What about the Shackleton ? It too has 2 jet engines as well as four Griffon IC Prop engines
Armstrong Siddeley Viper Mk.203 turbojets - used primarily for Jato from what I can see
Anyone any ideas ? Did they use Kerosene or AvGas ?
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Of course the same thing was also done on a/c like B-36, C-123, C-119, P2V etc, in versions which had both jet and piston engines. The planes didn't have two separate fuel systems, the jets just burned straight AVGAS in those cases.
Joe
Just read in a magazine, "Air and Space" about the A37, Dragonfly. Interesting that the A37, made by Cessna, was used to replace A1s that were becoming scarce. An advantage of the A37 was that pilots did not have to be retrained, like they did to fly A1s, to fly a tail dragger. Like Flyboy is always saying, tail dragger skill takes a while to mature and most AF pilots had trained on the A37s cousin, the T37. In fact when the A37 was deployed in VN the officer in charge wanted pilots who had no training necessarily in the A37 or in air to ground and the airplane itself had not been rigorously tested in the air to ground role. The article states that the A37 was highly successful, because it carried a huge load, for it's size, was very accurate, because it flew lower and slower than the fast movers, was hard to hit for the AAA because it was so low and slow( the bad guys kept overleading) and it averaged only two hours of maintenance for every hour of flight. It was cheap also. Not very sophisticated, like the A10, but effective. One does not hear much about it in VN because, the author states, the AC was not sexy and the AF likes sexy AC.
There are quite a few planes from 'Nam that seem to have disappeared down the plug hole of history there were in the COIN / Observation department.
Mohawk
Bronco
Cessna Skymaster
AC-119 Gunship (not the C130)
AC-47 Dakota Gunship
The Mohawk went away in the late 80s I believe. They served in Army intelligence units and served with the border patrol late in their career. The Bronco is still around, some of them serving with the US Forestry service. There is one Skymaster being used by the US Navy and there are still many used by civilian operators. The AC-119 and AC-47 went away because of the AC-130. C-119s have disappeared as they were expensive to operate and couldn't get out of their own way unless they had JATO pods. As far as the regular C-47/ DC-3? I think there's somthing like 300 of them still flying.
Not really - I remember AC-47s and the first AC-130s - both served in NamYes, true, but I was talking specifically Nam period
For example, if you say 'Gunship' people mostly think C130 - not AC47
I also think of F-5s and AC-37sAlso, if you say ground attack you get Skyraider or Thud
Yep!Of couse some C47s are Turobprop now and seem to be performing Sterling service - Bassler and you know etc etc
Not really - I remember AC-47s and the first AC-130s - both served in Nam
I also think of F-5s and AC-37s
Yep!
There were many used by US forces as well as the SVNAF. There were some even used by NVN after the fall of Siagon.F5 - you mean the Tiger ? did that get some use in Nam - I thought it was mostly export.
Many thanks!Also, don't forget that you are a. American and b. knowledgeable about military aviation (not that I am saying it is unusual to have that mix)
Cromwell - you are a man wise beyond your years. If you look at the military aspect of the Vietnam War, there was much time and resources pissed away, but in the end MILITARILY the US won the war hands down. Politically it was a disaster.By the way - one of my bug bears is that I find many of the Hoi polloi do not understand that the US forces WON the first battle of Saigon decisively and hammered the Viet Cong and NVA pretty badly.
In fact I think the US could have won Nam - but you Lost the Political War interally and internationally
There were many used by US forces as well as the SVNAF. There were some even used by NVN after the fall of Siagon.
Many thanks!
Cromwell - you are a man wise beyond your years. If you look at the military aspect of the Vietnam War, there was much time and resources pissed away, but in the end MILITARILY the US won the war hands down. Politically it was a disaster.
The whole time the US military was never allowed to do its job. Lyndon B Johnson fought the war as if it was a game of chess between college chums, mainly because of the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara who although was probably one of the smartest men of his era, was also one of the dumbest. Nixon did not get serious until an election year was around the corner and bombed the NVA into submission. All these history revisionists forget that from the spring of 1973 until 1975, South Vietnam existed on its own. Had the NVA been treated in 1966 as they were in late 1972, we would have been out of there in 1967 with only a fraction of the losses sustained. Johnson was too worried about his "Global Image."
My brother did 2 tours in Vietnam, Silver Star recipient. He has a lot of resentment on how things played out but is very proud of his service. As he put it "I never got my ass kicked in Vietnam, had some tough fights but always came out ahead."
I am afraid that I do not think that the US has EVER really recovered from Vietnam - I think the 70s was the end of the hard working American, who made things work, and it also introduced the Credit Card mentality.
(note many Americans are hard-working, but at one time you had the Yankee Ingenuity ethos and people who would mend maked-do and believe being frugal was actually a good thing, and don't buy it if you can't afford it etc etc )
The people (at home I mean) were not mentality prepared or srtong enough to fight a war of attrition AND it cost the USA a LOT of money - it pushed you South financially - and so you started to Borrow, Borrow, Borrow and so on.
Financial Crisis - this is down to ONE main problem - Politicians in the US dodged the Tax Issue back in the 70s when you should have been paying more AND learning to be Frugal aka Austerity Measures.
The Fed President stated in 73 or 74 that unless the US accepted Taxes Frugal Living the country would be bankrupted in 30 years
Guess what ? Tada ! look where we are NOW
Note. I do not think WW2 - band of brothers etc - could be fought with the kind of mentality we now have in the US and the UK.
Those guys worked on farms, walked to work, had tough jobs, knew how to spin out money and they also had a good grounding in old fashioned values and 3Rs - read, write, arithmetic
(One thing about Churchill, he had been a soldier on the front line - which is why he is still respected here on both sides of the political divide)
I could just about agree on almost all points. What did happen is many of us were being taxed to death, especially if we owned property so there were measures passed to limit property taxes. It was at that time that government on all levels should have learned to be frugal but as you pointed out, the generations sice Vietnam 'expected' certain things from our government without being willing to put anything into it, and the size of government just grew.
And here we are...
Without getting into the politics too much, I second everything that Flyboy said about VN. There are a lot of beliefs about VN among people in the US. Most of these beliefs are based on misinformation fostered by the media and revisionist history. Interesting that someone thinks that it is somewhat unusual for an American to be knowledgeable about aviation. Maybe I misread that.
I recently read some allegedly accurate statistics about the VN War and it is amazing how misconceptions about the war have proliferated.
How many people could be put in the Skyraider's rear compartment? On another board, someone stated that you could get 12 people in there. . . Is that correct?