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THE RISE OF THE T-7A RED HAWK

An exciting new advanced jet trainer was introduced into US Air Force (USAF) service on March 17, 1961. The world’s first purpose-designed supersonic trainer, Northrop’s sleek T-38 Talon, was devised around a pair of afterburning General Electric J85 turbojets and joined the Cessna T-37 ‘Tweet’ primary trainer in an all-jet instructional program optimized for the latest frontline warplanes.

On September 27, 2018, a team comprising Boeing and Sweden’s Saab was announced as winning the USAF’s T-X contest to procure a replacement for the T-38. Boeing had revealed its T-X competitor in the form of two production-ready aircraft on September 13, 2016, promising to deliver a jet every bit as pioneering as the Talon. Powered by a single General Electric F404 afterburning turbofan, the Boeing/Saab T-7A Red Hawk is among the world’s highest performing, purpose-designed trainers.

According to the Boeing website, the name “builds off the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen, paying tribute to the legends of the past and the heroes of the future”, while ‘Hawk’ is a reference to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk the 99th Fighter Squadron initially flew. The new aircraft will join the Beechcraft T-6A Texan II in an instructional program specifically aimed at jets of the fifth-generation and beyond.

The bulged canopy, rugged undercarriage and twin tails give the T-7 the appearance of the fighter it could become. This advanced trainer may yet find a market as a light combat aircraft. Boeing/Bob Ferguson

Look back 60 years to those early T-38A sorties with the 3510th Flying Training Wing at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas and it’s easy to see how dramatically-different the Talon was compared to the Lockheed T-33 it replaced. Elsewhere in the air force, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo and North American F-100 Super Sabre were among the stalwarts of tactical airpower, the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II was ten months away from service entry, and Boeing’s B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress were the ultimate expression of American bomber prowess.

In this company, the T-38 was every bit the futuristic trainer. Now compare the T-7A Red Hawk to the Talon. Is the result of six decades’ engineering progress immediately obvious looking at the aircraft side-byside? Perhaps not, for the T-7A’s capability goes way beyond aesthetics.

The USAF enters the third decade of the 21st century with Boeing’s F-15 Eagle and Strike Eagle, plus Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22A Raptor and F-35A Lightning II among its tactical fleet, while the B-52 still holds its own alongside the Rockwell B-1B Lancer and Northrop Grumman’s B-2A Spirit bombers.

Maj Dean Hall, pilot, and Lt Col Jared Laliberte, co-pilot, perform close-formation flying in a T-38C Talon during a training sortie over a military operations area located in East Texas, September 12, 2019. The purpose of the flight was to conduct required upgrade training for the instructor pilot program. The pilots are assigned to the 560th Flying Training Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. USAF/Master Sgt Christopher Boitz

Does the T-7A look at home in this company? Absolutely, but the essence of its pioneering abilities runs deeper still. The T-7A has been designed as the flying component of an advanced training system, featuring an extensive suite of ground-based synthetic instructional aids that will ensure students are better prepared than ever to go flying, and that every drop of learning potential is extracted from each minute they spend in the air.

Mastering the mechanics of flight and acquiring the somewhat intangible skill of ‘airmanship’ are tasks best suited to the air, just as they were when the USAF commissioned the T-38 back in 1956. Those graduating from the Talon took their shiny new pilots wings to demanding aircraft that required considerable skill to fly safely, and considerably more again to operate as effective weapons platforms. When student pilots complete the first undergraduate T-7A course towards the middle of the decade, they will move to the cockpits of frontline aircraft that experienced combat pilots generally find ‘easy to fly’.

The complication today comes not from keeping the jet in the air, but from managing mission systems to deliver precise outcomes in a challenging air environment. The T-7A will teach pilots the airmanship they learn today in the Talon and how to work in the modern, data-driven digital cockpits they’ll find in the F-35A and F-15EX. And it will make them better learners in the synthetic environment throughout their careers.

This manipulated image shows the T-7A planform to good effect, emphasizing its similarity to that of the F/A-18. Boeing/Kevin Flynn

Digital by design

On September 14, 2020, Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett defined in her keynote speech, for those attending the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, a new engineering and trials concept for aircraft development. “By lowering development costs, barriers to entry are reduced by establishing digital prototyping – problems are identified and solved quickly, and timetables are collapsed,” she said. Barrett went on to describe aircraft designed under such a process as ‘eSeries’, stating: “The first eSeries designator is awarded to an aircraft that was designed, built and tested using digital engineering: the T-7A, the Red Hawk.”

Thus, Boeing’s trainer is truly a pioneer, for the fifth-generation training capability it heralds and the manner of its design. In reality, the two are inextricably linked, since the ground-based training system (GBTS) Boeing is designing, as part of the wider T-7A offer, relies on the aircraft’s digital design.

Sherri Koehnemann, Boeing’s T-7A training and sustainment director, explains: “The T-7A was created through 3D model-based systems engineering. That generates a ‘digital thread’ that we’re taking through into the simulators and support equipment, which means the software and characteristics of the jet are matched in every aspect of the GBTS, from full simulator to web-based courseware.”

Sherri Koehnemann, Boeing’s T-7A training and sustainment director, who came to the program from the F-15 which, she describes as being ‘in my DNA’. Boeing

It’s an extraordinary concept that avoids the familiar problem of aircraft and simulator drifting apart, so that the latest changes to flight control software, for example, are in the jet, but not reflected in the simulator, obliging instructors to teach with caveats and potentially misleading students. Since simulation, or synthetic training, takes on far greater importance with the T-7A, the digital thread and its implications for accurate simulation are essential to the entire system.

Typical of modern pilot training systems, the GBTS includes a variety of teaching aids, ranging from desktop task trainers to full flight simulators. But thanks to the digital thread, all these systems keep pace with developments in the aircraft itself, which is unprecedented; Koehnemann describes the jet and GBTS as ‘digital twins’. Within the simulators, she identifies environmental, aircraft performance, aircraft physical systems and aircraft computational systems as four major fidelity categories, while acknowledging that the jet itself was designed “making extensive use of those fidelities”.

And thanks in part to that digital thread, the full simulators will be certified to FAA Part 60 Level D standard. Familiar to commercial operators, Level D means maneuvers flown in the simulator must very closely match the same maneuvers flown in the jet. Military aviators, certainly those operating fourth- and fifth-generation fighters and modern training aircraft, are familiar with the benefits of linking simulators to facilitate multi-ship formations and full-mission rehearsal. The fact that the T-7A GBTS includes networkable simulators is therefore no surprise but, again, Boeing is taking a leap forward in capability.

Boeing prepared this simulator proposal for the T-X campaign. The T-7A Ground Based Training System will achieve new levels of fidelity, thanks in part to 8K-native constant resolution visual systems installed in the full flight simulator devices. Boeing/Eric Shindelbower

The concept of ‘recording’ a training mission to ‘playback’ in the post-flight debrief is as well understood as networking, but thanks to what Koehnemann calls live, virtual, constructive connectivity, T-7A simulators will network not only with one another, but with live aircraft, too. “It means an instructor on the ground can observe, record and playback at any time in the simulator what’s happening in the live aircraft,” she says.

