[HN Gopher] Aster shootdown over Sydney in 1955
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Aster shootdown over Sydney in 1955
Author : tapper
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-06-21 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (navyhistory.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (navyhistory.au)
| ortusdux wrote:
| It doesn't take all that much wind to cause modern light aircraft
| to take off on their own. The gusts in this video were 55 knots,
| but I've heard that some STOLs are susceptible to 20 knot winds.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI
| bombcar wrote:
| Ah there are pilots in those planes, I was wondering how they
| were doing so well.
|
| The other plane with all the guys lying on the wing is amusing.
| Onavo wrote:
| That's a glider I think
| dfgasdgsd wrote:
| Yup - this looks like it's at the Air Force academy north
| of Colorado Springs - spent a summer there and was really
| cool to drive by and see the gliders getting towed up for
| practice pilots almost daily.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| That is crazy, thanks for sharing. I wouldn't call a Piper Cub
| modern though.
| NikkiA wrote:
| The cessna 172 is still manufactured today, its factory
| condition stall speed is 40 knots.
| delecti wrote:
| There's a regional airport near me, which I drive past often,
| and the smaller planes are all tethered to their "parking
| spaces" (taut cables between the tips of the wings and mounting
| points on the ground). It always seemed a bit silly and I've
| had the thought "what, like they're going to run away?". It
| doesn't seem so silly anymore.
| sundvor wrote:
| Send a few Blackhawks over or near untethered light aircraft
| and watch the party. :-)
| WalterBright wrote:
| The landing is the hard part.
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| Oh, no: It's really easy. Doing it twice is the hard part.
| smegger001 wrote:
| "If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If
| you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding
| landing."
|
| Chuck Yeager
| labster wrote:
| One year later, the USAF fared an even worse against a runaway
| drone. It took two days to put out all of the fires caused by the
| rockets that missed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale
| appplication wrote:
| Wow, 208 rockets fired and all of them missed. That is way more
| than I would have thought. Also, I hope those pilots got some
| training, or maybe they quickly reevaluated the battle
| worthiness of those rockets. I imagine there are much harder
| targets to hit than an unmanned drone.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > The Mighty Mouse was to prove a poor aerial weapon.
| Although it was powerful enough to destroy a bomber with a
| single hit, its accuracy was abysmal. The rockets dispersed
| widely on launch: a volley of 24 rockets would cover an area
| the size of a football field.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding-Fin_Aerial_Rocket
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| Also they had no functional targeting computer or gun
| sights.
| russfink wrote:
| And they were not skilled in the ways of the Force.
| russdill wrote:
| There's a lot of stories regarding weapons that have abysmal
| success but stay fielded anyway. US navy torpedos are a good
| example.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| If the Mk 14 Torpedo had worked for the US submariners off
| the Philippines in December, 1941 the Japanese would have
| probably failed to take those islands.
|
| 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.
| dctoedt wrote:
| One of the funniest things I've read in awhile -- not least, that
| it took two young pilots from the _British_ Royal Navy, on
| temporary duty with the Aussie navy under an exchange program, to
| shoot down the errant aircraft after failures to do so by Aussie
| navy and air force. I 'm sure the RN didn't gloat about that one
| _at all_ ; oh, no, that'd _never_ happen .... (Their attitude
| would likely have been a dismissive, "Of course -- what'd you
| expect?")
| cbanek wrote:
| This is a good one, but I think the most impressive is the
| cornfield bomber.
|
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
| tristramb wrote:
| Surely it should have been called the 'cornfield interceptor'?
| cbanek wrote:
| This makes perfect sense to me. The plane was an interceptor
| intercepting the ground, there's no bombers at all involved!
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I imagine that this pilot was heavily trolled after this
| incident!
| Terr_ wrote:
| Maybe, but perhaps they could counter that their piloting
| skills are so good they don't even have to be _in_ a plane to
| land it.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| "It was a great landing," he said at the time. "We even got
| to use the plane again."
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently he was told over the radio to "get back in" while
| still on parachute.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I was surprised when I first took a flight lesson how easy it is
| to takeoff and go. You push the throttle all the way in and it
| takes off on its own. I believe there have been incidents of them
| flying themselves for hours after a pilot died or was
| incapacitated.
|
| They are built to fly, so they do unless something interferes.
| buildsjets wrote:
| "In a million-to-one chance the brake failed to hold and although
| pilot Thrower grabbed a wing strut to check the plane he was
| quickly forced to jump clear, just avoiding the tail"
|
| 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.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/134695710339
| quercusa wrote:
| _the engine failed 10 feet from the ground. Landing the plane in
| the middle of the strip he climbed out, swung the propellor by
| hand (there was no self-starter) and the engine immediately
| roared into life._
|
| Early software developer?
| lmpdev wrote:
| For those unfamiliar Punchbowl to coast is well over 10km
|
| At the time this would have been a city-wide event
| BoppreH wrote:
| > The incident did not quickly subside here. Embarrassing
| questions were directed in Federal Parliament to. the Government
| of the day by both Mr C Chambers (Member for Adelaide) and Mr F
| Daly (Grayndler) during the Budget debate the following month.
| They asked why was so much money being spent on defence to an Air
| Force and Navy that took over two hours to shoot down an unarmed
| light aircraft?
|
| ...
|
| > 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.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| The real question is, whatever happened to the Gatwick Airport
| Drone?
| susam wrote:
| In case you missed it, at the bottom of the article, there is a
| link to a 10 minute documentary about the incident:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k The documentary is
| quite interesting too!
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(page generated 2024-06-21 23:00 UTC)