The Airplane Thread

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Today is the (CV-11) USS Intrepid's 80th commissioning anniversary.....

Years ago I became intrigued by the aircraft carrier situation in World War II. We were down to only 3 or so carriers by late 1942. Fortunately, the Japanese had lost a bunch of carriers, too.

An aircraft carrier is a complex thing that takes time to build, plus Congress has to first appropriate the funds to build it, there have to be shipyards to built it, etc. So how is it, I asked myself, that a flood of new carriers were commissioned starting in 1943?

The answer, I found, was that some prescient senior Navy people and members of Congress foretold that trouble was likely to come and jump-started the process of starting carrier construction. Quite a few of the Essex (CV 9) class were authorized pre-war so that steel was already coming together before Pearl Harbor. Had it not been for those people, it would have been another six months or year before those new carriers would have joined the fleet.

I've said it before but it bears repeating -- the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen that fought the war were heroes -- but there were many more heroes that did their part to save the world: welders, riveters, machinists, shipfitters, etc. The Greatest Generation did not by any means all wear uniforms.

[flybigjet]

Originally Posted by Llarry

Here's a one-of-one little-known aircraft: The Boeing XB-38 bomber, which was a B-17 with the Wright R-1820 9-cylinder air-cooled radial engines replaced by Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V-12 engines in 1943. The XB-38 was a bit faster than its B-17 counterpart, but the ceiling was lower, which I think was a big deal with the bombing campaign against Germany just getting into high gear. High-altitude bombing was the Army Air Force's key tactic.

In the same vein, if you want to go down the B-17 rabbit hole, do a little research on the YB-40 Gunship.

It was sort of a "successful failure".

R.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by flybigjet

In the same vein, if you want to go down the B-17 rabbit hole, do a little research on the YB-40 Gunship.

It was sort of a "successful failure".

I've got another one, too: The Boeing XB-39 was a B-29 fitted with eight (!) V-1710 liquid-cooled V-12 engines. The engines were paired and designated V-3420. I've been unable to find a photo of this aircraft flying, but here's one of it being built (edit) and one of the completed bomber.

I've read that the B-29 had a lot of problems with the early R-3350s; that might have been the rationale for the V-3420 project. Of course the R-3350 ultimately became one of the most reliable and successful radial engines ever built.

[Llarry]

I've made many posts about U.S. combat aircraft in this thread, but few or none about their weapons, so let me try to briefly introduce the airborne weapons used by the U.S.

There is a huge variety of weapons; I'll start with bombs. There are a bewildering variety of bombs used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy/Marines. A full recounting will give us all a headache, so let me just hit the high points.

Back in the 1950s, a family of new "dumb" (unguided) bombs with a more aerodynamic shape suitable for carriage by new high-performance aircraft were developed. While I imagine detail improvements have been made over the years, these basic bombs are still in use today, and are referred to as the Mark 8X series low-drag general purpose bombs:
Mk 81 - 250 pounds
Mk 82 - 500 pounds
Mk 83 - 1,000 pounds
Mk 84 - 2,000 pounds
These bombs are increasingly equipped with accessories that turn them into guided "smart" bombs. The first iteration of these kits made them into laser-guided bombs (LGBs), which required that the target be illuminated with a laser during its flight to the target. These were first used during the late stages of the Vietnam war. More recently, a large family of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) with inertial guidance and using GPS to find the target have been developed and are now widely used. These have the advantage of being "fire and forget" weapons that are on their own after being dropped.

The Mark 8X bomb designations are pretty simple; more recent bombs come in a confusing set of designations. They can be summarized in two categories:
BLU (bomb live unit) - A newer bomb than the Mk 8X series
GBU (guidance bomb unit) - Either a complete guided bomb or a kit that turns a basic unguided bomb into a guided bomb.

Bombs are also differentiated by the type of result when the bomb hits:
-- High-explosive bombs are the plain vanilla variety with a relatively thin steel case and an explosive filler.
-- Penetrating bombs have heavier steel casings and the nose of the bomb usually is made of special hardened metal. The fuse is normally in the tail of the bomb and has a delay built in. The latest can penetrate hundreds of feet of reinforced concrete structures before exploding. These are often called "bunker busters" and the most capable are not numerous, since they are reserved for targets that are particularly difficult to destroy.
-- Cluster munitions, that are dispersed over a large area before the bomb hits the ground, are very effective but are severely criticized for the unintended casualties they can cause as a curious child or local farmer, for instance, picks up a small unexploded cluster munition and it explodes, killing the victim. For this reason, many nations have banned cluster munitions and the U.S. military is phasing them out of use. In their place, the U.S. has developed fragmentation bombs that can also cover a large area but with deadly (non-explosive) fragments.