“The experience is further enhanced through improved environmental fidelity and an 8K-native constant resolution visual system that guarantees the highest screen level fidelity ever delivered in a simulator,” she continues. However good the visuals though, the simulator will never fully replicate the physiological demands of flight, although Boeing intends for the T-7A to come close. True, there is no way of recreating the peril of flying into the ground that exists in a live aircraft, but Koehnemann believes her team is well on the way to making up for several other shortfalls of the synthetic environment.

“The simulator visual cues will be matched to aural, motion, vibration and g-loading cues, time sequenced to create an accurate replication of how a pilot would sense them in the aircraft,” she explains. “The seat will provide motion onset and vibration cues, there will be sound effects and we’re representing g. Air compressors built into the simulator seats and connected to the pilots’ flying suits will cause inflation and deflation to replicate g loading.”

Two T-X demonstration and trials airframes, N381TX and N382TX, were built to production-representative standards. Boeing/Stewart Goldstein

Three years to take-off

The $9.2-billion USAF contract awarded to Boeing in September 2018 to replace the T-38 with a fleet of 351 T-7A aircraft and 46 GBTS simulators aims to deliver full simulators for trials from early 2022, first jets in 2023, and achieve initial operational capability in 2024. It’s an ambitious target that Boeing and its partner, Saab, are working hard to achieve even while COVID does its best to interfere.

Employing 3D engineering and computer modelling – including virtual wind tunnel testing – Boeing and Saab produced a clean-sheet aircraft design and flew it for the first time on December 20, 2016, just three years after agreeing the terms of their partnership. That’s an unprecedented 36 months and ten days to fully engineer a brand new, high-performance jet of advanced design through international collaboration. Added to which, the digital engineering concept that makes the T-7A the eSeries paradigm, means parts manufacture and first-time assembly were so accurate that no prototype was required; the two T-X demonstrator aircraft were built as production-representative airframes.

It is not unusual for overseas manufacturers to partner with US companies for defense contracts. British Aerospace and McDonnell Douglas produced the US Marine Corps’ AV-8 Harrier and US Navy’s T-45 Goshawk, for example; while Beechcraft adapted the Pilatus PC-9 to create the T-6. But Boeing looked to Saab for its innovative approach to military aircraft design, rather than to exploit an existing airframe.

Boeing has generated a number of computer renderings, based on photographs of the T-X demonstrators, showing the T-7A Red Hawk as it may appear in USAF service. Boeing

Swedish defense policy demands that the non-aligned, strategically significant country must secure its own defense without outside intervention. The need for dispersed aircraft operations, and extensive use of conscripted personnel, therefore drove Saab’s fighter design philosophy through the Cold War and into the 2000s. It was Saab’s innovative drive and experience in making complex aircraft simple to operate that drew Boeing to it.

The T-7A is not ‘based on the Gripen’, although the legacy JAS-39 and Red Hawk share significant design philosophies and engine choice. Saab designs and builds the production rear fuselage, but in the design phase the Gripen informed principles that will make the T-7A easier and more efficient to operate through the rigors of day-to-day flying.

Many access panels are therefore accessible from a standing position without step ladders. Where that’s not the case, panels hinge open to provide working platforms strong enough for maintainers to stand on. Those same maintainers will also be delighted to find that the T-7A’s need for specialized tools is minimal, and that the side-hinged cockpit canopy is designed to ease removal of the ejection seat.

The T-X demonstrator/trials aircraft flew together for the first time on April 27, 2017. Boeing

Externally, the T-7A is notable for its twin vertical stabilizers, which might be argued as contributing unnecessary complexity and weight to the design. It comes as no surprise that the configuration was chosen on merit though, as a Boeing spokesperson confirms: “The configuration is similar to other high-performance tactical jets we produce. Training in a jet that has flight characteristics like an F-15 or an F/A-18, let’s say, gives student pilots a realistic feel for what they will graduate into.

“The twin tail also provides greater stability in certain envelopes and situations, and in a training jet especially, safety is paramount. It also allows for the aircraft to fit into current structures without additional military construction [that is no modification is required to accommodate a taller fin in existing infrastructure].”

Healthy prospects

For now, Talon replacement is the priority, but Boeing is likely to find no shortage of potential customers interested in its fifth-gen training system. Students and instructors from several NATO nations will experience it through the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program and word will quickly spread, although for any air arm looking to replace legacy capability, the T-7A looks especially attractive.

The first T-X aircraft makes a spirited afterburner take-off from St Louis on March 17, 2017. On the 24th, the jet completed four flights, demonstrating considerable maturity, some 18 months before Boeing was awarded the T-X contract. Boeing/David Torrence

There is a real possibility that the first next expression of interest will come from home, since the US Navy’s T-45C based training program needs short to medium-term recapitalization. The challenge will be to revise the T-7A for carrier operations, but Boeing has considerable experience with the F/A-18E/F and EA-18G, and thought has surely already been given to navalizing the Red Hawk; with its twin vertical stabilizers and leading edge root extensions it even looks a little like an F/A- 18. The company spokesperson confirms: “Boeing would welcome the opportunity to provide the T-7 as the future advanced training jet for incoming US Navy pilots.”

Elsewhere, several operators of Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers and F-35s are in, or may soon enter, the market for new advanced jet training systems; Australia and Sweden among them. Depending on the outcome of its $12-billion HX program to replace legacy Hornets, Finland may also find itself in the Lightning, Super Hornet and Growler club and, by extension, could see considerable value in the T-7A.

Boeing’s market ambition is actually surprisingly bold, as the spokesperson explains: “Boeing sees the T-7 as a future franchise program, part of a $40-billion market where there is an opportunity to sell as many as 2,600 jets worldwide.”

With the city’s iconic Gateway Arch as a backdrop, the T-X jets proclaim St Louis, Missouri, as their own. Boeing selected its St Louis facility for T-7A final assembly on May 15, 2017. John Parker

The core T-7 training system clearly has promising sales prospects beyond the USAF, but to understand the bigger picture it’s necessary to go back to 1954 and Northrop’s N-156 light military jet concept. The company planned to offer a powerful, lightweight fighter against emerging requirements in Asia and Europe. In the event, the design evolved along parallel tracks as the N-156C fighter and N-156T advanced trainer. The USAF saw potential in the latter and commissioned the T-38 in 1956, while the Department of Defense adopted the private venture N-156C, as the F-5, from 1962.

As the Freedom Fighter, the F-5 served air arms in Asia, Europe, and North and South America, before the evolved F-5E/F Tiger II won a new swathe of export orders and equipped USAF, US Navy and US Marine Corps aggressor/adversary units. Today, Tiger IIs remain in service with those dedicated Red Air squadrons and with several overseas air forces, where flying hours are being consumed without an obvious replacement platform in sight. Unless a missionized T-7 fits the bill.

