Friday, June 22, 2018

Interesting, if a bit of a kooky idea. Good vintage aircraft video.




Hat tip: Xbrad

4 comments:

  1. That's some neat stuff. The USAF tried quite a few ideas for taking fighters along with the big bombers. They called the program FICON (Fighter COnveyance)

    If you want to see silly look up the plane called Goblin. Now that was silly. And proved to be dangerous too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's a Goblin, which was a defensive fighter carried on a trapeze that could lower it out of the bomb bay of a B-36 and theoretically recover it as well, next to its mothership at the USAF museum at Wright-Patt. An "A" for innovation but an "F" for practicality.

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. imaging. doing this in the presence of the wing tip vorticies, looking over you shoulder during the hookup, the intrinsic danger of the close proximity of the two aircraft, being wholly dependent on the ability to release(unable to release would result in losing both aircraft), not the mention the static electric charge differences of the two aircraft and potential damage the arc on contact could do. the technology couldn't overcome the human factor of the pilot. sitting there alone and unable to move or sleep for so long must have affected the pilots combat readiness.
    the recon mission would have to be critical as the potenntial asset loss would be large. that the U2 and SR71 were only a few years away needs to be remembered.
    probing the russians and chinese with elint and photo recon assets was costly in men and machines, most of which had never be publicly acknowledged.

    ReplyDelete