Might try “Strategic Air Command”, a 1955 Jimmy Stewart film. Lots of great air, ground and cockpit shots of B-36, B-47, KC-97 and C-124s. Plot line a bit weak, but the aircraft are great!!!

You mean Colonel James M. Stewart, USAF (R)?

He served as Air Force Reserve commander of Dobbins Air Reserve Base in the early 1950s, and was promoted to Brigadier General on July 23, 1959.

Yep… the same guy… also flew 20 combat missions over Germany in B-24s in 1944/45.

More than Military: JIMMY STEWART Actor

Thanks for the link, ls1 miata… it describes perfectly certain posters on this and other boards.

Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite.

In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation.

Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

Like a certain person who kept claiming that no version of the F-35 would ever sell for less than US$100 million flyaway.

When I showed him links proving the Australians and Canadians had signed contracts for F-35A that set the per aircraft cost (including engines & radar) at a maximum of US$80 million each, he just kept repeating his cost claim in later posts!

Purchasing HMS Centaur after she was decommissioned in 1965 (after only 12 years service) and modernizing her would produce a similar ~20-25 year post-mod service life (or more, see Hermes/Viraat)… also fitting into the 1990-1995 end date.

She would only be capable of operating Sea Vixen/A-4s (and F-8/A-7s after modernization), but even an all A-7 strike/self defense air wing would be rather nice. She would be cheaper to run than an Essex… although far less capable.

Perhaps the RAN could pick up HMS Eagle when she is decommissioned? After all, she had just 7 years service after a rather complete modernization*, and needed just a tiny bit more work to fully operate F-4s! She could have operated F-8s, A-7s, & A-6s as she was (or just buy some Buccaneers, as she was operating them).

* her £30 million modernization was far more comprehensive than Ark Royal’s £32 million modernization (Eagle got her propulsion suite fully overhauled but Ark didn’t, Ark got the full catapult & JBD & arresting gear upgrade but Eagle only got her catapults upgraded).

It would have only cost around £5 million to install water-cooled JBDs, to install upgraded arresting gear, and fit the F-4-specific maintenance equipment in Eagle, and she would have been good for far longer than Ark Royal was.

The F-4 was never certified for operations from the modified Essex class carriers, because it would have required the complete replacement of the entire flight deck (remember that these ships were build with a wood-covered unarmored flight deck, and still had it {with a light aluminum sheeting applied over the landing area}).

The F-8 did not require a water-cooled JBD for launch, but the F-4 did… because the exhaust from its two lower-placed J79s heated the deck and JBD far more than the one higher-placed J57 of the F-8. This would have torched the flight deck.

The F-14 could never have been launched from the short C11-1 catapults on the Essex class ships (except unarmed and with only a partial fuel load).

Better to order more F/A-18A/Bs… along with a replacement of the forward flight deck with an all-metal structure and further strengthening of the aft flight deck.

However, even better would have been to have taken action back in 1960 when the USN offered to give the RAN an un-modified Essex free*, with Australia to pay for modernization of it, or to have approached the US for one in 1964, when the RAN asked for one (the MOD instead decided to buy the Oberons for offensive operations).

So, we are looking at ~1970 for completion of modernization (given a 1965 approval of purchase), and since the Navy had also asked for the modernization to be for use of F-4 Phantom IIs, they would have received a full flight deck replacement in the process. This would be good until 1990 or 1995**… or longer, depending on usage.

* There were a number of Essex class CVs that had seen 5 years or less of active duty which were sitting in “mothballs”… and we know from history that it would have been good for at least 20 years (average post-modernization service for most of the modernized Essex ships equipped with steam catapults).

** CVA-31 Bonhomme Richard had 4 years service before modernization, and 25 years service after completion of the modernization.

CVA-34 Oriskany had 6 years service before and 16 years service after, and was considered in good enough condition for reactivation in 1981… but would have required too much modification for F/A-18s to be feasible for only 10 more years service.

CVA/AVT-16 Lexington had 4 years service (including 2 1/2 hard war years) before and 36 years after (29 as a training carrier)!

They had it built in 1941?

That is the date of the Lockheed vs NACA dust-up.

Reading this, it seems that Boeing had access to only a 250 mph wind tunnel until after WW2:
http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1934a.html

In 1934, UW aeronautics and astronautics professor Frederick K. Kirsten designed and obtained the funds to build a large wind tunnel on campus, a facility that bears his name and is still in use today. Over the years, through this facility and the UW’s unique relationship with the Boeing company, the University has contributed greatly to the development of the nation’s multiengine military and transport aircraft.

The wind tunnel project was funded through the joint effort of the Boeing company, the Washington State Legislature, and the federal government. Completed in 1938, the tunnel operated in the subsonic range of wind velocities. It featured a rectangular cross section measuring eight by twelve feet, and it generated an airflow of 250 miles per hour. It was put to immediate use by student crews testing new aircraft designs for Boeing and other companies.

All of the Boeing designs of the prewar and World War II years passed through the Kirsten Wind Tunnel for testing, in addition to other craft such as the North American AT-6, the B-25 and P-51, the Chance Vought XOS2U-1, the Consolidated Vultee B-24, and the Grumman F4F-3.

After World War II, Boeing constructed its own wind tunnel test facilities, but to this day continues to use the Kirsten Wind Tunnel for some of its low-speed test work. The UW carried out much of the low-speed testing on the B-47–the country’s first swept-wing jet bomber–as well as the B-52, the Dash-80 Model 707 jet tanker/transport prototype, and Boeing’s commercial transport craft.

Note that the B-47 testing was LOW-SPEED ONLY!

Lockheed needed air-speeds of over 400 mph in order to solve the “compressibility” issues plaguing the P-38, and the NACA and Boeing wind tunnels were limited to 250 mph.

Gen. ‘Hap’ Arnold took up the matter and overruled NACA objections to higher air speeds. NACA built a handful of new high-speed wind tunnels, and Mach 0.75 (570 mph, 920 km/h) was reached at Moffett’s 16-foot (4.9 m) wind tunnel late in 1942.

Of course you did… :rolleyes:

See my post before your earlier one.

The XP-42 was delivered to the US government for tests in 1939 (after company flight tests), and was scrapped in 1947.

The 1942 date for the all-flying tail installation came from U.S. Fighters by Lloyd Jones (1975).

Another point, didn’t AK start to undergo a modernisation program recently? I remember talk of the hanger deck being extended and certain weapons systems being removed

Nope… the plans are in place, but not the funding. Its recent refit was of the normal variety.

Preventative medicine costs money.

Isn’t the NHS philosophy to only spend money for actual conditions, not for conditions that might not come to pass??