Installed in the T-7 airframe, the F404 is likely to deliver more thrust in Mil setting (maximum thrust without afterburning) than the total thrust delivered by an F-5E’s J85s in full reheat. This means the T-7A will barely have to stretch its legs at high speeds, but will also have ample energy available for high-alpha (angle of attack) maneuvering. It also means there is plenty of power available for carrying mission systems and, should Boeing see a potential for replacing tired Tigers and even Alpha Jets, Kfirs, early-model F-16s and Mirages, then the potential for transforming the T-7 into a light fighter is within reach.

The second T-X aircraft, during taxi tests on April 20, 2017. It completed its maiden flight four days later. Boeing/Eric Shindelbower

With just a little lateral thinking, another tantalizing T-38 parallel presents itself. The US Navy has replaced the legacy Hornets flown by the Blue Angels with the F/A-18E/F. While the USAF Thunderbirds are equipped with the F-16C/D Fighting Falcon, there is no obvious replacement for the team’s Lockheed Martin F-16V Vipers when the time comes. The Thunderbirds once operated the T-38 and that jet’s replacement, the T-7A, would look especially good in patriotic red, white and blue.

There is no reluctance on Boeing’s part to acknowledge the Red Hawk’s wider potential, and in discussing the type’s twin tail, the spokesperson added that: “…it will enable a more accessible approach for a future inflight refueling probe.” Otherwise, while the T-7A employs emulation to simulate radar, weapons and other functions for training, it is a noticeably ‘roomy’ aircraft and Boeing confirms: “It was always designed with future mission sets in mind. The space inside may one day house a variety of systems to support those missions.”

There may be 60 years between them, but the T-7A looks set to repeat not only the success of the T-38, but also the historical significance of the F-5 series that evolved in parallel. Boeing’s design is every bit as pioneering in the training performance it promises, but at the same time has already taken military aircraft design into a new world of 3D engineering, virtual testing and digital threads. Just as the T-38 has trained pilots for generations of fighters, so the T-7A will graduate aviators better equipped than ever for the fifth-generation jets of today and the sixth-generation machines of tomorrow.

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France’s Dassault F1 Mirage Fighter: No Mere Desert Illusion

The F1 Mirage remained in service with the French Air Force until 2014 when they were retired in favor of the Mirage 2000.

The time-honored Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “mirage” as “an optical (see OPTICAL sense 2a) effect that is sometimes seen at sea, in the desert, or over a hot pavement, that may have the appearance of a pool of water or a mirror in which distant objects are seen inverted, and that is caused by the bending or reflection of rays of light by a layer of heated air of varying density.” However, the “Mirage” we’ll be discussing in this article is a very real, very solid object, and no, we’re not talking about the soon-to-be-defunct Las Vegas Strip hotel either.

Rather, we’re talking about the Dassault Mirage F1 fighter plane.

Dynamic Dassault’s Fast French Fighter

This Mirage was built by the Dassault Aviation S.A, a French aviation manufacturer founded in 1931 by engineer and industrialist Marcel Dassault (born Marcel Ferdinand Bloch) under the name Société Anonyme des Avions Marcel Bloch (SAAMB). The F1 was first conceptualized in 1963 when the French Air Force (Armée de l’Air) drafted its specifications for an all-weather low-altitude interceptor with supersonic interception capabilities, ability to use short and rudimentarily-equipped landing strips, and approach for landing at less than 140 knots (260 kph/161 mph). The Mirage made her maiden flight on 23 December 1966 and saw her first deliveries for operational usage on March 14, 1974. The warbird’s max speed capability was Mach 2.2 (2,338 kph/1,453 mph)

A total of 720 airframes were built from 1966 to 1992. In addition to serving her native France, the Mirage would be exported to 13 foreign countries; three in Europe, five Middle Eastern, and five African nations.

Assault by the Dassault

Thanks to the F1’s wide global distribution, the plane would see combat in a number of wars. The apartheid-era South African Air Force (SAAF) used them heavily in both the ground attack role and an air-to-air role against Cuban Air Force MiG-21 “Fishbed” and MiG-23 “Flogger” pilots in the skies during the South African Border War (aka Namibian War of Independence, aka Angolan Bush War) of 1966-1989.

The Mirage’s exact air-to-air kill tally for this conflict is difficult to ascertain. However, it is known that the Mirage – specifically the F1-CZ variant – enabled the SAAF to get its first confirmed aerial victory since the Korean War when, on November 6, 1981, Major JJ Rankin used his warbird’s two 30mm cannons to down a MiG-21MF flown by Lt. Danacio Valdez, resulting in KIA status for the Cuban pilot. It is also known that in 23 years of service, only eight South African Mirages were lost due to all causes, and out of those, only one was a combat loss, at the hands of an SA-13 “Gopher” missile.

Meanwhile, the Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi Air Force (IqAF) made good use of its F1EQ variants during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. As with the SAAF, the IqAF used its Mirages for air-to-ground and air-to-air operations alike.

In the latter role, the Iraqi F1 drivers acquitted themselves fairly well, downing 35 Iranian Air Force aircraft in exchange for a loss of – depending on which source you choose to believe – anywhere from seven to 33 of their own.

Most of the IqAF Mirages’ Iranian victims were F-4 Phantoms and F-5E Tiger IIs. Still, at least one lucky Iraqi pilot managed to bag the vaunted F-14 Tomcat, back on November 24, 1981, thus making history as the first-ever aerial kill of the Tomcat. According to at least one source, the Iraqis may have actually downed a second F-14, making good use of a skillful combination of hit and run tactics and R.530 medium-range missiles.

Most infamously from an American perspective, back on May 17, 1987, an IqAF F1 pilot somehow mistook the U.S. Navy frigate USS Stark (FFG-31) for an Iranian tanker and struck her with an Exocet missile, killing 37 American sailors in the process.

Accidental or not, the Stark would be avenged less than four years later during Operation Desert Storm, whereupon American F-15 Eagle pilots killed 6 IqAF Mirages with no losses; in the process, the F1EQ earned the dubious distinction of being the first Iraqi aircraft to be lost in air combat in the war. Two more Iraqi Mirages were shot down in a single engagement by Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) F-15 pilot Capt. Ayehid Salah al-Shamrani, thus making him an instant hero within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Where Are They Now?

The F1 Mirage remained in service with the French Air Force until 2014 when they were retired in favor of the Mirage 2000. To the best of my knowledge (and if I’m wrong, please let us know below in the comments section), the last combat usage of the F1 occurred during the 2011 Libyan Civil War, when it was used solely in a ground attack role against anti-Gaddafi rebels.

Today, this venerable 50-something warbird remains in service with the air forces of the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Iran (ironically and conveniently acquired from Iraq during Desert Storm), post-Gaddafi Libya, and Morocco.

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Aircraft

AV-8B Harrier: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Favorite Fighter Jet?

