The Airplane Thread

[Lady Jane]

Originally Posted by Llarry

For something a little less exciting than a Wild Weasel, I present the Beechcraft UC-45J (pre-1962 designation SNB-5 or JRB-6). This airplane was used widely by all the services as a trainer and light utility aircraft. Thousands were built during World War II and at least one or two could be found at any military airfield.

Known as the RCAF CT-128 Beech 18 C-45 Expeditor in service from 1952 to 1972 as a navigator trainer, SAR, light utility and bomber trainer with a plexiglas nose.

It was affectionately known by a variety of names such as the “Bug Smasher”, “Twin Harvard”, Wichita Wobbler”, or “Exploder”.

[Llarry]

The U.S. Navy's advanced jet trainer, the T-45C, has suffered a number of problems in the past couple of years that have resulted in the fleet of trainers being grounded several times and thereby delayed pilot training.

Lockheed Martin has teamed up with Korean Aerospace Industries to offer a replacement based on the KAI T-50/F-50 family of aircraft. Replacing almost 200 trainers will be expensive, but the proposed "TF-50N" would revitalize Navy/Marine jet training.

[Llarry]

For this week's Phantom Phriday, I'm going to dip my toe into the subject of F-4 fuel and weapons payloads. This is a very complex topic and so for this post I will only address the early Phantoms and their payloads.

Keep in mind that the top priority mission of the F-4 was protection of the carrier group from attack by Soviet land-based strike aircraft armed with bombs and early cruise missiles. For this purpose, the basic armament was four AIM-7 Sparrow III air-to-air guided missiles. The AIM-7 was a semi-active radar guided missile -- the radar energy was provided by the F-4's radar and the missile homed on the reflected radar energy. For this reason, the Phantom needed to keep its radar pointed at the target throughout the flight of the missile.

The AIM-7 became operational in 1959, just as the Phantom was about to be placed in service. The Navy had great hopes for the Sparrow III, but the early models were problematic and the kill ratio in combat and in the early stages of the Vietnam War was disappointing. The missile was 8 inches in diameter and about 12 feet long, with wings/fins about 3 feet in span. It weighed about 400 pounds at launch. The early models had a speed of about Mach 2.5 and a range of less than 10 miles. The improved AIM-7E variant could reach Mach 4 and had a range of up to 15+ miles and the further improved AIM-7F could hit targets at ranges of up to 35+ miles.

The Sparrow III did not shine in combat, but the F-4 was designed to carry four of them in a semi-submerged configuration on the belly of the fighter. In an overload condition, two more could be carried on wing pylons. Of course, the Navy had decided to not incorporate a gun, so that tried-and-true option was not available.

There was, however, another missile option and that was the shorter-range AIM-9 Sidewinder. Four could be carried on the wing pylons. The Sidewinder had a better chance of hitting the target but was limited in range (several miles max for the early AIM-9B) and had only a 10-pound warhead. The missile was 5 inches in diameter and weighed a bit over 150 pounds at launch. (Note the first photo: 2 AIM-9s on the right wing pylon and a single AIM-7 on the left.)

Naturally an aircraft needs fuel to accomplish its mission, and the F-4's internal fuel capacity was just over 13,000 pounds. That sounds like a lot but that pair of afterburning J79 engines could gulp fuel at a prodigious rate. McDonnell also manufactured two different types of external fuel tank for the F-4 -- a large centerline tank holding 600 gallons (about 4,000 pounds) and underwing tanks of 370 gallons each (5,000 pounds of fuel for the pair.)

Relatively early in the F-4's career, the Navy and the Marine Corps parted ways on the missions for the Phantom. The Navy was fixated on the fleet air defense mission and did not stress attack missions for the F-4, while the Marines designated their F-4 squadrons as "fighter attack" squadrons and soon desired to hang bombs and rockets on their new Phantoms. The story of other weapons -- and there were many -- for the Phantom will have to wait until next time.

[Lady Jane]

Well, that narrows it down for us peasants.

[Llarry]

Images of apparent Chinese Chengdu J-36 fighter with three engines, side-by-side crew seating and a large weapons bay. It appears to be a very large aircraft. The front and side views may be of a model.

[Llarry]

The Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Southern Japan is home to several Marine Crops squadrons as well as most of the Navy's Carrier Air Wing 5, which operates from the USS George Washington (CVN 73) when the carrier is not in homeport at Yokosuka on Tokyo Bay.

