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It Now Takes All the Running You Can Do To Keep in the Same Place
https://news.usni.org/2016/05/26/navy-lays-bare-fa-18-readiness-gaps-take-year-surge-air-wingOnce upon a time, the Navy had the luxury of margin in its airplane inventory. In the mid-1950s, an air...
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Training the Right Stuff
Amazon is shipping my latest book, coauthored with Mark Frankel, now."A comprehensive study of the training aircraft used to transition the United States military into the jet age. At the end of World...
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A History of the Northrop Corporation's Projects
The title and subtitle pretty much summarize the contents in this excellent Specialty Press publication authored by long-time Northrop employee Tony Chong. And a wonderful collection of drawings,...
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McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom First Flight - One Engine or Two?
It's widely reported or at least implied that the U.S. Navy's first jet airplane, the twin-engine McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom, made its first flight on 26 January 1945 with only one engine installed....
View ArticleNavy Joint Fighter Conference - October 1944
See http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2012/05/navy-joint-fighter-conference-october.htmlfor added information (scroll down).
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How Hard is It to Land on an Aircraft Carrier?
U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tomas CompianI was recently asked "How hard is it to land on an aircraft carrier?" I regret to say that I don't know personally. My only pilot...
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The Turtle's Takeoff
Great googly moogly...For a summary description of this Lockheed P2V's record distance flight, see http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/01/truculent-turtle.htmlI knew the overloaded takeoff from Perth,...
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Horses for Courses: Intruder vs. Buccaneer
If you're familiar with both U.S. Navy and Royal Navy airplane programs from the early 1960s, you may have wondered why the former developed a bigish carrier-based, subsonic, two-seat attack airplane...
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1946 Royal Navy Deck-Landing Training
"England and America are two countries divided by a common language." Before the U.S. Navy took a close look at postwar Royal Navy innovations like the steam catapult, angled deck, and mirror landing...
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Carrier Plane Guard by Helicopter
This is a work in progress...The carrier plane-guard role dates from the very first operation of airplanes from ships. The destroyer Roe was reportedly assigned that duty for Eugene Ely's takeoff from...
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The Complete and Illustrated LSO Guide and Much More
Once upon a time, I posted a brief summary of the history of Landing Signal Officers here:http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2012/11/waving-them-aboard-lso.html (also see...
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A Carrier-Based Zipper?
In early 1953, Lockheed proposed its Model L-242 in response to the Navy's requests for proposals meeting its Outline Specification 130.The design was similar to the Model L-246, which won the USAF...
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The Short, Tragic Operation of the F-4 Phantom by the Blue Angels
In the process of doing some fact checking on the operation of the F-4 Phantom by the Blue Angels, I discovered that many of the online articles about it are somewhat incorrect, beginning with the...
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Extravagantly Illustrated and Detailed VQ-2 History!
Click on the image to better see the preorder offer for this cradle-to-grave history of one of the earliest and most used electronic reconnaissance squadrons, which went in harm's way to obtain the...
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F8U-3 Auxiliary Rocket Engine
One of the options after World War II that the U.S. Navy considered for the defense of the carrier against incoming bombers was the deck-launched interceptor. The performance priority was on rate of...
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Brewster F2A Buffalo
I have a soft spot for unappreciated or much maligned aircraft as you could tell from the subjects of most of my monographs, i.e. soft-cover books (see http://tommythomason.com/). I might have written...
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Vought F-8 Crusader by William D. Spidle
If you're considering buying this book—and you really should if you have any interest in carrier-based airplanes—note the subtitle. It covers the predesign, proposals, engineering design, test (and...
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The First Supersonic U.S. Navy Fighter?
That claim is made for the F8U/F-8 Crusader in the subtitle of Bill Spidle's excellent book on its development (see yesterday's post). Some might quibble with that (many think it was the F4D Skyray) so...
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Pre-war Downward-Vision Windows
One of the interesting features I noticed early on as I grew better acquainted with the history and development of U.S. Navy carrier-based airplanes was the presence of downward vision windows on most...
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