Recent content by ahanswurst

I vote for the P-38 because of what it did and could do during the war. Granted the Mosquito had it's place and mission. But compared side by side I think the P-38 has no equals as far as a piston driven aircraft.

Without a doubt it would have been a B-29 to drop an atomic bomb on Germany if need be. But the Russians would have leveled Germany before an atomic bomb was needed. When The Russians captured Berlin and took German prisoners back to Russia. The History Channel had a series on the fall of Berlin...

The basic weight of a B-52H model was about 180,000 lbs with 220,000 lbs of fuel and their alert load was 502,000 lbs. that leaves 102,000 lbs for bombs. But the B-52H cofigured for an alert carried 2 Hound dog missles on pylons. Without these missles installed I wonder if they could carry...

The Revell P-38 is not too hard to assemble. My P-38 was a Chinese model and no name. But I liked the Revell P-38 model because of the decals included. I painted all of the parts while they were still connected to their plastic trees. Then I cut the pieces off and touched up the area. It takes a...

Amazing how the German airplane looks like a model for the USAF's F-82 Twin Mustang used in the Korean war as a radar plane. I am amazed how much the USA copied a lot of the German aircraft designs

One thing good about an atomic bomb detonating is that the fireball is so large that pinpoint accuracy was not needed. But I remember that the 2 A-bombs that were dropped on Japan were set to detonate above ground as an air burst to maxamize damage.

This is the 40 millimeter cannon used on the Ki-44. One of its features was the round was caseless. I have not been able to determine how the powder was ignited. In researching the various cannons used by the allies I found out that the Germans were starting to use the gatling style cannons to...

I am adding a Japanese fighter plane, The Ki-44 Shoki code named Tojo to the list. The Ki-44 IIc model had (4) 40 mm cannons firing a 1/2 kilogram bullet. On Feb 19th of 1945 a small number of Ki-44's shot down 10 B-29s out of 120 B-29's in that mission. The Ki-44 in all of it variants was one...

The Condor FW 200 flew from Berlin to New York nonstop in 20 hours. But it was in August 1938 and not during the war. So the Germans could have bombed New York if they had wanted to. The Japanese also had a copy of the Condor in their aircraft inventory

The ME-163 komet is credited for shooting down 16 airplanes during the War according to an article I just read. I would have thought that more bombers met their fate then 16. One of the ME-163 Pilots was still alive and living in Dayton Ohio. You have to give the German aircraft designers credit...

The MG-151 is a 20 mm cannon. The MK-108 is a 30 mm cannon and last but not least is the MK-114 which is a 50 mm cannon. The MK-114 was used for bomber busting. The MK-108 30 mm cannon was on the ME-262 and other german fighters. But its cyclic rate of fire was very slow so a high speed fighter...

I recently saw a story somewhere where the Germans had a Condor fly nonstop from Germany to New York's airspace and back to Germany. Did anybody else see this article ?

Now if they could get the exhaust smells along with the smell of the 115/145 octane avgas to go along with the sounds... what a thought

I flew from Japan to the USA in a WC-135B We took off from Yokota AB Japan and had to refuel at Wake Island. From Wake we went to the USA and landed at Sacremento Californa for refueling. But the Boeing 747's probably flys nonstop form the USA to Japan without refueling. When we left...

My father who is 83 and still alive was a waist gunner on a B-17 stationed in England (Upper Ipswitch) with the 390th bomb wing. I asked him of all the gun positions on a b-17 which did he think was the safest. His reply was the waist position. He flew over 25 missions over Germany. I have his...