American planes flying off her decks? The S2F Trackers and TBM Avengers were definately American, but the Koninklijke Marine also operated Fireflies and Sea Hawks from it.

After the Dutch retired the Karel Doorman because of it’s many problems (especially it’s tendency to start burning, hence it’s nickname “HMS Rookverbod” or HMS No Smoking), it was sold to the Argentinians who operated it for a few more decades as the 25 de Mayo.

Nope, Russia and China were enemies from about 1960 on. It got far enough that in 1972, when Nixon visited China, the US got China that far that in case of WW3, the PRC would fight along with the West.

Also, from the late 1960s on into the 1970s there have been several border clashes between Chinese and Russian troops. Most famous and biggest one was along the Amur river, very close to the city of Khabarovsk. Changing current of the river made some new but disputed lands, which was appearantly worth some fighting over.

first of all, no-one knows for sure which is better out of the F5 and Mig21/J7 since they have never met in combat, but the vast majority put the two on par, and it will come down to pilot skill.

They did meet in combat, although this is constantly ignored in most, if not all, aviation publications (including a recent one in AFM). Both during the Ogaden War in 1977 between Ethiopia and Somalia, and during the Iran/Iraq War did the F-5 and MiG-21 meet each other on opposing sides.

To Taiwan? There is one Harrier GR3 in Beijing, which was sent as a pattern for possible license production… Taiwan’s deal never even got that far, there was only a letter of interest but that’s it.

still, i think russian ac that have speical filters and are designed to take off and land on makeshift feilds like the mig29 and su27/30 would be better suited for strategies like this.

Doesn’t mean that the Russians and their ilk don’t do FOD-walks though. Once saw a large one (some 100 guys i guess) in preparation for a day of MiG-23 flying at Ozerne in the Ukraine. After all, not flying for a week or two might leave some seriously large stuff on the tarmac.

The EH-101 originally won the Canadian competition, but the order was cancelled. I seriously think re-ordering the Merlin would have been too much of an embarrasment in some Canadian political and military circles.

As for the Fat Hawk being faster, longer ranged and capable to carry more than the Merlin: yeah, right.

This thread won’t be removed just because some people don’t like this as a topic. It IS a discussion point, after all. If you don’t like it, just ignore it and hope other people will ignore it as well so the thread dissappears by itself.

You mean like the Go-229? Besides, i thought the idea of making the MCA tailless had been dropped quite some time ago.