Flintlock76 charlie hebdo If the runways were too short to land at Chanute, how did they get there intact? Pilots have gotten aircraft down on runways (or other places, for that matter) where "The Book" says it's not possible to do so. It's been done. But on the other hand, flying them out of there again can be another matter entirely.
charlie hebdo If the runways were too short to land at Chanute, how did they get there intact?
If the runways were too short to land at Chanute, how did they get there intact?
Pilots have gotten aircraft down on runways (or other places, for that matter) where "The Book" says it's not possible to do so. It's been done.
But on the other hand, flying them out of there again can be another matter entirely.
Extremely skilled and proficient operators of any form of machienry can get it to do things the 'specs' say are not possible - those writing the 'specs' are aiming those specs at the average or worse operator - as a safety margin for the the machine.
Every time you watch a motor race - the winner exceeds the norm for operations as identified by those finishing in 2nd and lower positions. Sometime that difference may be 0.001 second or less, sometimes that difference may be a lap or more.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
By using every available foot of the runway and thresholds. As I mentioned, I believe at least one of them over-ran the runway. For the record, the runways at Chanute are 5,001 ft and 4,894 feet. It is now an uncontrolled general aviation airport.
And there's no guarantee those planes actually were flyable after landing, plus what everyone else has said. I'd imagine they planted them pretty hard.
As an aside, my son (a former F15 crew chief) told me they had tried to repower a B-52 with more modern power. I think they only put four engines on, versus the usual eight, and still had to derate the engines as they were too much power for the airframe...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
They used the B52 to test the engines for the 747 ..
http://newsroom.pw.utc.com/2015-05-26-B-52-Re-Birth-from-Boneyard-Sparks-Memories-for-Former-Pratt-Whitney-Pilot
There is a active plan to re-engine the current fleet and they plan on sticking with 8.
https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/engine-testing/rolls-royce-completes-testing-of-potential-b-52-replacement-engines.html
rdamonThere is a active plan to re-engine the current fleet and they plan on sticking with 8. https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/engine-testing/rolls-royce-completes-testing-of-potential-b-52-replacement-engines.html
That's only one of the section 804 design efforts; that's basically the same engine package that fits the Gulfstream V.
General Electric proposed the CF34-10 as the high-bypass 4-engine replacement choice, and the "Passport" business-jet engine (with an enhanced suite of diagnostic and support tools) for the eight-engine choice.
A primary reason to use a small-core engine to replace TF33s is that they can be phased into existing 'power pods' with minimal effect on the 'rest' of the airframe. As I recall, the later mods of the '52 lack explicit aileron authority and the 'fence' effect of the pods is an important part of stability. As I recall, the 'last-century' pitch to use Rolls-Royce RB211 fan engines as the replacement foundered, in part, on having significant required support differences (4 matched converted engines per airframe, no 'mix and match' as seen in the engine-test pictures) that would have to be supported for the considerable time of the conversion; much better to have engines that at least in theory could be 'modularly' installed perhaps even using some of the existing nacelle structure, or even be made 'plug compatible' (in emulation, including implicit FADEC remapping and derating) with the controls for the earlier engine to make them interchangeable in emergency conditions.
In my opinion section 804 was well written and should produce reasonable results -- note that initial choices were supposed to be made around this month, and I don't expect that 'milestone' target would be missed...
OK, this is about an airplane. It's not attacking a train and I hope this thread doesn't get locked because of me posting this, but it's so damned beautiful that words fail me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9qqLX3Afaw
Like a piece of sculpture by a fine artist.
One of the most beautiful airplanes ever built, a national icon for the country that built it, and a sword through Britain's deadliest enemy.
You can't beat that combination!
charlie hebdo Like a piece of sculpture by a fine artist.
And a fine sounding one as well...
Being an old car guy as well as a train guy, I participate in an on-line forum called Bringatrailer.com. Cars are for sale, people write in comments both informed and uninformed. They post questions such as "Which do you prefer, Ferrari or Maserati?" and such like. A question a while back was, 'What is your favourite V-12?" The winner? The Merlin!
Hard to argue with the choice of the Merlin!
Although, I do have a soft spot for the V-12 engine in the 1939 Lincoln-Zephyr!
I mean, just look at this tank!
http://www.ipocars.com/vinfo/lincoln/zypher_v12-1939.html
Flintlock76I mean, just look at this tank!
The old cars may not have had all the padding and other safety features, but when you stepped into one, you felt like you were stepping up into something solid.
I'm reminded of my father's comment about newer cars: "You have to sit down before you get in."
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Flintlock76http://www.ipocars.com/vinfo/lincoln/zypher_v12-1939.html
Well, what would you expect from a car explicitly named after a train?
And this was the 'Packard 120' product in the Lincoln lineup. For true locomotive wonder with that V12 flathead you should go to Edsel's Continentals.
