Picture of the day

[Gibbs505]

This Day in Aviation History

September 11th, 1946

First flight of the North American FJ-1 Fury.

The North American FJ-1 Fury was the first operational jet aircraft in United States Navy service, and was developed by North American Aviation as the NA-135. The FJ-1 was an early transitional jet of limited success which carried over similar tail surfaces, wing and canopy derived from the piston-engined P-51D Mustang. The evolution of the design to incorporate swept wings would become the basis for the land-based XP-86 prototype - itself originally designed with a very similar straight-wing planform to the FJ-1 airframe - of the United States Air Force’s enormously influential F-86 Sabre, which itself formed the basis for the Navy’s carrier-based North American FJ-2/-3 Fury….

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

Here's "103". Now just have to find a pic of "104" and we'll have the whole series.

 

[cosmic]

Hmmm... The pilot gets to sit on top of the GT. I wonder if they designed the casing for containment? I've seen a few "blade salads" - not pretty.

 

[diopter]

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

Well played, sir.

Churchill AVRE:

Just the thing for use against various emplacements, bunkers, and small resistant villages.

[youtube]Bd1_YJgKtic[/youtube]

<< ptoo....WHOMP! >>

 

[diopter]

Closer to home. Wish the video quality was better.

 

[CV32]

Hmmm... The pilot gets to sit on top of the GT. I wonder if they designed the casing for containment? I've seen a few "blade salads" - not pretty.

The J35 turbojet is actually behind the pilot, taking up roughly half the length of the aircraft (including the afterburner); he is surrounded by the machine guns.

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

The T-20 Komsomolets - a Bren gun carrer with a Russian accent.

Here, Sasha takes the whole basketball team out for ice cream.

Not designed for enless abuse:

Forcefully exported to several other nations:

"Stalin's watching - everybody look cool..."

And one you can own.

 

[Gibbs505]

Not sure which is is but I guess from the helicopter that is was an escort carrier

 

[Gibbs505]

English Electric Lightning

The last purebred British fighter jet.

 

[grelmar]

USS Point Cruz - CVE-119


Name: USS Point Cruz
Builder: Todd-Pacific Shipyards
Laid down: 4 December 1944
Launched: 18 May 1945
Commissioned: 16 October 1945
Decommissioned: 30 June 1947
Recommissioned: 26 July 1951
Decommissioned: 31 August 1956
Reclassified: Cargo Ship and Aircraft Ferry, AKV-19, 17 May 1957
In service: 23 August 1965
Out of service: 16 October 1969
Reclassified: T-AKV-19, August 1965
Struck: 15 September 1970
Fate: Sold and scrapped in 1971

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Point_Cruz_(CVE-119)

Not sure which is is but I guess from the helicopter that is was an escort carrier

 

[Gibbs505]

Well Done!!

 

[Bubba Yugga]

The Sikorsky S-55 (H04S,HRS) you see on that deck has literally dozens of grease nipples in its rotor hub, that need to be serviced every 15 flight hours.
I spent 15 minutes with the grease gun, then 2 hours with the rags, 'cause pilots get awful snarky about grease splats all over their windshield...

 

[Gibbs505]

The cockpit of the SR-71

 

[grelmar]

JU-287 prototype test bed.

Forward swept wing jet bomber.

 

[Gibbs505]

Baddest looking plane ever built.
Saw this fly at Abbotsford air show in 1986

 

[diopter]

Hollow grind Fairbairn-Sykes. Cutting edge. Pun intended.

 

[donor]

JU-287 prototype test bed.

Forward swept wing jet bomber.

Soviet development of that idea.It was called OKB-1 EF 131.

Wiki doesn't mention it but some ideas from that project were used in design of Il-28(info from plastic modelers mag).

 

[RRCo.]

....
It's notable that while modern ships "aren't designed to take hits" they do have quite effective damage control systems and design. The problem is that the vast increase in lethality of ship to ship weapons has rendered armour a moot point. A single modern missile or torpedo will cut the hardiest ship in half. So the name of the game has become "how not to be seen" and "how not to get hit."

Armour a mute point...I wonder! We've made so many advances in armour since the end of WWII for land vehicles, probably a lot of those lessons could be applied to ships if naval planners wanted to bother, but with the lack of serious naval warfare since 1945 I would suggest they have been running on theories, guesswork and "hopes" for so long that we're well out of touch with reality now. A serious war will bring us back to earth in a few short, sharp shocks.

We all remember the Falklands, and how the Brits were dragging weapons out of museums and plastering them all over their tin cans, because when the sh1t is flying at you suddenly every gun makes a difference. Not getting hit is a nice idea, but with displacement hulled ships that can go no faster than they could in 1945, if not 1918, particularly if the seas are a bit rough, how do you avoid getting hit when submarines can go twice as fast submerged as they did in 1945? And aircraft are four times as fast with fire and forget supersonic missiles? When torpedoes are faster, more powerful, more difficult to detect, wire guided, when subs can lauch SSMs? The list goes on.

No one wants to face it, but in a serious naval war displacement hull vessels are done without a technological revolution in survivability.

 

[mark k]

I met a guy years ago that worked at Litton industries. He told me his workbench in his garage was a sample of armour from the deck of a US Aegis cruiser. It was about 3" thick and made from what looked like Kevlar and epoxy. Looked like it could take a hit or two...