There are two permanently assigned F-35B Marine fighter/attack squadrons at Iwakuni -- VMFA-121 Green Knights and VMFA-242 Bats. In addition, F-35B squadrons from the U.S. make six-month deployments to Iwakuni as well. Currently both VMFA-211 Wake Island Avengers and VMFA-214 Black Sheep are deployed to Iwakuni. Given the tensions in the area, a robust presence in the area makes sense.

One (of four total) strike fighter squadrons in CVW-5 is equipped with the carrier version F-35C. VFA-147 Argonauts has recently joined the wing.

Iwakuni is also home to a Marine transport/refueler squadrons with KC-130Js and to Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force units.

[Llarry]

A U.S. Navy MH-60R helicopter recently shot down a Houthi UAV (drone) in the Red Sea. To my knowledge, this is a first.

MH-60Rs began life as a ship-based antisubmarine platform. To the basic Sikorsky S-70 (H-60) airframe they add search radar, electro-optical equipment, dipping sonar, sonobuoys, etc. They can be armed with homing torpedoes, Hellfire air to ground missiles, machine guns, etc. Thus, they have evolved into a multi-mission maritime platform.

While the weapon used in the engagement with the drone was not specified, I suspect it was either a machine gun or perhaps a Hellfire missile.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by Llarry

For this week's Phantom Phriday, I'm going to dip my toe into the subject of F-4 fuel and weapons payloads. This is a very complex topic and so for this post I will only address the early Phantoms and their payloads.

//snip//

Relatively early in the F-4's career, the Navy and the Marine Corps parted ways on the missions for the Phantom. The Navy was fixated on the fleet air defense mission and did not stress attack missions for the F-4, while the Marines designated their F-4 squadrons as "fighter attack" squadrons and soon desired to hang bombs and rockets on their new Phantoms. The story of other weapons -- and there were many -- for the Phantom will have to wait until next time.

Allow me to finish my series of posts on the Phabulous Phantom with a continuation on the subject of F-4 weapons. As 5,000+ F-4s were used by a large number of countries, I cannot vouch for all the weapons used by all users, so I will restrict my comments to U.S. services' F-4s.

Very early in the F-4's career it was tested with a B61 nuclear bomb carried on the centerline; that remained an option for F-4s and RF-4s throughout the life of the aircraft.

Very early in the Vietnam War period, a variety of air to ground ordnance was used on the F-4. The omission of a cannon on many F-4s could be corrected by carriage of a pod-mounted 20mm Vulcan cannon -- typically a single pod on the centerline, although up to three pods could be carried. My recollection is that the pod-mounted Vulcan was not particularly accurate, though; no matter how securely the pod was mounted, there was some movement during firing. The later-production USAF F-4E solved that problem by putting a Vulcan in the nose.

A logical option was the carrying of bombs. Most of these were in the Mark 8x series of low-drag general purpose bombs ranging from 250 pounds (rarely used) through 500, 1,000 and 2,000 pounds. Before the F-4 entered service the carriage of multiple bombs on a single rack was solved with the introduction of the triple ejector rack (TER) for up to 3 weapons and the double-sized multiple ejector rack (MER) for up to 6 weapons.

Another innovation was a device for slowing the flight of the bomb so that the dropping aircraft could drop the bomb at very low level yet escape the blast itself. The earliest version was a kit for the Mark 82 500-pound bomb called the Snakeye.

Other bombs used were napalm fire bombs and cluster bombs like the Mark 20 Rockeye, which scattered small submunitions over a wide area. Both of these types have fallen out of favor in recent years -- mostly political correctness, as particularly the cluster bombs caused civilian casualties from unexploded bomblets even long after the attack.

Later in the Phantom's career the laser-guided bomb (LGB) appeared as a kit that could be applied to a dumb bomb to transform it into a more accurate weapon. The accuracy of the LGB depended on continuous illumination of the target by a laser -- usually from another aircraft. The next step -- to the GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) came after the F-4's time to my knowledge.

In addition to the air-to-air missiles discussed earlier, the F-4 could carry air-to-ground missiles. I posted on the subject in the post on the F-4G Wild Weasel earlier -- I'll omit the anti-radar missiles in this post. Probably the most common attack missile was the AGM-65 Maverick, which appeared later in the F-4's career. A larger weapon was the Walleye unpowered glide bomb, long since retired.

The F-4 could also fire rockets from several sizes of pods. Mostly these were 2.75-inch rockets (7 or 19 per pod) but the high-performance 5-inch Zuni (4 per pod) was also used.