The Harrier Is Simply An Amazing Piece of Aviation History: In 1994, James Cameron’s True Lies debuted, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film was popular. Audiences enjoyed the blend of humor and action, the relationship between Schwarzenegger’s character and his on-screen wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. But the inclusion of a piece of novel military technology stole the show, prompting audiences to ask: Is that real?

The scene-stealing military technology was the AV-8B Harrier, a subsonic military jet capable of vertical take-off and landing.

Spoiler alert: Cameron employed the Harrier for the film’s climactic scene, in which Arnold hovers around downtown Miami to save his daughter and foil nuclear-armed terrorists. The film highlights the Harrier’s ability to, essentially, hover-in-place.

To film the scene, Cameron didn’t cut any corners. Whereas most filmmakers would have built a model of a Harrier cockpit, set the thing against a green screen, and added some camera shakes every now and again, Cameron wasn’t having it. Bear in mind, Cameron is a uniquely particular filmmaker. It took the guy 13 years to make an Avatar sequel because he felt the technology he needed to shoot the film he envisioned did not yet exist. So, he waited.

Cameron already had that perfectionist mindset when filming True Lies. So, instead of setting a Harrier cockpit against a green screen, Cameron had his team construct an elaborate system of cranes and rigs, which was then used to hoist a full-scale model Harrier high above a Miami street.

The Harrier model weighed 7,000 pounds. Of course, that is much lighter than a true Harrier jet, which, loaded with engines and avionics, and hydraulics, weighs nearly 15,000 pounds. To manipulate the model Harrier, filmmakers used a computerized motion-control system that depended on a complex system of hydraulics. The movements were precisely programmed with the computer system. Cameron threw Schwarzenegger in the cockpit and the cameras rolled. The results were special effects substantially ahead of their time. They still look pretty good 30 years later. Audiences responded favorably. True Lies was the third highest grossing film in a year packed with hits including The Lion KingForrest GumpPhiladelphiaSpeedAce VenturaDumb and DumberMrs. DoubtfirePulp Fictionand Interview with the Vampire.

Much of True Lies’ success against such remarkable competition is owed to the Harrier scene, as Schwarzenegger seemed to understand. According to John Bruno, the VFX producer on True Lies, Schwarzenegger knew they had something special: “Well at first everybody was kind of nervous because of the scale of this whole thing. You know, it was a 20,000-pound motion base and 7,000-pound jet on the top of a roof with these huge hydraulic systems…I overheard Arnold say to Jim [Cameron], he goes, ‘You know, Jim, this is the money. This is the money. This is where the money is. This is great.’”

Schwarzenegger was correct. True Lies raked in $146,282,411. That may seem modest according to today’s standards, but in 1994, it was a lot of money for a flick. By comparison, the two films of 1994 that outgrossed True Lies were both transcendent and enduring films, both recognized as foundational American classics: The Lion King ($298,879,911) and Forrest Gump ($298,096,620).

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Two Tail Bomber Force: How the B-21 and B-52 Bombers Will Fight for America

This two-fold trajectory will continue the Air Force’s deliberate and carefully analyzed balancing act of engineering new platforms while sustaining, upgrading, and propelling older, combat-tested platforms like the B-52.

The Air Force is solidifying its future bomber force structure by advancing concepts of operation which link an upgraded B-52 Stratofortress with the newly emerging B-21 Raider, combing a modernized, decades-old platform with a new, paradigm-changing stealth bomber.

This innovative mix suggests a number of key significant developments for the Air Force, including the B-1B Lancer bomber’s retirement and sustainment of the old B-2 Spirit aircraft. While some enhancements are being made to the B-1, such as ongoing efforts to configure its bomb bay to carry and fire hypersonic weapons, the service does plan to phase out the aircraft once sufficient numbers of B-21s arrive and the B-52 advances its ability to fire hypersonic weapons.

“The modernization efforts that are going into the B-52 are incredibly important for strategic deterrence,” Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, said at the 2022 Air Force Association Warfare Symposium on March 3. “The B-21 is a penetrating, daily flyer that we have to have, and it will be the preponderance of the bomber force as we drive down to a two tail force; it and the B-52. That’s what the United States of America is going to have as a bomber force.”

This two-fold trajectory will continue the Air Force’s deliberate and carefully analyzed balancing act of engineering new platforms while sustaining, upgrading, and propelling older, combat-tested platforms like the B-52.

While the B-52 first emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the B-52 of today is almost an entirely new aircraft. Indeed, B-52’s airframe remains viable despite years of service due to maintenance work, added support, and the overall strength and quality of the structure itself. In recent years, this reality has inspired the Air Force to add new CONECT digital communications for real-time intelligence; an internal weapons bay to increase the aircraft’s bomb-carrying and attack capability, and the ability to fire hypersonic weapons; and giving the aircraft a new engine using more fuel-efficient commercial technology.

While the B-2 stealth bomber will eventually be replaced by the B-21, the Air Force has continued to upgrade the B-2 bomber to help bridge the gap in the bomber force for years to come as more B-21s are steadily produced and deployed. This effort is quite significant as it is likely to ensure that the thirty-year-old B-2 Spirit can remain viable and effective against a new generation of air defenses. While there are only twenty B-2s in the force, the upgraded platform is expected to deliver breakthrough capabilities and operational performance.

For instance, the B-2 is being engineered with a new, 1,000-times-faster computer processor that is able to efficiently gather and analyze sensors and targeting data. This will increase the crew’s ability to receive real-time processed data and more quickly to respond to incoming intelligence information. The B-2 is also being engineered with new air-defense detecting sensors called Defensive Management Systems. This technology will help mitigate the extent to which new generations of air defenses can track stealth aircraft by identifying the location of where enemy air defenses are. This enables the aircraft to adjust course to avoid operating within range of the weapons and therefore improve its prospects for preserving stealth characteristics and the element of surprise attack.

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Aircraft

How Long Will the F-22 Raptor Stealth Fighter Remain Untouchable?

Combining stealth, supercruise, maneuverability, and integrated avionics, coupled with improved supportability, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor represented an exponential leap in warfighting capabilities when it was introduced in 2005.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: The F-22 Raptor has proven to be an aircraft that can engage an enemy but has speed on its side as well. Its engines are able to produce more thrust than any current fighter engine flying today, while the Raptor’s aerodynamic airframe along with increased thrust allows it to cruise at supersonic airspeeds, greater Mach 1.5, without utilizing its afterburner – a characteristic known as supercruise.

Combining stealth, supercruise, maneuverability, and integrated avionics, coupled with improved supportability, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor represented an exponential leap in warfighting capabilities when it was introduced in 2005. Even today, the F-22 cannot be matched by any known or project fighter aircraft and it is easy to see why this fifth-generation stealth warplane could remain part of the United States Air Force’s fleet for decades to come.