A relatively new bomb, also designed to minimize collateral damage, is the GBU-39 small diameter bomb. This is a smaller (250-pound bomb) equipped with wings to glide to the target. Often carried in a four-pack.

The JDAMs also have wings, although they are very small; more like strakes along the body of the bomb to provide a bit of lift. A guided bomb needs some aerodynamic means of changing course and the JDAMs use a tail section with moveable fins. The JDAMs:
-- GBU-31 (In many varieties) -- a 2,000-pound bomb with JDAM kit. The bomb body can be a Mk 84 bomb, or a BLU-109 penetrator, or equivalent size bomb.
-- GBU-32 or -35 -- A 1,000-pound bomb with JDAM kit.
-- GBU-38 -- A 500-pound bomb with JDAM kit

Back to penetrating bombs, there are a couple that deserve special mention. The GBU-43 "Mother of All Bombs" (MOAB) is a 21,600-pound guided bomb and the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator is an even larger 27,000-pound-plus weapon. The huge bombs are only carried on USAF bombers.

Didn't I tell you we'd have a headache before all this was through? I'll cover missiles in another post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_...ttack_Munition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39..._Diameter_Bomb

Disclaimer: I'm about as peace-loving as they come. The unfortunate reality is that military forces are meant to kill people and break stuff. The trend on much of what is happening in the military is to increase precision and decrease collateral damage. So kill only the bad guys and break only their stuff. The concept is imperfect and tragedies continue to happen. The small diameter bomb is the poster child for the concept of minimizing collateral damage.

[Lady Jane]

Originally Posted by Llarry

The huge bombs are only carried on USAF bombers.

Didn't the MOAB also extracted and "parachute dropped" from the back of a C-130?

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by Lady Jane

Didn't the MOAB also extracted and "parachute dropped" from the back of a C-130?

Yes indeed, and there was a predecessor weapons, the BLU-82 that was also dropped by the C-130.

Load the bomb into the C-130 cargo area on a pallet with parachute(s), fly to the target area, open the rear ramp, deploy the parachute(s) which pull the bomb right out the back of the airplane. The pallet and parachute(s) separate and the bomb falls onto the target.

The BLU-82, no longer in the inventory, is pictured but the MOAB use would be similar.

[Llarry]

U.S. air-launched missiles are an important component of aircraft armament. I'll divided the discussion into two parts: Air-to-air missiles (AAMs) and air-to-surface missiles (ASMs).

U.S. AAMs are pretty straightforward. These days there are only two basic types in service: The AIM-9 Sidewinder and the AIM-120 Advanced medium-range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM).

The AIM-9 Sidewinder, in its earliest form, was the first U.S. AAM. The earliest models -- in 1956 -- could only be launched from behind the target, as they were infrared-homing and homed on the exhaust of the target aircraft. Improved versions followed, but the Sidewinder remains an IR homing missile, albeit now with a greatly expanded engagement envelope. Late versions can even be instructed to circle around and attack a target behind the firing aircraft. The AIM-9 is currently used in two forms: The AIM-9L and AIM-9M look much like earlier Sidewinders, while the AIM-9X sports new, smaller fins and is replacing the earlier models. The Sidewinders are used on a wide variety of aircraft. They are a primary weapon of such aircraft as the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F-22 and F-35, as well as a self-defense weapon carried by aircraft like the A-10 and AV-8B. They are even carried by a helicopters, such as the Marine AH-1Z. The AIM-9 was derived from the 5-inch rocket and weighs under 200 pounds.

