Aster shootdown over Sydney in 1955
navyhistory.au
navyhistory.au
The pilot ejected due to a flat spin (just like what happened in Top Gun, RIP Goose). Now a flat spin is a kind of spin and stall that tends to happen when the center of mass and center of lift are in the same place. This can make planes very unstable. So the pilot can't recover and ejects. But this changes the center of mass on the plane, and the plane recovers on its own, and eventually lands itself in a corn field.
The plane was eventually returned to service after repairs.
What led to the high crash rate for some operators (other operators had much lower losses) was the jump in aircraft complexity and performance combined with an inherently challenging and dangerous low-level strike mission.
>Starting in the late twentieth century, the safety of metal-tipped lawn darts was called into question in several countries. After thousands of injuries and at least three children's deaths were attributed to lawn darts, the sharp-pointed darts were banned for sale in the United States and Canada.
Is this a common outcome of flat spins? That is, to return to a recoverable state after ejection? I’d think this would be exceedingly rare. And what’s the stability profile on this make of plane?
Parking brakes in light training aircraft of that vintage, if they were even equipped with one, were typically a hole drilled through a metal plate, that was placed on the actuator rod for the brake master cylinder, so that the metal plate would jam on the actuator rod and hold the brakes down when you pulled on a piece of string that was tied to the metal plate. They worked similar to the tab of metal to hold open the damper of a crappy old aluminum-framed screen door.
Parking brake failure in aircraft of that era is not a million-to-one scenario, it is the default operating condition. Go down to your local general aviation airfield and peek in the window at the parking brake knob on every Cessna 150 you see, I guarantee that many of them will be placarded INOP, and many of the un-placarded ones are also actually be INOP if you tried to use them.
Here's one for sale on eBay. $300 for that bit of junk! No wonder people leave them INOP.
Not that I’m counting or anything
The other plane with all the guys lying on the wing is amusing.
IIRC, the US subs put torpedoes into more than half the Japanese ships, but did almost no damage due to defective torpedo exploders.
Imagine if the US had stayed with the reasonably reliable Mk 10 Torpedo and had adopted the British Fairey Swordfish instead of the TBD Avenger.
Just deploying Swordfish along the US East Coast would have saved thousands of lives lost in the Battle of the Atlantic. Instead Admiral Nimitz relegated the existing Swordfish to ferrying personnel after they chased Japanese subs away from the American West Coast. He did not believe the reports of then damaging so many Japanese subs. After the war, he learned those reports were correct.
WW2 in the Pacific would have been a lot shorter.
The Swordfish did OK in the Atlantic solely because it never faced any meaningful fighter opposition (having been quickly relegated to "safer" roles), and the distances were low enough that its low speed was not a hindrance. It would have been utterly unsurvivable in the Pacific theater against Japanese opposition.
Additionally, short-range ASW aircraft were never really the problem in the Atlantic, the problem was always how to provide long-range cover, which was only solved by the use of land-based B-24s and carrier-borne Avengers.
You are correct. I apologize.
The TBD Devastator was a disaster compared to the ready-to-use Fairey Swordfish. FDR and Nimitz screwed the pooch on that one.
The Swordfish acquired a somewhat mythic representation from performance early in the war, but that performance was a result of FAA doctrine rather than any particular characteristics of the Swordfish - the FAA was really the only service to take night carrier operations seriously pre-war, and most of the successful Swordfish operations were conducted at night. When operated in daylight against competent air defense they were just as vulnerable as the TBD.
Where the two also differ is that the TBD was soon retired completely following the slaughter at Midway and replaced by a much superior platform (the TBF/TBM), while the Swordfish was moved to other roles (e.g. ASW) as it was also replaced (also by the TBF/TBM in many cases). In no small part that was because the FAA needed everything it could get, and the failure of the intended successor (the Fairey Albacore) left them with no other domestic alternative.
If the US had large numbers of Fairey Swordfish guarding the US East Coast in 1941, they could have deployed aircraft carriers to win the Battle of the Atlantic. I imagine the US converting many surface combatants that were in production to aircraft carriers for their Europe-First plan.
Fundamentally, winning the Battle of the Atlantic relied on other technical means than mere aircraft alone: HF-DF, much better (and smaller) airborne radar, improved sonar, codebreaking, and improved ASW weapons. No single aircraft platform earlier in the war would meaningfully have changed the situation without these other improvements as well.
Here is my alternate history scenario:
IF the US had Fairey Swordfish that had proven effective in combating Japanese submarines on the West Coast, Which they had but Admiral Nimitz did not believe the reports. The Fiarey Swordfish were superior ASW aircraft in 1934. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Swordfish
And IF the US had hundreds or thousands more Fairey Swordfish they had built. This is the alternate history part. The US had the tools to set up an assembly line in storage and forgot to tell anyone after Prime Minister Churchill told President Roosevelt how important they were.
And IF the US had used those newly American-made Swordfish to drive the German U-boats away from the US East Coast, moving the Battle of the Atlantic farther out to sea,
And IF the US then wanted to convert any ship in production to be a light carrier designed to carry Fairey Swordfish and escort convoys,
Then some or all of the 8 light cruisers the US completed in 1942 (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_World_Wa...) could have been converted as the Independence Class aircraft carriers were converted from the Cleveland Class light cruisers (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence-class_aircraft_ca...)
I am not talking about magically building more Hornet or Essex class fleet carriers. I'm talking about changing history so that light cruisers were converted into escort carriers and Fairey Swordfish hunted U-boats in the Atlantic long before this really happened.
I contend 2 changes would have shortened World War 2 massively: 1. The US should have never mass-produced the Mark 14 torpedo and instead tested the heck out of the Mark 10. 2. The US should have mass-produced a variant of the Swordfish, instead of mass-producing the TBD as a torpedo plane.
I would love to move up the production of Kaiser's Escort Carriers, but that would be too risky. The magic of Kaiser's escort carriers could be sabotaged by a butterfly flapping its wings. I would only supply them with a bunch of Swordfish when they were available to go with their F4F Wildcats and SBD Dauntlesses.
Turns out the D variant only had rockets, the cannons were removed.
Interesting insight into the thinking around interceptor tactics immediately post-war.
Early software developer?
Once, in another life time, I owned an ancient Horex Regina II 400 cc., a 1953 model and it came with Full Self Driving. To activate it, I simply had to take my hands off the wheel and rest them on the tank. It would keep going straight on its own, without intervention. If the road turned, all I had to do was turn my hips a bit and it would follow along.
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> The harsh criticism against the Services was unfounded though and despite some initial bad luck the Navy and Air Force had performed creditably on a difficult and elusive “ENEMY”.
That was a suspiciously unconvincing conclusion. It made me check check the domain, and sure enough, "navyhistory.au". I wonder if it was even written by the same author.
They are built to fly, so they do unless something interferes.
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At the time this would have been a city-wide event
I doubt it. People in 1955 had a different (and, IMHO, more balanced) outlook on things like this. Sometimes weird flukes happen. I imagine their default mindset was "Thank goodness no one was hurt" and not "who can we place the blame on and hold legally liable." The plane rental company probably had insurance which covered the loss of the plane and everyone moved on.
Much more likely: the pilot forgot to engage the brake
Chuck Yeager