The Gun Counter

74-2130. It was a turd, but it was my turd.

Gotta be A-10s and any C-130 (which has been in the inventory as long as I have). AC's are seriously cool, but any 4-engine cargo ship that can land on a carrier is tops!

Gotta break it down by category...

WWII: P-38, Mosquito, & the FW190D

Still trucking: B-52, C-130 Both look set to outlast multiple replacements

Mud-Movers: A-10 Warthog, the only plane the US Air Force can't kill no matter how hard they try...

Mach 2+ SAM Sites (aka: fighters): F-22. I got to see one running through its paces at the last NAS New Orleans air show. Bloody thing manuvers like a goddamn UFO. Seriously. I watched this thing do a bootlegger turn. Not an Immellman, not a Split-S, but a flat 180 degree skid and acceleration back the way it came. At a fairly decent subsonic speed. What it did at low aerobatic speeds defy description. Iranian & Russian fighter pilots should just save themselves a bunch of trouble & hit the silk as soon as they hear that hostilities have commenced.

I recently saw a cool video of Jimmy Stewart flying and landing a B58 Hustler. That was a heckuva plane back in the day. Ah, here it is:

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos. ... ent=172859

Darrell wrote:I recently saw a cool video of Jimmy Stewart flying and landing a B58 Hustler. That was a heckuva plane back in the day. Ah, here it is:

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos. ... ent=172859

Sweet video. I seem to remember, back in the days before the B-1, they was some talk about pulling the B-58 out of mothballs, and rebuilding them to be a low altitude penetrator.

Too late, they were already scrapped, IIRC, because they were built with some precious metals.

sam wrote:

Darrell wrote:I recently saw a cool video of Jimmy Stewart flying and landing a B58 Hustler. That was a heckuva plane back in the day. Ah, here it is:

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos. ... ent=172859

Sweet video. I seem to remember, back in the days before the B-1, they was some talk about pulling the B-58 out of mothballs, and rebuilding them to be a low altitude penetrator.

Too late, they were already scrapped, IIRC, because they were built with some precious metals.

wiki article said that at one point they actually cost more than their weight in gold!

Depends on the time period - I like WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too many, but I'd have to say my ALL TIME favorite is the SR-71.



Although this one looks like its got some damage to its nose.

Unlike this one:

308Mike wrote: Although this one looks like its got some damage to its nose.

Mike, that is heat distortion. Upon returning from a mission ground crewmen used a sledge hammer to reshape the nose.

God owes me a flight in an A-10. If it wasn't for Him, I'd probably be flying one of those in Iraq right now.

I have a particular fondness for big round motors, so F4U Corsair, A-1 Skyraider, and P-47 Thunderbolt.