Posted on 01/05/2016 9:47:28 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Damn.That sucks.We are caught short.
The 35 is the second coming of the same idiocy that brought us the TFX project that resulted in the F-111 - a fighter that couldn’t dogfight and was the size of a medium airliner.
Wow.The P36 did get the first kill at Pearl Harbor but was soon eclipsed.I guess I’m lost way,way back.
I take that back. What we have is:
A lot of upgunned P-36s. Old, but upgunned.
A very few P-47s. We destroyed the tooling for those.
The XP-58 is being delivered slowly.
And a whole bunch of rainbow flags.
LOL, at first I thought your post read rainbow fags.The best to you in 16 and beyond.
Bring back the F-14!!
Can’t do that either. Tooling’s been destroyed. So have all the spare parts.
Also worth remembering the fourteen pilots who managed to get airborne while under fire at Pearl Harbor. On a day when nobody would have blamed them for staying under cover or fighting from the ground, they ran then flew to the sound of the guns.
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-few-who-got-up/
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/pearl-harbor-the-army-air-forces-fight-back/
Thanks.
Yes indeed.
The P-40 was effective because guys like Claire Chennault figured out how to use its strengths against other planes weaknesses.
There were far better fighters later, but they were what was there at the time.
What was that Pug guy flying? Was it a P-40?
“Damn good thing this didnât happen in the run up to world war 2.(in some limited cases it did)A decade behind? Thatâs unreal.”
Actually, I think the Navy was caught at least a generation behind by the Zero and other Japanese long range planes. We caught up fast, but at that time America had something like 35% of the world’s industrial capacity and a huge, skilled workforce. Today we produce software and five dollar coffee. The workforce either can’t, won’t or lives nicely on welfare. We aren’t the same country we were and the technology is leaping ahead. We won’t be beaten on quantity, but we may end up ceding local areas like those around China simply because the cost of taking or defending them will be too much for the public to bear.
The world will be a darker, more dangerous place because America has slipped from its preeminent status.
I guess that’s why they gave them to the Marines. Improvising to get it to work.
I don’t get why anyone in their right mind would destroy tools and equipment to make advanced machines of anything.
The only reason I could see is if enemy takeover was unavoidable.
or, they could retire two carriers and apportion the planes to the carriers remaining in service
“Faced with delays in the adoption of the F-35” Not delays with the aircraft but with Congress because they didn’t want to approve a replacement aircraft when asked by USN/USMC and that caused the delay in the program. Now everyone is trying to play catch up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.