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Somehow a string of what amounts to gibberish (to me, anyway) got inserted into the beginning of the text of "And Now for Something Completely Different". The only browser that couldn't seem to cope...
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Making It Harder Than Necessary?
Designing a carrier-based aircraft means dealing with several constraints that don't have to be addressed by designers of land-based ones. These affected folded size, weight, strength, takeoff and...
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Fitting In IV
The maximum folded span on a U.S. Navy carrier-based airplane and how it changed over time is obviously a subject of interest to me. See:http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2009/07/fitting-in.html,...
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Grumman A-6 Intruder History
The best history ever written on the A-6 Intruder is by Mark and Rick Morgan:I'm going to go out on a limb here, since I haven't seen it yet, and say that the second-best book on the A-6 Intruder has...
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And Now for Something Completely Different II
In April 1956, a VX-1 crew in a Sikorsky HSS-1 was conducting dipping sonar trials off Key West using Corporal (SS-346) as a target when cockpit instruments indicated that there was a problem with the...
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Hellcats on CVEs
The CVE was an escort carrier built, in the beginning, on an oiler or merchant-ship hull. They had the smallest flight decks and slowest top speed of all the U.S. carriers. (See...
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It Never Fails
After I finally decide that I've found everything I'm going to find about a subject and my monograph on it is published, somebody shows up with something. In this case, it was the F7U-1 and Rick...
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COD Redux
Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) is normally provided by an airplane that utilizes the arrested landing gear and catapult to arrive and depart. Shore-based helicopters sometimes deliver or pickup...
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Your Speed May Vary
Once upon a time, the U.S. Navy and Air Force vied with each other and the military services of foreign countries to set aircraft performance records in speed and altitude. Attempts at surpassing the...
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A Brief History of F8U Crusader Armament
The Navy originally bought the F8U Crusader as a carrier-based "day fighter". That basically meant that it didn't also need to be capable of finding and shooting down another aircraft in low visibility...
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F4H-1, F4H-1F, F-4A?
This shouldn't be that confusing but I was momentarily discomfited by a poorly worded description of the transition recently so herewith an summary illustrated history.The F4H-1 (F for Fighter, H for...
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American Military Transport Aircraft Since 1925
This was a pleasant surprise. I never expected to see an entire book dedicated U.S. military fixed-wing transports. Yet another book on fighters, bombers, or strike airplanes, yes. But transports, even...
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Things Under Wings: FJ-4B
23 April 2013 Revision: Well, that didn't take long. Gerry Whiteside has correctly identified the weapon on the FJ-4B in this post as a 750-lb Mk 77 Fire Bomb modified with a Mk 19 Bomb Conversion Kit....
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The Last Flight of Vought's XF7U-1 Cutlass BuNo 122472
Once again, I've come across something that I would have liked to include in one of my books, in this case the crash report for XF7U-1 BuNo 122472 on 28 September 1949 during takeoff at Vought's...
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The First Launch of an Unmanned Aircraft from an Aircraft Carrier?
Not the X-47B, despite the press release claim.U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman by Alan RadeckiIt might not even be the tenth one. For sure there were a few F6F drones catapulted during the...
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The Curious Case of the A3D-1Q Crew Size
26 May 2013: Updated with additional information and an illustrationEvery once in awhile someone asks a question that causes me to do a fact check and research that leads to a different answer than I...
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Navy Aircraft Designation Suffixes
Dana Bell has teamed up with Classic Warships to produce a series of Aircraft Pictorials on U.S. Navy Airplanes. Three have been published so far, covering the SB2U, OS2U, and F4F. See...
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The A-12 Avenger II Program: The End is Near
It's hard to believe that it has been more than two years since I last updated the status of the A-12 Avenger II program and its termination is still not yet complete from a financial standpoint. See...
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