Posted on 09/29/2014 7:29:02 AM PDT by C19fan
I made that Revell model when I was 7. Couldn’t read the instructions so things often required “innovation”. I miss those AC model kits.
I’d bet that when that cannon was fired, there is a jolt to the pilot and plane! I’d presume that prudence would dictate that only one at a time would be fired.
The name in that Stuka picture - Hans-Ulrich Rudel. He was one helluva pilot. Later in the war he flew a FW190. I read his book Stuka Pilot when I was a kid.
Wiki: Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a Stuka dive-bomber pilot during World War II. The most highly decorated German serviceman of the war, Rudel was one of only 27 military men to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, and the only person to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit goldenem Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten), Germany’s highest military decoration at the time.[Note 1]
Rudel flew 2,530 combat missions claiming a total of 2,000 targets destroyed; including 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, 70 landing craft, nine aircraft, four armored trains, several bridges, a destroyer, two cruisers, and the Soviet battleship Marat.[1]
I remember Revell models.
Are they still in business ?
Interesting. Always thought the “JUG” inspired the modern day A-10.
Without the A-10 there can be NO CME’s air support as we know it.
Sure fighter bombers can drop bombs and strafe targets but they’re so fragile they could be shot down by small arms fire.
It would take a hell of a lot of small arms fire or yet heavy machine gun fire to take out an A-10.
If the Air Force takes the A10 out of the inventory it will not only be a big mistake for the Air Force.It will also be a mistake that cost the lives of infantry on the ground and the pilots flying Aircraft not up to the capability of the A-10.
And Hanz Rudel was a hired consultant to Fairchild, who built the A-10.
There is a functional idiocy at work here in that the Air Force ‘owns’ all of the fixed wing combat jets not belonging to the USN and USMC. The A-10 should belong to the the force that uses it, the US Army. Like the USMC, the pilots who do ground support need to come out of the training and ethos of the ground troops to appreciate their vital need. NOT SAYING that those A-10 pilots have done anything but a good job, it is just that their bosses in the USAF tend to look strategically not tactically which is the role of the A-10.
The A-10 and its successors should belong to the Army, PERIOD! Given the trend to “Joint Basing” and shared resources, I fail to see why we should eliminate the capability in the A-10 because it does not match the future requirements of the USAF.
Do you mind telling me who did that picture and if it has a title or caption?
One of my treasures is a B-17 print “No Empty Bunks Tonight” by Bill Phillips.
The B-25. Just look at their tails.
Army and Marines.
The A-10 should be theirs, not the Air Forces.
What’s incredible is that for the first two years of the war Rudel was thought to be a poor pilot and was denied a combat role because of it.
I just searched on “paintings of P47’s” and came up with that one. My great grandad would regale us kids with WW2 stories - he was Army Air Force - B17’s - nineteen years old. Pilot. Anyway Nicolas Trudgian was the artist and I found it here:http://www.aviationartprints.com/thunderbolt.htm
The parallels between the Ju-87 and the A-10 contiue deeper. The Ju-87 was outstanding in the permissive airspace of the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Poland, but losses to Allied fighters were so great that it had no effect against the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Likewise, the A-10 is surpurb in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wasn’t goung to fare well in a Soviet full scale invasion of Europe or in a neer-peer future conflict.
It's worth noting that the Stuka had pretty well disappeared from the Luftwaffe by the time of the Normandy invasion. Its air-to-air capability was almost nil, and the Stukas got shot out of the sky by P-47s and P-51s.
While I'm in favor of the Air Force keeping the A-10, in a war against a "peer" air force such as Russian or Chinese, the A-10 wouldn't survive long unless protected by F-15s or F-22s. The A-10 can operate and survive only under conditions of air supremacy.
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