The earliest combat seen by the Sidewinder was in the Taiwan Strait in 1958 where Chinese Nationalist fighters carrying U.S.-supplied Sidewinders tangled with Chinese Communist MiGs; One AIM-9 hit a MiG without exploding and was recovered by the mainlanders. Soviet technicians were able to examine the missile and reverse-engineer it, thereby coming up with the Soviet Atoll IR homing AAM used in large numbers in the Soviet bloc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

The AIM-120 AMRAAM, nicknamed the "Slammer", is a longer-range AAM with a radar in the nose for final guidance to the target. The AMRAAM dates to 1991 and, like the Sidewinder, has been progressively improved. In particular, late-model AIM-120s have greatly increased range. The latest model also features fins of reduced size to facilitate internal carriage in stealth fighters such as the F-22 and F-35. The AIM-120 is larger than the AIM-9 and weighs over 300 pounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM

Both the AIM-9 and the AIM-120 have been manufactured in very large numbers and are used by many countries.

Next up: Air-to-surface missiles.

[ezaircon4jc]

I always thought the head of the missile had an explosive charge, much like a torpedo. In intercept school I learned that there is a segmented length of metal (I don't remember which metal and I don't have easy access to my old training materials) that when deployed, shoots out of the missile head like an expanding watch spring. That just tears the target apart.

Things may be different now, but I figured a sidewinder is a sidewinder and a sparrow is a sparrow.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by ezaircon4jc

I always thought the head of the missile had an explosive charge, much like a torpedo. In intercept school I learned that there is a segmented length of metal (I don't remember which metal and I don't have easy access to my old training materials) that when deployed, shoots out of the missile head like an expanding watch spring. That just tears the target apart.

Yes. Continuous rod warhead.

[Llarry]

There are quite a few varieties of air-to-surface missiles used by the U.S.

The smallest is the AGM-114 Hellfire, which weighs only a bit over 100 pounds and has been in service for almost 40 years. Most are laser-homing -- they home on the reflection from a laser illuminating the target from either the firing aircraft or someone on the ground. They have a range of 8 to 11 km. They were originally carried only by armed helicopters, but were then adapted to use on the MQ-9 Reaper UAV flown by the U.S. Air Force and others. The AGM-114 is used on Army AH-64s and SpecOps helicopters, Marine Corps AH-1Z Cobras and Navy MH-60 SeaHawks. They've been widely exported as well, as have most of the below missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

The AGM-65 Maverick has been around a long time, entering service in 1972. It has various guidance systems: Electro-optical, imaging infrared or laser-guided. The Air Force's A-10 is probably the poster child for the Maverick; most photos show AGM-65s under the wing. The Maverick can be carried by other tactical aircraft as well. It has a relatively short range of about 12 miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-65_Maverick

The AGM-84 Harpoon originated as an air- surface- or submarine-launched antiship cruise missile. It is still used today in that role and is carried by the Air Force B-52 and by Navy F/A-18 fighters and P-8 patrol aircraft.

The AGM-84 was adapted to land attack as the Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) and is currently in service as the AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER with increased range. It is carried by Air Force F-15Es, as well as Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets and P-8As. The SLAM_ER retains its ability to attack ship targets as well and has mostly replaced the original Harpoon. The modern versions include -- as do most U.S. ASMs -- GPS guidance for land targets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-84H/K_SLAM-ER

Suppression of adversary air defenses is an important part of air war and radar homing missiles are a vital component of that effort. The AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) has been around for almost 40 years but has been continuously improved. The AGM-88E is the current version. A newer AGM-88G advanced antiradar guided missile (extended range) doubles the previous range of the missile to 160 miles and has entered service in recent years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM

The newest ASM in the U.S. arsenal is the AGM-158 joint air-to-surface standoff missile (JASSM), which is a stealthy cruise missile with inertial and GPS guidance. It was introduced in 1998 and the AGM-158B model has extended range (500+ miles). The JASSM is carried by all the Air Force bombers and the F-15E and has a 2,000 pound warhead.

A derivative of the JASSM is the AGM-158C long range antiship missile (LRASM), a ship-killing stealth missile based on the JASSM and carried by Navy Super Hornets and P-8A and by Air Force B-1Bs in the antiship role. (not pictured)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158_JASSM

[Llarry]

A photo addendum to the aircraft weapons posts:

1) The underside of a banking F-16 loaded with (top to bottom) 2 AIM-120 AMRAAMs, a JDAM bomb, external fuel tanks, a second JDAM. one AIM-9X Sidewinder and a third AIM-120.