In the glorious period in the mid-Seventies when I got to order all the family new cars at the local Lincoln-Mercury agency, it was their practice to have 'special-interest' cars in the showroom -- perhaps to compete with the Mercedes people up the street who always had some interesting historical thing for sale. One such tempting target was a 'driver restoration' of a '46 Continental, essentially put into not flawless concours undrivability, but as the car would have appeared in a contemporary showroom for sale. (Not quite as practical as one of the box Town Cars, though... when you could get one with four-wheel disc brakes and stage IV towing and built-in CB right from the factory, and if you knew the right people get a police-spec 460 in the thing as well. Surprising how well one of those went, with near 50/50 weight distribution, when you "improved" some things in the suspension...)
Paul of Covington Flintlock76 I mean, just look at this tank! The old cars may not have had all the padding and other safety features, but when you stepped into one, you felt like you were stepping up into something solid. I'm reminded of my father's comment about newer cars: "You have to sit down before you get in."
Flintlock76 I mean, just look at this tank!
Also, the front fenders on a Model A were wonderful for children to use as slides.
Johnny
Paul of Covington The old cars may not have had all the padding and other safety features, but when you stepped into one, you felt like you were stepping up into something solid. I'm reminded of my father's comment about newer cars: "You have to sit down before you get in."
Yes, but...
We're talking essentially about this -- same color and same trim:
and you most assuredly don't 'step up' into it. Nor, by intent, were you supposed to.
Mind you, it's no Jaguar, or Pantera, or Bullet Bird. But it wasn't something enormous like a '47 Cadillac, either.
Hudsons were another car named after a fast locomotive ... or at least you won't get me to admit anything different ... that you didn't board like a pickup truck.
Substantial, yes. Awkward climb up over the sill of the chassis? I don't think so.
And then of course you have this -- intentionally in later-Twentieth-Century evocative colors:
Of course, there's also these, which are admittedly a bit extreme, but they make a pretty good point:
Now, one or the other of you is surely going to get around to 'well, what if we actually built a car POWERED by a railroad engine; wouldn't that be something you had to climb up into no matter how slinky it was styled?' ...
Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not...
Kind of jumping ahead out of the era of those classics, but one of the things I liked about the PT Cruiser I had was stepping up into it intead of half-sitting down before getting in as I have to do with the Hyundai I'm driving now.
Fun car that Cruiser, but it didn't age well. Too bad.
Lady Firestorm's Kia Soul is like the Cruiser, step up into it, which she loves.
Man, that Bugatti Overmod linked looks cool as hell! Didn't Mussolini have one of those?
I first encountered the Bucciali "V-16" only as a drawing in a book of classic cars I was given in my early teens. In those pre-Internet days it was tough to come across anything substantive, but was that ever an evocative silhouette!
Later Christian Huet would document the development, and then there would be a three-part series in 2014 on the car and the two 'replicas' made of it. Here is the first installment.
Oddly enough, I knew a couple of the Tishmans fairly well and never heard about this.
It took a very, very long time, considering the time and effort put into projects like Coddington's Whatthehaye and French Connection, but someone in the rodding community finally woke up and did a version. Let's hope there will be more!
Bucciali pioneered front-wheel drive vehicles, two years before the mass-produced DKW F-series.
I've seen the Bucciali at the Meadowbrook show in Michigan-It's one of the longest cars I've ever seen. For the best of Edsel's Lincoln Continental you have to look at the 40-41 with the waterfall grille- from every angle, it just looks right. The story is, Edsel wanted a personal car to use at the estate in Palm Beach- when they saw it, his friends begged him to put it into production and so it was. His prototype still exists in mint condition.
The car with the horizontal stripes is a Ruxton- also front wheel drive and extremely rare.
Actually, front wheel drive was pioneered by Walter Christie who built a transverse-engined front wheel drive racing car in 1904. He also designed a tank that could do 80 mph on rough ground and 120 mph on paved roads. The US Army wasn't interested, so he sold the design to the Russians who used it as the basis of the T-34, pretty much the best tank of the second world war.
Hudsons were named after the owner of the J.L Hudson department store in Detroit who financially backed the car company that lacked a name. The board of directors thought naming a car after the company founder would be a little awkward since his name was Coffin.
54light15The car with the horizontal stripes is a Ruxton- also front wheel drive and extremely rare.
There's an over-thirty-page account of the restoration of this particular car on line. I linked to it in an earlier thread here. Interesting discussion of how they came to paint it in a 'grayscale' version of the multiple-tone Urban color scheme.
Coffin? Don't you mean Roy D. Chapin, Sr.?
charlie hebdoCoffin? Don't you mean Roy D. Chapin, Sr.?
He means Howard E. Coffin. A much more important figure in the developing American automobile industry than most people recognize.
An interesting and possibly troubled figure.
Flak train versus planes at Ploesti Rommania.
"The approach of the groups led by Kane and Johnson, parallel to the railway linking Floreşti and Ploieşti, had the unfortunate distinction of encountering Gerstenberg’s disguised Flak train. At an altitude of only about 50 ft (15 m), the bombers of the 98th and 44th BG(H)s found themselves to the left and right of this train’s direction of movement. The advantage lay with the 98th and 44th BG(H)s, whose gunners responded rapidly to the threat, disabling the locomotive and killing many of the Flak gun crews."
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2007/December%202007/1207wave.aspx
Since this thread has reactivated, I have this one question.