Developed at the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, the advanced tactical fighter was designed as a supersonic, dual-engine fighter that could project air dominance, rapidly and at great distances and defeat threats attempting to deny access. Lockheed Martin teamed with Boeing to develop and build the extremely advanced tactical fighter to replace the F-15 as the United States military’s front-line dominance fighter.

The first production F-22 was unveiled in April 1997, at a rollout ceremony hosted by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Pratt & Whitney. It was the first of nine prototypes built for flight testing.

Since its introduction 15 years ago, the Raptor has been a critical component of the Global Strike Task Force, and even won the 2006 Robert J. Collier Trophy from the American National Aeronautic Association (NAA). The F-22 program was also awarded the Air Force Association’s 2015 John R. Alison Award for outstanding contributions by industrial leadership to national defense.

During its development, the Air Force redesignated the aircraft the F/A-22 to reflect its multi-mission capability where it could take part in both ground attacks and in an air-to-air role. That designation was subsequently updated again to F-22A in 2005. The Air Force had originally planned to buy 750 of the fighters, however, the program was scaled back to just 187 operation production aircraft and the last F-22 was delivered in 2012.

A Mix of Weapons and Speed

The F-22 Raptor has proven to be an aircraft that can engage an enemy but has speed on its side as well. Its engines are able to produce more thrust than any current fighter engine flying today, while the Raptor’s aerodynamic airframe along with increased thrust allows it to cruise at supersonic airspeeds, greater Mach 1.5, without utilizing its afterburner – a characteristic known as supercruise.

The aircraft is powered by two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofan engines with afterburners and two-dimensional thrust vectoring nozzles, and each provides 35,000 pounds of thrust. The F-22 can roar into action and get out just as quickly, and it can certainly hold its own against the opposition.

This fifth-generation fighter is also quite a weapons platform and in its air-to-air configuration it can carry six AIM-120 AMRAAMs and two AIM-9 Sidewinders; while in its ground attacks role, the F-22 also be configured to carry two 1,000-pound GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions internally. The fighter features on-board avionics for navigation and weapons delivery, and this is further enhanced by the addition of upgraded radar and up to eight small diameter bombs. In addition, the Raptor can be configured to carry two AIM-120s and two AIM-9s in its air-to-ground role.

In September 2014, the F-22 Raptor took part in its combat debut during coordinated strikes with other fighter jets and bombers against Islamic State (ISIS) strongholds in Syria.

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31 Pilots Explain Why They Love the F-35 (More Than Any Other Aircraft)

Here’s What You Need to Know: The F-35 continues to attract high praise.

Hundreds of U.S. pilots currently have been trained to fly Lockheed Martin’s F-35A Lightning II. A few years back, the Heritage Foundation interviewed 31 of these former F-15C, F-15E, F-16C, and A-10 pilots. Each expressed a high degree of confidence in the F-35A, their new fifth-generation platform.

Here are nine insights gleaned from those conversations:

1. Even with developmental restrictions that limit the F-35A’s responsiveness and ability to maneuver, every U.S. fighter pilot interviewed would pick the F-35A over his former jet in a majority of air-to-air (dogfight) engagement scenarios they could face.

2. A former F-15C instructor pilot said he consistently beat his former jet in mock dogfights.

3. A former F-16C instructor—and graduate of the Air Force Weapons Instructor Course (Which is similar to the Navy’s famed “Top Gun” school)—said the jet is constrained on how tight it can turn (G-limited) now. But even so, the rudder-assisted turns are incredible and deliver a constant 28 degrees of turn a second. When the Air Force removes the restrictions, this jet will be eye watering.

4. Three former F-16CJ Wild Weasel instructor pilots, those tasked with attacking surface-to-air missile sites, said a single F-35A can find and attack SAM sites faster and more effectively than three F-16CJ fighters working together.

5. The F-35A’s radar effectively can shut down enemy fighter and surface-to-air radars without those adversaries becoming aware they are being electronically attacked. Coupled with stealth, this jet is all but invisible to enemy radars.

6. A former A-10 instructor pilot said the situational awareness aids associated with the sensor suite of the F-35A allowed pilots to execute close air support missions as well or better than the A-10 in low-threat environments. The F-35A is the only multirole platform capable of conducting close air support in high-threat environments.

7. The research and development that went into the stealth skin of the F-35A removed the high-maintenance and sortie-limiting requirements associated with the radar-absorbing skin of the F-22, F117, or B-2. Stealth does not limit the F-35A’s ability to fly multiple combat or training sorties each day.

8. Bringing all the tactical sensors of the F-35A into a single display (sensor fusion) is still not optimized, and most pilots complained of “ghosts” or multiple displayed contacts for the same threat.

9.  In full production, the F-35A is projected to cost less than the four-plus generation Eurofighter Typhoon, the French Rafale M, or the latest version of the F-15K Strike Eagle. It will outperform those jets and every other four-plus generation fighter in an air-to-surface role, and none of them would fare well against it in an air-to-air engagement.

Concurrent development of the F-35A certainly has had its challenges, and the risks for delays and cost overruns should have been factored into the acquisition process. They were not.

Component, sensor, and airframe development were (and still are) all happening at the same time, and even small changes in the weight, size, performance, and schedule of any component could affect the weight, size, performance, and schedule of the entire system.

The biggest single factor in keeping the program on time and under budget is effective, stable leadership.  That leadership is now in place and the United States is on the precipice of delivering arguably the freshest, most advanced fighter technology ever fielded.

The gains and contracting lessons gleaned through concurrent development of the F-35A program are significant. The Pentagon needs to apply them to every major acquisition program for technology and systems that are susceptible to fielding obsolescence.

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B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber: The Air Force’s “Silver Bullet” Super Weapon

The B-2 was the first plane to use of the GPS-guided JDAM bombs marking a turning point in aerial warfare towards the widespread use of cheaper precision-guided weapons.

Since its inception in 1947, the U.S. Air Force has been deeply invested in operating long-range strategic bomber for nuclear deterrence. However, by the 1960s it grew clear that high-flying B-52 bombers had poor odds of surviving the Soviet Union’s growing network of high-speed interceptors and surface-to-air missiles. The Air Force instead invested in supersonic FB-111 and B-1 bombers designed to penetrate hostile airspace at low altitude, where radar detection was more difficult. But Pentagon strategists knew the Soviets were developing doppler radars and airborne radars to cover that blindspot.

By then, U.S. aviation engineers were aware that radar-absorbent materials and non-reflective surfaces could reduce a plane’s radar detection range drastically, features implemented to modest results in Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. Lockheed’s Have Blue prototypes led to the first operational stealth aircraft, the F-117 Nighthawk strike plane.

The Pentagon wanted its next stealth plane, the Advanced Technology Bomber, to address the strategic nuclear strike role. By then Northrop had tested at Area 51 in Nevada a bizarre-looking stealth demonstrator called ‘Tacit Blue’ (also known as the “Whale” or “alien school bus”). Earlier in the late 1940s, the firm had developed a gigantic 52-meter wingspan flying-wing jet bomber called the YB-49. When Lockheed and Northrop went head-to-head in the ATB competition in 1981, Northrop’s larger, tailless fly-wing concept won out.

