The Zimbabwe AF is reported to be replacing there Chengdu F-7’s with twelve FC-1’s. The first six due to arrive this week!

BEEP – BEEP – BEEP

Yeah, the BS alert…

The Pulqui was actually designed by (or with lots of assistance of) Emile Dewoitine, of French pre-WW2 fame. I don’t know why he actually ended up in Argentina, but possibly his behaviour during the first half of the 1940s had anything to do with it.

Kurt Tank, the guy who gave later Focke Wulf-aircraft their Ta- prefix rather than FW-, was the designer of the later Pulqui II.

Yeah, woo all those leftist intellectuals who sided with Hitler. Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh both admired the Time Man of the Year 1936. And Joseph Kennedy, the famous liquer-runner, indeed wanted to appease Hitler.

So what’s your way of handling with those dangerous intellectuals then, Steve? The Pol Pot solution?
The sad thing is, that posts like this don’t do anything but promote ignorance. Anything better than a leftist intellectual since those are all suspect, and a perfect excuse to be an ignorant rightwinger. Guess that’s why you thanked Steve, Sauron? Trying to teach lessons from history (which in itself is pretty much useless) without seeing the need for historical accuracy or even chronology might well help in creating masses of Ignorant Rightwingers, i don’t think it leaves much for debate. After all, if you disagree you are a leftist intellectual which means you love Hitler. Subtle.

Fun thing though, wasn’t it right-wing Richard Nixon who appeased Mao’s China? Wasn’t it right-wing president Gerald Ford who supported the Khmer Rouge in order to prevent Vietnamese influence in Cambodia?

Sauron,
Soviet dissident economists foresaw the Soviet collapse from the early- to mid 1970s onward. The guys you quote appearantly didn’t bother to read stories from the inside.

The grey-with-grey-blotches has been going on since the late 1970s, when aircraft painters started to get colourblind en masse. It’s called countershading: the areas of the airframe usually reflecting most light (so the areas lit up by the sun the most) are painted in a darker grey than the areas more in the shadows. This appearantly confuses the view of the aircraft, since the person watching it ‘misses’ the shadows. Appearantly, the brain needs shadows to properly construct and identify a picture. In theory of course. Those disruptive schemes were ment to do the same thing: avoid the observer properly identifying an object. It was first done with ships in WW1, to avoid submariners the opportunity to guesstimate speed & heading and so make a torpedo shot a lot harder.

As PLA mentioned, it’s funny that all camouflage rules are usually set aside when an actual war breaks out. Camouflage makes visual identification a lot harder, especially worrisome when aircraft (or tanks, or whatever) look even vaguely similar. To avoid friendly fire incidents, markings were often applied over the meticulously planned and studied camouflage/low-viz paintjobs to help identification, like the huge orange triangles on Israeli Kfirs, the D-Day invasion markings on Allied aircraft during WW2, the large ^ symbols (the Arab 8) on coalition ground units during GW ’91, or the white/black upper rotorblades on US helos during the Vietnam war (although this wasn’t standard).

As for the fake canopy on the underside of aircraft: it was/is used quite often. Canadian Hornets, some Marines Harriers, most of the US agressor stuff. Problem seems to be that this blotch of paint is appearantly patented by Keith Ferris, the inventor of this (and the main advocate of the disruptive schemes) so he makes a few bucks every time a jet is painted with a false canopy. I’m not really sure about this though, but at least it’s a good rumour 🙂

I believe the idea behind splinter schemes is to combine low-viz and disruptive effects with good old camouflage, plus the fact that it looks cool. Although i personally think the German WW1 hexagonal pattern (hexagonal blocks of greens, browns, purples, beiges, blacks) was by far the coolest scheme ever. This was thought out because it would be an easy way to industrially paint the fabric which was to be the outer surface of an airplane.

Nice pics everyone, great job. A bit of nitpicking for Starsign: that Armenian Hind you’ve got labelled as a Mi-24D is actually a Mi-24RKR chem-recce variant, as you can see by the large horizontal window on the side, and the sampling scoops on the stubwing endplates. And the first Hip at Manas is a genuine Mi-8, not a Mi-8M/17 as it has the tail rotor on the right hand side. Mi-8M’s/Mi-17s have the tail rotor on the left side. The second one is a Mi-8M/Mi-17, but considering it’s probably a machine built for the Soviet Union itself rather than export, it’s a Mi-8M.

Ja,
Avia built 12 S 92s (three of them were two-seaters) which after some time being experimental flew with 5sqn in 1950-1951 after which they were replaced by the first MiG-15s. Operationally they had tactical codes (V-xx, the one at the Kbely museum being V-34 c/n S 92.4) , construction numbers were simply S 92.1 to S 92.17, with at least number 7 being a trainer and hence CS 92.7. This one also had BMW003 engines fitted in stead of the Jumos.

Funny thing is that Yugoslavia actually ordered two, which were eventually never delivered.

Steve,
‘My’ nineteen RT-33s:
53-5567, 53-5560, 54-1542, 54-1537, 54-1532, 53-5693, 53-5687, 53-5650, 53-5644, 53-5638, 53-5600, 53-5553, 53-5491, 53-5482, 53-5409, 53-5257, 53-5239, 53-5237, 53-5607
Different from those on Fantasma’s list are 53-5239 which isn’t mentioned as an RT on his list, and 54-1541 which isn’t on mine.