Robin Olds in his autobiography "Fighter Pilot" writes about strafing trains in Occupied France, and how by Olds' reasoning, the locomotive crews in Occupied France were just doing the bidding of their occupiers. He claims that he "aimed for the boiler and not the cab" so as to not, at least immediately, kill the French engine crews.
What happens when you shoot into a live boiler? Do you risk a boiler explosion and hence serious harm to the crew? Or does the resulting bullet hole leak steam without the boiler tearing itself apart?
Speaking of WW-II France, anyone ever see this movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Train_(1964_film)
I came across it flipping channels, and I came across the scene where Burt Lancaster is recasting the white-metal driver bearings that had been sabotaged by the locomotive driver, who had placed a coin in the lubricator line. It's a complicated plot why Lancaster is working to cross-purposes with the Resistance at that point, it appears it may have some interesting steam locomotive scenes?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul MilenkovicSpeaking of WW-II France, anyone ever see this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Train_(1964_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFVU0A_55B4
charlie hebdoAn interesting and possibly troubled figure.
David Niven, in Bring on the Empty Horses, describes someone from Hollywood who did what I think was much the same thing. When he felt his creative and thinking life was over, at 65, he chose to end things rather than fade away.
We had yearly memorials at my old boys' high school for someone who was 18 and died 'cleaning his favorite gun'. At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber. Oh, to be so innocent again. Or perhaps not.
Overmod At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber.
To be perfectly honest with you, I'd never thought of that angle. Kind of a euphemism.
Overmod charlie hebdo An interesting and possibly troubled figure. David Niven, in Bring on the Empty Horses, describes someone from Hollywood who did what I think was much the same thing. When he felt his creative and thinking life was over, at 65, he chose to end things rather than fade away. We had yearly memorials at my old boys' high school for someone who was 18 and died 'cleaning his favorite gun'. At the time I was only about 13, and I couldn't understand how anyone could be so foolish as to try cleaning a weapon so familiar to them with a round in the chamber. Oh, to be so innocent again. Or perhaps not.
charlie hebdo An interesting and possibly troubled figure.
David Niven was probably talking about George Sanders, who famously left a suicide note that said "I am leaving because I am bored."
Turns out that wasn't the real reason. Sanders had suffered a series of strokes that while not appearing to have had any outward effects left him unable to persue his favorite hobby, playing the piano (He was concert-quality good) and unable to remember his lines. Having to use cue cards humiliated him, even though everyone understood. In frustration he even dragged his piano out of the house and chopped it up with an ax.
Depressed and in despair he took his own life. What shame.
And as far as "Killed while cleaning his gun..." is concerned a police detective explained to me years ago.
"Well, if the decedent was a Catholic being a suicide he'd be denied the Last Rites of the Church, plus a Catholic burial service, and burial in a Catholic cemetery, suicide being a mortal sin as far as the Church is concerned."
"And, life insurance companies don't pay out in the case of suicides. So, for the benefit of the families we class the death as "Killed while cleaning..."
"Yeah, we're lying about it, but sometimes you just have to, you know?"
Flintlock76And as far as "Killed while cleaning his gun..." is concerned a police detective explained to me years ago. "Well, if the decedent was a Catholic being a suicide he'd be denied the Last Rites of the Church, plus a Catholic burial service, and burial in a Catholic cemetery, suicide being a mortal sin as far as the Church is concerned."
I heard the same thing in the past, but only for religious reasons. Insurance companies are a different kettle of fish because of potential fraud discovery.
Leo_AmesI wonder what made for the best train strafer in the European theater? I imagine it's a race between the USAAF P-47 and the RAF's Hawker Typhoon and Tempest.
.
When it comes to Air-To-Ground attacks during WW2, the best weapons platforms were easily the Hawker Typhoon and the P-47 Thunderbolt.
It could be debated endlessly which of these two should wear the crown, but really, nothing else came close to what these two could do to virtually any ground target when considering single manned aircraft.
I would give the number 3 position to the IL-2 of the Soviet Army, but that is just my oppinion, and it had a crew of 2 anyway.
Flintlock76I'd give slightly higher points to the Hawker Tempest and Typhoons since they had 20mm cannons. The USAAF never went into 20mm's in a big way, the .50 cal Brownings were considered more than adequate.
I think 8 .50 caliber machine guns is the definition of more than adequate.
Paul MilenkovicWhat happens when you shoot into a live boiler? Do you risk a boiler explosion and hence serious harm to the crew? Or does the resulting bullet hole leak steam without the boiler tearing itself apart?
I suppose that all depends on what you hit it with.
Light machine gun fire would probably put enough holes it it that it lost boiler pressure, and the crew would need to drop the fire, but it probably would not explode.
The combined force of 8 .50 caliber M2s from a P-47 might just rip the whole thing apart and it might explode.
I would love to see some real experimentation on this, that would make good TV!
From what I understand, WW2 pilots were told to attack a train low and from the front. I do not know if this was to prevent as much defensive fire from A/A guns as possible, or if that was the best way to inflict the most damage to the locomotive.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
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