The “grey” project’s existence was announced to the public, but further details remained highly classified, with the Pentagon procuring parts from mystified subcontractors using dummy companies. Nonetheless, two B-2 engineers were arrested for industrial espionage in 1984 and 2005. Over the next eight years, the bomber was expensively redesigned for low-altitude penetration, leading development costs to overrun to $42 billion, generating political controversy.

The Spirit was finally unveiled in 1988 and made its first flight the following year. But even before it began production in 1993, the Cold War abruptly ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, largely taking the rationale for a nuclear-armed super bomber with it.

The Air Force still wanted B-2s, but the expensive program was on the chopping block with other premium weapons like the Sea Wolf-class submarine. The Pentagon hastily placed new emphasis on developing the B-2’s non-nuclear capabilities—after all, a stealth bomber could theoretically reduce the number of escort aircraft required in the opening days of a conflict. (In practice, Spirits have often been accompanied by EA-6B Prowler aircraft to provide jamming and anti-radar support—just in case.)

The Spirit procurement was first reduced to seventy-five, then cut to twenty by the Bush administration in 1992. An additional B-2 prototype was converted to operational status under Clinton, for a total of twenty-one. This caused the B-2’s half-billion dollar unit price to surge to $737 million—or $929 million counting spare parts, upgrades and technical support. With development factored in, the Spirits come out to $2.1 billion—by far the most expensive airplane ever built.

All but one test aircraft serves today with the 509th Bomb Wing based in Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, a unit descend from the group which dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. The Spirits are flown by an elite corps of around eighty pilots who often fly globe-spanning missions directly from Whiteman, though B-2s have also been forward based at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Guam and England.

Each Spirit is named after a U.S. state, starting with the Spirit of Missouri. The exception is Spirit of Kitty Hawk, said to be possessed because it once mysteriously started its engines in the hangar while unmanned. In 2008, Spirit of Kansas crashed shortly after takeoff in Guam due to an air-moisture sensor miscalibrated by a storm led to a malfunction of the fly-by-wire system. Thankfully, the crew successfully ejected from the most monetarily expensive airplane crash in history.

Like today’s F-35, early production B-2s were not really delivered ‘feature complete,’ lacking full payload, weapons, navigation and defensive systems. Over time, Northrop Grumman phased in two improved models, introducing a Terrain Following System, GPS navigation, satellite communications via laptop (instead of very terse high-frequency radio messages) and most importantly, integration of smart bombs and cruise missiles. Today, the Air Force continues to invest billions updating the B-2’s radar-absorbent materials, fiber-optic wiring, computer processors and datalinks.

The B-2 received “Initial Operating Capability” in 1997 and saw their combat employment in March 24, 1999 by kicking off the NATO bombing campaign pressuring Yugoslavia to halt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. B-2s based in Missouri flew fifty 30-hour sorties across the Atlantic, successfully penetrating the Yugoslav air defense network to drop roughly a third of the ordinance released in the first two months of the campaign.

The B-2 was the first plane to use of the GPS-guided JDAM bombs marking a turning point in aerial warfare towards the widespread use of cheaper precision-guided weapons. However, the war also illustrated that greater precision didn’t help if intel failed to distinguish targets correctly. A Spirit dropped five JDAMS on the Chinese embassy, wrongly identified as a weapons depot by the CIA, killing three and causing serious diplomatic fallout.

Two years later, the Spirits were back in action, flying six 70-hour missions involving layovers in Diego Garcia (where a replacement crew was mustered) to blast Taliban targets in Afghanistan—the longest combat sorties in history. Two years later, the B-2 was finally declared ‘fully operationally capable,’ with just six Spirits striking ninety-two targets in the opening days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq

B-2s kicked off another U.S. war in 2011, the intervention against Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, destroying most of the Libyan Air Force on the ground at Ghardabiya Air Base using JDAMs. The Spirit’s most prominent recent mission was a strike killing eight-five ISIS militants camped out in the Libyan desert on January 19, 2017—detailed in this excellent article by William Langwiesche, who points out that the billion-dollar-bombers were dispatched to wipe out bedraggled insurgents lacking anti-aircraft weapons.

The Air Force’s twenty Spirits remain an intimidating “silver bullet” first strike weapon that can drop heavy conventional or nuclear payloads onto even well-defended command bunkers, air defense radars or strategic weapon sites with little advance warning.

But the B-2’s weren’t just expensive to build—they cost a fortune to operate, with every flight hour costing a staggering $163,000 dollars per flight hour and sixty man-hours of maintenance. (It used to be closer to 120!) Simply maintaining each B-2 costs $41 million per year, and that with mission-capable rates hovering around 50 percent or lower.

Furthermore, each Spirit requires a special extra-wide $5-million air-conditioned hangar to maintain its radar absorbent coating. And every seven years, the Spirits receive a $60 million overhaul, in which the RAM is carefully blasted off the skin with crystallized wheat starch and the surfaces meticulously inspected for tiny dents and scratches.

Many defense writers have lamented the small number of B-2s procured. However, the B-2 cut was a ‘bet’ on a lack of great-power confrontation the Pentagon is probably thankful for today, sparing the Air Force from spending the last twenty-five years paying for dozens of additional stealth bombers specialized in high-intensity warfare while the United States was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Of course, China and Russia have recently emerged as formidable potential near-pear adversaries, giving the B-2’s long-range strategic strike mission greater relevance. However, the Pentagon is procuring a stealthier, and (ostensibly) more cost-efficient B-21 Raider to meet that contingency. After all, the B-2’s stealth capabilities are no longer cutting-edge, with newer F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters boasting between one-tenth and one-hundredth the B-2’s .1 to .05 meter squared radar cross-section.

The B-21 very much resembles a Spirit 2.0, and will incorporate more cost-efficient radar-absorbent materials baked into the skin of the airframe and networked computers for sensor fusion with friendly forces, allowing it to double as surveillance platform.

As the B-2’s capabilities would be fully subsumed by the B-21’s, the Air Force plans to retire the Spirit around the year 2036 as the Raiders phase in. Of course, the B-2 story suggests that the biggest question may be whether the B-21 can stay on budget, and just how many Washington will be willing to pay for when the bill comes due.

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Wooden Wonder: The Story Of The De Havilland DH.98 ‘Mosquito’

The Mosquito performed daylight bombing raids over German-occupied Europe.

Apart from the Spitfire and the Hurricane, if there were ever an aircraft that epitomized the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War Two, it would have to be the de Havilland Mosquito. As the Nazi Party in Germany continued to build up its military, the British Air Ministry was looking for a short to medium-range bomber in response.

Photo: Alan Wilson via Wikimedia Commons.

