P-40
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    Trick flying, he actually landed his airplane on that truck as it sped down the runway.
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    C-47
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    PBY
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  2. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    Limited to 20 pictures per post, had to cut off a bunch, here's more.

    Corsair and Wildcat, simulated dogfighting with Japanese planes.

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    Simulated battle between US and German armor. I couldn't get closer for better pictures.

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    Panzer Mark III
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    Part of a P-61

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    Some others

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  3. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Out here in the totalitarian state of California in the IE, we have the Planes of Fame at Chino Airport.
    One of the largest collection of warbirds and the liberals to the west in L.A. are uncomfortable with these warbirds being so close to the Capital of the Third World.

    https://planesoffame.org/aircraft

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    Douglas AD-4N 'Skyraider'


    Aircraft Type: Attack Aircraft
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Douglas Aircraft Company
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1950
    Remarks: Arrived too late for WWII, but Skyraiders served in Korea and Vietnam wars.


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    Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-9 'Wurger'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Flug Werk GmbH
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: Replica built in 2009 based on 1944 aircraft
    Remarks: Over 20,000 Fw190 aircraft were built from 1939 until 1945, making this aircraft one of the mainstays of the German Luftwaffe of WWII.

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    Lockheed P-38J 'Lightning'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Lockheed Aircraft Corporation
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1944
    Remarks: Museum’s aircraft served with the 483 Air Base Squadron in Santa Maria, California during WWII.


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    Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 bis 'Fagot'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1951
    Remarks: Served with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (China) during the Korean War.


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    Mitsubishi A6M5 'Zeke'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1943
    Remarks: Allied code name: Zeke


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    Vought F4U-1A 'Corsair'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Flying Aircraft
    Manufacturer: Vought Aviation
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1943
    Remarks: WWII Combat Veteran


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    Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17F 'Fresco'


    Aircraft Type: Fighter
    Aircraft Status: Static Display
    Manufacturer: WSK-Mielec Aviation
    Location: Chino
    Year Built: 1959
    Remarks: Built under license in Poland as LIM-5.
     
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  4. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    LOVE the lines of the Corsair.

    Black sheep squadron FTW.
     
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  5. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There's a story why the Corsair had inverted gull wings.

    Originally while still on the drawing board the Corsair didn't have gull wings.




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    The wing shape in the F4U Corsair is called the inverted gull wing. The main reasons for use of this is the large propeller used in the aircraft.

    The Corsair design was in response to the US Navy RFP (Request for Proposal) in 1938, which mandated the following things:

    • It should have maximum attainable speed
    • The stall speed should be 70 mph
    • Minimum range of 1000 miles
    • Bombs should be carried under the wing (this was supposed to be dropped on aircraft formations from above, which didn't work out)
    In order to achieve this, the Vought engineers used the largest available engine, the Prat and Whitney R2800 Double Wasp radial engine (this was done as the Navy, in a change of heart, vowed to consider designs with liquid-cooled engines, in contradiction with a policy settled in 1927 that required air-cooled engines for shipboard aircraft). Also, the wing area of F4U was the largest naval aircraft of its time.

    During design, the oil cooler and supercharger inlets were moved to wing leading edges. In order to extract power from the engine, a large (~4m dia) propeller was chosen. This large propeller caused problems with ground clearance, which necessitated an increase in the landing gear length.

    The Vought team overcame this by choosing an inverted gull wing, which starts out with a strong anhedral, and then curved upwards to strong dihedral, with landing gear at the lowest point in the bend.

    The main advantages of this configuration are,

    • Shortened landing gear
    • Elimination of the need for wing fillets, and reducing drag as the wing and fuselage were perpendicular.
    • Simplified wing folding (the wings were folded at the lowest point), with the folded wings nearly at the height of the propellers. This enabled simple automatic mechanism for folding/unfolding, unlike the F6F Sto-wing which was manual, as the hydraulic mechanism added too much weight.
    The main disadvantages were:

    • The design added weight compared to straight wing.
    • (To some people) It was ugly
    This design has been used in a number of other aircraft too, mostly to reduce the length of the landing gear and carry large external stores, the most famous being the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka...

    source -> https://aviation.stackexchange.com/...dvantage-of-the-f4u-corsairs-gull-wing-design
     
  6. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Interesting I always figured it was to add wing surface area.
     
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  7. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    "> Landing and taking off on aircraft carriers was extremely difficult with the F4U as its high torque and the large diameter of the propeller tended to spin out easily during takeoff. The pilot had to carefully determine the Corsair’s takeoff velocity. If the velocity was too high, there was a chance that the Corsair would spin around the propeller; if it was too low, the aircraft would be too slow for takeoff.