2) F/A-18E loaded with 8 GBU-32 thousand-pound JDAMs and two smaller 500-pound JDAMs. Not visible in the photo, but probably present are one or more air-to-air missiles for self-defense and possible an external fuel tank on the centerline.

3) F-22A firing an AIM-120 AMRAAM from the open main weapons bays; the smaller side weapons bays, which each hold a single AIM-9 Sidewinder are also open.

4) F-35 with 2 GBU-31 2,000 pound JDAMs and 2 AIM-120 AMRAAMs split between the two internal weapons bays. Note that the missiles are loaded onto the doors of the bays.

5) A rotary launcher in the bomb bay of a B-1B loaded with a mix of JDAMs; I think I see three sizes of bombs: 500 pounds, 1,000 pounds and 2,000 pounds. Sort of a bomb dispensing machine.

6) AGM-158 JASSM with wings and vertical tail deployed

[Llarry]

The U.S. Air Force is spending several hundred million dollars with JetZero to develop a blended wing-body aircraft that promises major fuel savings due to reduced drag. A prototype is projected to fly in 2027. Here's a computer-generated image.

[Lady Jane]

Originally Posted by Llarry

Here's a computer-generated image.

I like the looks of it. Lifting body design?

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by Lady Jane

I like the looks of it. Lifting body design?

Not sure, but it sure looks like it to me.

In a commercial passenger application, how about 30 seats abreast in coach? (Actually the airplane does not look that large but definitely a wide-body passenger cabin.)

[Llarry]

Relatively new Chinese air force drogue tanker with 2 or 3 refueling points. The caption at the bottom of the first photo states fuel capacity is greater than 100 tonnes. The second photo shows two thirsty fighters as well.

This aircraft is designated the YY-20: First Y = You (fuel), second Y = Yun (transport.) So far at least the aircraft is using Russian-made engines. A notable weak point of the Chinese aircraft industry is engine design and production; I'm sure they're working hard on the problem.

The max takeoff weight of the Y-20 transport is 220,000 kg (485,000 lbs) so it is not as large as a C-17 but 50% larger than an Airbus A400M.

[Lady Jane]

Originally Posted by Llarry

Not sure, but it sure looks like it to me.

In a commercial passenger application, how about 30 seats abreast in coach? (Actually the airplane does not look that large but definitely a wide-body passenger cabin.)

I would probably trade-in the Gulfstream and Bombardier for a private version.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by Lady Jane

I would probably trade-in the Gulfstream and Bombardier for a private version.

There would be plenty of room for a hot tub, too.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by Lady Jane

I would probably trade-in the Gulfstream and Bombardier for a private version.

Keep in mind that there's only two window seats per wiiiiiiiiiide row, and a whole lot of "center" seats.....

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Keep in mind that there's only two window seats per wiiiiiiiiiide row, and a whole lot of "center" seats.....

Yes, but if it's a mega-executive jet, you can have any window you want for your very, very comfortable chair.

[flybigjet]

Originally Posted by Llarry

Relatively new Chinese air force drogue tanker with 2 or 3 refueling points. The caption at the bottom of the first photo states fuel capacity is greater than 100 tonnes. The second photo shows two thirsty fighters as well.

This aircraft is designated the YY-20: First Y = You (fuel), second Y = Yun (transport.) So far at least the aircraft is using Russian-made engines. A notable weak point of the Chinese aircraft industry is engine design and production; I'm sure they're working hard on the problem.

The max takeoff weight of the Y-20 transport is 220,000 kg (485,000 lbs) so it is not as large as a C-17 but 50% larger than an Airbus A400M.

Yeahhhhh..... go look at a C-17 from the same aspect and then tell me the Chinese didn't Industrial Espionage'ing the living shite out of that design!

But maybe that's a cynical view.

R.

[Llarry]

Originally Posted by flybigjet

Yeahhhhh..... go look at a C-17 from the same aspect and then tell me the Chinese didn't Industrial Espionage'ing the living shite out of that design!

But maybe that's a cynical view.

R.

I think industrial espionage is standard operating procedure in the People's Republic. That's reality, not cynicism.

[Llarry]

The Airbus A340 is out of production as the market shifts to twin-engine aircraft for fuel economy. But there is just something about a four-engine plane -- fuel economy be damned!

The Airbus A340-600 is 75 meters (245 feet) long. Very impressive.