Already having a reputation for building speedy planes de Havilland started work on a twin-engine aircraft that could outrun the enemy. Based on the company’s Albatross airliner, de Havilland believed that a bomber with a smooth minimal skin area could exceed the RAF’s expectations. Also, keeping it lightweight and built from wood would make it cheap and fast to produce.

The RAF was skeptical about a lightly armed bomber

Based on his experience with the Albatross airliner, Geoffrey de Havilland believed that a bomber made with wood could exceed the specifications that the RAF was looking for. The planemaker knew that should war break out with Germany, aluminum and steel would be in short supply while wood would still be plentiful.

De Havilland believed that by minimizing the plane’s equipment, they could build an aircraft with a top speed of 300mph. The design they settled on would be able to outrun any foreseeable enemy aircraft and would be powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. A lack of machine gun turrets simplified the aircraft’s production and reduced unnecessary drag. Contemporary RAF thinking favored heavily armed bombers with large crews, whereas the Mosquito could be flown with a pilot and navigator.

During the war the Air Ministry became more interested

Still not convinced that de Havilland was on the right track with its minimally armed fast bomber, the Air Ministry shelved the project and asked the planemaker to build wings for other aircraft. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Air Ministry became more interested in de Havilland’s fast bomber but was still skeptical about not having the plane armed. De Havilland compromised and said he would incorporate two forward and two rear machine guns into the design.

The prototype Mosquito made its maiden flight on November 25, 1940, and by 1941 was flying faster than a Spitfire Mk II, despite being a much larger aircraft. In June 1941, the Air Ministry agreed to mass produce the Mosquito with contracts for 1,378 variants. When the plane first entered service, it was used for photographic reconnaissance.After flying a mission over Oslo, Norway, in September 1942, Mosquitos made up a fleet of aircraft used to bomb the Phillip’s factory in Eindhoven. During the proceeding year, Mosquitoes were used for daytime raids targeting factories and railways in German-occupied Europe.During the summer of 1943, the RAF used its Mosquitos to guide heavy bombers over targets in Germany. Because of the plane’s speed, they were not only a nuisance for the Germans but were impossible for German night fighters to intercept.

Photo: RAF via Wikimedia Commons.

The Mosquito flew its last war mission on May 21, 1945, searching for German submarines in waters off the coast of Scotland. In total, between 1940 and 1950, 7,781 Mosquitoes were manufactured in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

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Aircraft

10 Weirdest Mustangs: Bizarre and exotic P-51 variants

 The P-51 Mustang‘s good looks and hygienically clean aerodynamics were often callously mistreated at the hands of wayward engineers and assorted warmongers. We asked Matthew Willis, author of ‘Mustang, The Untold Story‘, to introduce us to the 10 weirdest Mustangs.

10. RAF ground attack variant

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝟒𝟎 𝐦𝐦-𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐤 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 – 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐚 𝐆-𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐱 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭’𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 – 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐲 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐀-𝟖𝟑 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐤 𝐈, 𝐑𝐀𝐅 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐌𝟏𝟎𝟔/𝐆.

What do you do when you’re the RAF and you find yourself in receipt of “undoubtedly the best American fighter to have reached this country”? Why try to turn it into a mud-mover of course. The Mustang was an aircraft with a wing of unparalleled aerodynamic efficiency, which evidently so angered Their Airships that they tried to ruin it with a pair of 40mm cannon in ungainly pods or a battery of 3in rocket projectiles and associated ironmongery with more drag than Santa Pod. To be fair, the early Mustang had a superlative low-level performance which made it attractive as an attack aircraft, but the RAF’s test programme into a ‘universal wing’ plumbed for every kind of ordnance imaginable went further than most proposals.

9. US tank-obliterator

…Apart, that is, from North American Aviation themselves, who in their efforts to find a use for their new aircraft for a sceptical USAAF came up with numerous ideas involving plenty of pounds for air-to-ground. One of these became the A-36 dive-bomber (don’t call it an Apache unless you want a very disagreeable reaction from this author), but in amongst the slew of offers were a couple that included the same 37mm Oldsmobile cannon that was the primary weapon of the P-39 Airacobra. One version included a relatively sensible pair of 37mm guns. Another was to have four, two slung beneath each wing, for what would surely have made the most powerful gun armament of any single-engined aircraft during WW2. It would have made mincemeat of Axis tanks and nervous wrecks of the pilots, assuming they could have got the machine off the ground in the first place.

8. Jet

One of the most well-known features of the Mustang is its carefully designed radiator duct designed to recover pressure and add a small but significant amount of thrust from the air heated by the radiator. This was not enough for the boffins at the Royal Aircraft Establishment who proposed fitting a bundle of ramjets behind the radiator to give that much more oomph. Frank Whittle’s Power Jets company designed an installation that clustered twelve burner tubes within a cylindrical heat shield to fit into the Mustang’s radiator scoop exit, and carried out extensive static testing in 1944. The installation may have flown briefly towards the end of the war but by then it seemed more sensible for Whittle to focus on turbojet engines. The USAAF also liked the idea of a ramjet assisted Mustang, and fitted a P-51D with a ramjet on each wingtip. It briefly boosted top speed to 480mph before blowing up spectacularly – fortunately, the pilot escaped.

7. Beguine

The standard, very efficient Mustang radiator was also not good enough for J.D. Reed, who purchased surplus P-51C 42-103757 in 1947, and former test pilot Paul Penrose who encouraged Reed to have it extensively modified by NAA engineers for racing and record-setting. Gone was the belly scoop and instead, coolant and oil radiators were located in a large pod on each wingtip. The similarity to the ramjet pods mentioned above has often been noted. Sadly, the fate of this aircraft, named Beguine (after the dance) at the request of Reed’s wife, was also rather too similar. Penrose had complained of unpleasant roll characteristics but he and Reed fell out before they could be addressed, and Reed sold Beguine to Jaqueline Cochran. Bill Odom flew Beguine for Cochran, winning the Sohio Trophy at a canter, but during the Thompson Trophy race, Odom was having difficulty following the course, and while attempting to correct, rolled inverted and crashed into a house, killing a woman and child as well as Odom. The disaster led to a 13-year break in the National Air Races.

6. Twin Trouble

The Twin Mustang was an unusual concept at the time  – two complete Mustang-derived fuselages, each with their own full cockpit, attached to a single wing, the concept being an ultra-long range escort fighter with a pair of pilots to share the workload. There was much more that was weird about the Twin Mustang though. First of all, the complete inability of the prototype to leave the ground, until it was realised that the counter-rotating propellers were creating negative lift at the centre-section. The rotation of the engines was swapped and the problem solved. The next oddity was that the model used for training and development, the F-82B, had a somewhat better performance than the variant intended for service use, the F-82E. This was due to the end of wartime technology sharing agreements and the wide availability of licence-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. As a result, the small number of F-82Bs were the last to be powered by Merlins, and the service variants all had Allison V-1710 power. In many ways a fine engine, Allison never satisfactorily solved the problem of two-stage supercharging, and the model adopted for the F-82E had to be de-tuned for reliability. The Twin Mustang proved most useful as a night-fighter, never fulfilling its initial promise.