    The US Marine Corps and the US Navy mainly used the Chance Vought F4U during the Pacific War. Additional compartments were used to carry and drop bombs on enemy targets. After dropping the bombs, pilots still had a heavy fighter, but with excellent performance and a top speed that was hard to beat at that time. This is how the Corsair was able to take on maneuverable Japanese Mitsubishi fighters. During the Korean War at the beginning of the 50s, this model was still used and one Corsair pilot even beat a Soviet jet. "<

    https://www.flyingbulls.at/en/fleet/chance-vought-f4u-4-corsair/
     
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  8. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Very cool.

    I just learned about this Nazi aircraft. I did not know they had primitive guided missiles back then.
     
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  9. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  10. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Nazi aircraft carrier?
     
  11. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes.

    But a German corporal just never understood sailors and war at sea.
     
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  12. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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  13. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    And IMO, Dönitz didn't properly operate the German surface fleet. Sending his biggest, best ships out by themselves or one escort to use as merchant raiders for God's sake.

    Never finished
     
  14. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's what Donitz did, he used his battleships, battle cruisers and cruisers as merchant raiders.
     
  15. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Also the design was extremely flawed and had a list that would have made it impossible to actually operate aircraft. Plus the Germans had literally zero doctrine or operational experience with aircraft carriers.

    They should have used the material wasted on the Graf Zeppelin to build more tanks or uboats.
     
  16. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Raiding was really the only useful thing the German navy surface ships could have done beyond being a fleet in being and just hanging out in harbor.

    They definitely couldn’t tangle with the British fleet and beat them.
     
  17. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Source ?

    The Germans were known for building superb warships and boats.

    The Graf Zeppelin flaws couldn't be corrected ?

    I wonder what the Kriegsmarine was intendending using the Graf Zeppelin for ?

    Merchant raider ?
    Surface warfare ?
    Bombing New York City ?
     
  18. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    They built it because everyone else was building carriers without any idea for how it would fit in their doctrine?
     
  19. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So where have you been hiding our Quester ?

    There are scores of opinions and "if's" regarding Germany's aircraft carriers.

    Below is just one of them.

     
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  20. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Any world in which Germany spends enough resources to build enough carriers to beat the British Navy is a world in which they fail to build enough tanks and artillery to beat the French and British armies.
     
  21. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    I know, that is what I was criticizing, using battleships to go after merchant ships was ridiculous. Sending them out in that way, these battleships did hardly any damage, in fact armed merchant raiders did far more damage than these battleships/cruisers.
    https://www.history.navy.mil/resear...e-in-world-war-ii/german-surface-raiders.html

    Germany lost the majority of it's destroyers during the invasion of Norway so there weren't a lot of escorts left, but maybe if they kept what they had available grouped together and operated within range of land based aircraft they could have gained local control over areas such as the channel and then maybe they could have prevented so many British from evacuating from Dunkirk for example.
     
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  22. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The most famous and successful merchant raider in history was the CSS Alabama.
    Over two years of raiding, it sank and captured around 68 ships.
    https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/alabama-commerce-raider-civil-war?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4

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    https://www.history.navy.mil/resear...and-projects/ship-wrecksites/css-alabama.html
     
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  23. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thanks for posting! My father RIP was an engineer gunner on a B-25 in the 5th Army Air Corp under General MacArthur in the Pacific Campaign from late ‘42 till the end of the war. He sat in one of those glass turrets on a bicycle seat firing .38 caliber machine guns, then had to rebuild the engines in his “down” times. I went with him several times to his bomber group reunions every 5 years. What a great bunch of guys! Right before he died he did an hour long video about the Pacific Campaign standing next to a B-25 at Van Nuys Airport near LA. It is now in the Library of Congress. To me it is still amazing how we went from having a threadbare military in 41 to full production and total victory over the two biggest military powers in the world in under 4 years. It seems that since then, we have used our overbloated military as a profit center for those selling battlefield expendables. We have been engaged in several turd hunts lasting 10 years or more against pissant countries for decades and now it appears that the chicken hawk idiots in charge are about to start up anotheragainst Iran. Pretty disgusting.
     
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  24. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I love the sound of a gas guzzling internal combustion radial engine in the morning
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2019
  25. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    My old man hated working on any engines after tearing those radial engines apart with big crescent wrenches and putting them back together in hot jungles. He called those wrenches knuckle busters. But he said he was real good at it because he and his brothers depended on them to get in fast and low strafe, bomb and get the hell out...
     
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