As shown before in the Wild Weasel post, the F-4 could also carry electronic countermeasures (ECM) pods.

This really only scratches the surface of the large range of combat loads for the F-4. Suffice it to say that the Phantom was one of the most versatile combat aircraft to serve with the U.S. military.

[Llarry]

The perils of airplanes on an aircraft carrier deck...

Under certain emergency conditions, a carrier-based aircraft may be unable to make a normal arrested landing on the ship. There are a couple of options; the airplane may be diverted to a nearby airfield ashore if available or the carrier may rig a barricade to stop the aircraft even if it cannot make a normal carrier landing. A barricade engagement often results in damage to the aircraft, but that is preferrable to the total loss of the aircraft. Here are a couple of examples of barricade landings.

The first is an A-7E a split second before encountering the barricade. The second is a F8U-1 (new F-8A) after coming to a stop; note the damage to the aircraft.

The third photo depicts the situation that a pilot found himself in when his A-4C had a brake failure while taxiing on the flight deck. In this case, the pilot and aircraft were saved.

[snowbimmer]

Hey Llarry, you ever talk about the Goblin? Saw this tucked under the B36 at the SAC Museum in Omaha. Scary looking little bastard.

[flybigjet]

Interesting Vulcan bomber walkthrough that my father sent me.

We've *definitely* come a long way!

R.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by snowbimmer

Hey Llarry, you ever talk about the Goblin? Saw this tucked under the B36 at the SAC Museum in Omaha. Scary looking little bastard.

The XF-85 Goblin had a fairly undistinguished record: Only two built that flew for a total of seven flights. The great difficulty was hooking up to the mothership and several of those flights ended in emergency landings. The performance was also substandard.

[Llarry]

I would guess that most -- or at least many -- aircraft with folding wings have been flown on rare occasions with wings folded. Usually pilot error, although I've heard of mechanical issues as well.

Here's an F-4 Phantom flying with wings folded.

[Llarry]

In the middle part of World War II, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps realized the value of aerial photography in the Pacific War. The first photos taken were back-seaters in Douglas SBD dive bombers or Grumman TBF torpedo bombers but it was soon realized that something with the speed of a fighter would be preferred.

The earliest specialized photo fighter were Navy conversions of F6F Hellcats with one or two cameras behind the cockpit and wings. By the end of the war, conversions were also made of FM-2 Wildcats. Conversions of F4U Corsairs proved a bit more difficult because of the structure of the rear fuselage but ultimately the task was done and F4Us took over the carrier-based photo missions. A few years later, the Grumman F8F Bearcat was modified for the role as well.

But jets were coming and photo pilots -- alone, unarmed and "unafraid" -- needed jet speed to survive.

The two important early jet fighters in the Navy and Marines were the F9F Panther and the F2H Banshee. Factory-produced photo versions soon appeared. The F2H-2P in particular had excellent high-altitude capability and was favored during the Korean War, but F9F photo birds were also used. Some of those aircraft served long enough to lose their dark blue paint and adopt the new gull gray of 1955.

The F2H was a straight-wing design and Grumman soon modified the early F9F Panther design into a higher-speed swept wing configuration. The F9F-6P and then the F9F-8P replaced the photo Banshees in the mid-1950s. The last subsonic photo plane, the F9F-8P was around long enough to get new-fangled air refueling probes.

Supersonic photo aircraft were inevitable and the F8U-1P (new RF-8A) ended up replacing all the older types in the late '50s. Marine Major John Glenn -- test pilot, future astronaut and future U.S. Senator -- set a new record for transcontinental flight in an F8U-1P.

Navy and Marine RF-8As also played a major role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, along with CIA and USAF U-2s and USAF RF-101 Voodoos.

The RF-8s were considered so valuable that they were upgraded during the Vietnam era into an improved RF-8G, which ended up as the last dedicated photo recon aircraft in the Navy. The Marines bought a small number of RF-4B Phantoms that served for years.

In addition to the photo aircraft based on fighter types, there were also so-called "heavy" photo aircraft, such as the North American AJ-2P Savage (that flew some hairy overflights of China in the '50s) and later Douglas RA-3B Skywarriors, which saw service in Vietnam, though mostly land-based.

By the 1970s, all these were replaced by photo pods carried by F-14 Tomcats.

[SpeedBuggy]

Posted from the Youngstown Air Reserve Station (910th) C130 flying thru rainbow after huge rain storm a couple of days ago.

Not sure if this is one of the left over H series or one of the new J-30 Super Hecules series that are beginning to arrive.