5. Mid-mounted mania

Rolls-Royce was impressed with the Mustang from the outset, thanks to test pilot Ronald Harker singing its praises after a flight at the Air Fighting Development Unit. For a while there was a plan for Rolls to re-engine existing RAF Mustangs with Merlin 61s in-house as it had done with the early Spitfire Mk IXs, but alongside that the company was developing far more ambitious ideas to get the best from Edgar Schmued’s creation. The company favoured a mid-mounted engine like the Bell P-39 and P-63, with a 2,000hp+ Griffon or the insane 4,000hp Crecy, a two-stroke monster combined with a jet turbine to recover energy from the fearsome exhaust flow. Neither the engine nor the aircraft flew, but it’s a truly intriguing what-if.

4. Wet feet

The British made a qualified success of turning the Supermarine Spitfire into a carrier fighter so why not try the same with the Mustang? On paper, the American fighter had a lot more going for it, with a much more heavily built airframe, a stable wide-track undercarriage and a better view. More to the point, it had peerless range, which was of great value in the Pacific war, especially when the B-29 came into play without a land-based fighter with the range to escort it.

The Mustang was completely against the typical form of USN fighters, which tended to be big, straightforward and powered by large air-cooled radial engines. The sleeker, subtler Mustang would have represented a big change in approach. Nevertheless, a P-51D was navalised and took part in deck-landing trials aboard USS Shangri-La in late 1944, proving that the fighter was easy to operate from a carrier. The US Navy was lukewarm about the Mustang, and even the test pilot on the programme was less than keen, citing the narrow margin between landing speed and stalling speed. NAA prepared designs for a naval Mustang, based on the P-51H, but the rapid US advance through the Pacific soon provided land bases for escort fighters – including Mustangs, and the USN stuck with big, bulky air-cooled fighters.

3. Turbo snoot

The Mustang’s many positive features kept it attractive as a military aircraft long after it was superseded in its primary role. F-51Ds were still popular in the ground attack role in the Korean War, and sought-after by smaller countries’ air arms. The US Department of Defense even showed interest in an updated Mustang for the export market and counter-insurgency work as late as 1967, approaching a company that had produced a popular civilian P-51 conversion, the Cavalier. These proved a modest success, and Cavalier considered truly modernising the type by fitting a more up-to-date turboprop powerplant. The result was certainly the oddest Mustang variant for looks, as the long, slim R-R Dart gave the Turbo Mustang a distinctly proboscis-like snout. Despite this monstrosity, a taller tail and the lack of a belly scoop, the aircraft was still recognisably a Mustang. It offered great close-air-support and counter-insurgency performance at a low operating cost, but Cavalier failed to gain any customers so sold the programme to a company that could put more resource behind it. Piper bought in and developed the Turbo Mustang into the PA-48 Enforcer, which was less inelegant but ultimately no more successful.

2. Cowboy

Sadly, there are no pics of the lasso I’m afraid, but here’s Philip Cochran, Air Commando head honcho with his P-51A.

Mustangs wielded a lot of different weapons over the years – machine-guns, cannon, bombs, rockets, even supply cannisters and napalm, but the oddest modification has to be for the weapon used by the First Air Commando in Burma from its P-51As – a lasso. Ironically, given the number of Mustang horses that found themselves on the receiving end of one. In the insurgent war fought by the Chindits and supported by the Air Commando, cutting enemy communications was a vital task. Someone had the bright idea to suspend a 450ft cable at each end from the Mustang’s bomb racks with a weight in the middle. The pilot, exercising great skill, had to drag the cable across telegraph lines in such a way that the weight wrapped around them…and as the aircraft flew on, the cables would break, or even uproot the telegraph poles. When enough telegraph wires had been cut, the pilot would jettison the cable. Simple, and quite mad.

1. Not A Mustang

When is a Mustang not a Mustang? And when is not-a-Mustang a Mustang. When Hollywood gets involved of course! The use of Mustangs to play enemy fighters started quite early, probably influenced by the old canard that they resembled a Messerschmitt Bf 109, which they do a bit if you squint and then keep squinting until your eyes are closed altogether and then imagine a Bf 109. Allison-engined Mustangs play the part Bf 109s in the 1943 pictures ‘Sahara’ and ‘A Guy Named Joe,’ while an RAF Mustang I (still in its RAF markings) does the same in the 1944 British film ‘For Those In Peril.’ Weirdly, a squadron of Air National Guard P-51Ds play the role of a squadron of Messerschmitts in the 1948 technicolour flick ‘Fighter Squadron.’ The practice of Luftwaffering up Mustangs was still going as late as 1992 when Planes of Fame’s P-51A once again donned Balkenkreutzes in ‘Iron Eagle III.’ The Messerschmitt got its own back, though, when a trio of Hispano Ha 1112 Búchons, relatively fresh from playing 109s and the occasional Hurricane in ‘Battle of Britain’ were recruited for the 1970 biopic ‘Patton.’ The preservation movement had barely started, and Mustangs weren’t available in Europe at the time. The Búchons were therefore dressed up with fibreglass belly scoops and USAAF markings to act as P-51Bs. They allegedly had some novel handling characteristics, and ultimately didn’t make the final cut of the film.

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Aircraft

Whistling Death: How the Corsair got its nickname

Whistling Death. It just sounds badass, doesn’t it? The Corsair, as the F4U built by Vought, or its identical twin the FG-1 (made by Goodyear), is one of the most iconic fighters of World War II. It could out-climb, out-run, and out-fight any propeller-driven aircraft it faced on the opposing side. Known for its distinctive design and huge propeller, the aircraft was also known for the peculiar sound it made at higher airspeed.

In order to keep the Corsair as aerodynamically clean as possible, designers made sure there was nothing protruding into the surrounding air to produce additional drag. In addition to the innovative “bent-wing” design, the intake for the aircraft’s turbo-supercharger, intercooler and oil cooler were located in slots in the inboard leading edges of the wings. Air running through those slots at high speeds gave the aircraft a very distinctive sound, and the Japanese tagged the fighter with the moniker, “Whistling Death.”

The facts and figures surrounding the Corsair’s service at war’s end were staggering. Corsairs flew more than 64,000 sorties between the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. They accounted for over 2,100 victories in air combat with only 189 losses, producing an overall kill ratio of more than 11:1. It did especially well against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, with a kill ratio of 12:1 versus that type. The Corsair also dropped 15,621 tons of bombs during the war, a figure approximate to 70% of the total number of bombs dropped by U.S. fighters during the entire war, regardless of theater.

So based on those numbers, and given its exceptional performance, the “Whistling Death” moniker is well-earned.

For those of you who haven’t actually heard the sound, check out this video of an FG-1 raging through the airspace during an airshow. It’s absolutely chilling, and not difficult to imagine being in the position of a Japanese soldier on the ground as a Corsair screamed in to rain death.