Vahe.DThe Basler BT-67 which received civil registration PR-MGF after being sold to Brazil was later re-registered as PR-MSY in 2007 and reverted back to the civil registration ZS-ASN for a second time in 2008 after returning to South African service. It was involved in a landing incident while returning to Lanseria International Airport after a training flight in February 2022.
Vahe.DThe Yanks Air Museum is nearing completion of the restoration of a UC-64 Norseman to static display.
https://vintageaviationnews.com/aviation-museum-news/yanks-norseman-nea…
Vahe.DIn a book published last year, titled Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51, Peter Merlin sheds light on US Air Force evaluation tests in Nevada in 1991-1992 of one MiG-29 formerly operated by East Germany prior to German reunification under codename Have Loan. The MiG-29 evaluated at the Tonopah Test Range by the Air Force was given the cover designation YF-116A for security reasons (the US Air Force chose to revive the pre-1962 F-for-Fighter designation sequence and assign cover designations in that sequence to captured and/or defected MiGs to prevent the USSR from learning about evaluation tests of those MiG jet fighters in Nevada in the 1970s and 1980s, although YF-1xx designations would also be given to top-secret US-built aircraft, including the F-117 Nighthawk, Bird of Prey, and Tacit Blue).
https://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/coverdesignations.html
Vahe.DDeliveries of the Boeing/Saab T-7 Red Hawk to the US Air Force began last year, and three service test T-7s have been delivered so far. However, the initial operating capability of the T-7 Red Hawk has been postponed to 2028.
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/10/27/boeing-deli…
https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2024/03/18/air-forces-t-7-trainer…
Vahe.DTwo additional sister ships of the Graf Zeppelin were planned, called the Flugzeugträger C and D. However, those two vessels were cancelled in 1938 before construction could begin.
If Adolf Hitler had listened to Kriegsmarine Admiral Erich Raeder’s warning not to invade the USSR, then the Graf Zeppelin might have been completed with existing financial resources and the Kriegsmarine would have used the ship to launch carrier-based versions of the Bf 109 and Ju 87 against American warships in the North Atlantic and naval shipyards along the US Eastern Seaboard.
Dreessen, C., 2000. Die deutsche Flottenrüstung. Hamburg, Germany: Mittler & Sohn.
Vahe.DThe Blohm und Voss Bv 141 was built for the RLM’s army co-operation aircraft requirement around which the Focke-Wulf Fw 189 was designed. However, the Fw 190 was chosen by the Luftwaffe for full series production, so only 25 pre-production and production Bv 141s were manufactured.
As a side note, one Bv 141 was used as a testbed for the left wingtip crewed gondola of the Blohm und Voss P.163 multirole combat aircraft project, which lost the Arbeitsflugzeug (workhorse airplane) competition to the Junkers Ju 188 derivative of the venerable Ju 88 fast tactical bomber.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/arbeitsflugzeug-program.12508/
Vahe.DThere are two Carvairs in long term storage, one in Gainesville, Texas, and other (belonging to Phoebus Apollo Aviation, a South African pilot training school) based at Rand airport in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. The latter aircraft last flew in 2005, and it could someday be donated to an aviation museum in the UK. On the other hand, the Carvair stored in Gainesville is relatively intact judging from recent photos of it.
Link:
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/aviation-traders-carvair-history
Vahe.DPhotos of remnants of one of the P6M-2 Seamaster jet seaplanes which were scrapped can be found here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajw1970/18499935845
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajw1970/17877250694/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajw1970/18312172540/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajw1970/18312255150/in/photostream/
The Mariner which rests at the bottom of Lake Washington bore he designation PBM, not P-5 (the redesignation of the P5M Marlin after the 1962 Tri-Service aircraft designation system was established by the Defense Department).
Even as the P6M Seamaster was undergoing flight tests, Martin undertook design work on the Model 307 SeaMistress eight-engine transport derivative of the Seamaster but also two seaplane projects incorporating some design attributes of the Seamaster, the P7M Submaster open-ocean ASW seaplane and the Model 329 supersonic seaplane. Some of Martin’s Model 331 design studies for nuclear-powered flying boats were derivatives of the P6M Seamaster (the rest were supersonic aircraft), but like the SeaMistress, Submaster, and Model 329, they never saw the light of day.
Vahe.DThe Lockheed Model 12A Electra Junior which crashed shortly after takeoff from Chino Airport was built as a C-40A with serial number 38-540, and it along with many other C-40s was redesignated UC-40. It was loaned to the Yanks Air Museum in 1998 and was restored to static display in 2006.
Link:
Vahe.DNorthrop Grumman has built a super-secret low-observable unmanned reconnaissance aircraft to fulfill the penetrating ISR niche left vacant by the retirement of the SR-71 in the 1990s. Informally dubbed “RQ-180” even though that is probably not its true designation, it first flew in 2010 and has been operational with the US Air Force since the late 2010s. The design of the “RQ-180” is derived from a 205-foot span conventional flying wing which was one of Northrop Grumman’s design studies for the SensorCraft program sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Satellites, as always, were never going to replace the U-2 or SR-71 because the laws of orbital mechanics mean that they only can provide episodic coverage of hostile territory. As tacitly stated by retired SR-71 RSO Richard Sheffield:
‘Satellites could never replace the SR-71. They don’t orbit east to west. Satellites can’t collect 100,000 miles of data per hour and it is easy to predict the path of a satellite. There was new money for projects in the Air Force if they went with satellites so they did. The Air Force Chief put Lockheed out of the SR-71 business. The Chief said that Lockheed trying to keep the SR-71 alive was going to hurt their chances of winning the F-22 contract [at the time the YF-22 was competing against the YF-23 in the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program]! Contractors like Lockheed only have one customer the Department of Defense.
The SR-71 undoubtedly was expensive to maintain and operate, partly with respect to the fact that it took time for images of enemy territory to be processed from the film cameras carried by the Blackbird, even though it was cheaper to operate than a single spy satellite launch in the 1980s. In a testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 15, 1993, Defense Department official Keith R. Hall said that the SR-71 was retired in March 1990 because a canceled CIA/NRO project for an unmanned long-endurance strategic reconnaissance flying wing, codenamed Quartz by the CIA, had a real-time satellite data link to provide images to field commanders, something the SR-71 lacked when it was retired in March 1990.
While there’s no doubt that rumors about the USAF operating a hypersonic spyplane in the early 1990s were debunked or totally dismissed as being unconvincing because of the immaturity of hypersonic air-breathing technology but also the reactivation of the SR-71 in 1995, Lockheed did undertake design studies for a hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71 in the late 1970s and 1980s, including the methane-fueled Mach 5 Penetrator. It is worth noting that General Dynamics Convair Fort Worth and McDonnell worked on design studies for a hypersonic successor to the U-2 and Archangel-12 in the 1960s under the auspices of the CIA program Isinglass (which also included Rheinberry), including the McDonnell Model 192 boost-glide air-launched spyplane that could fly at close to Mach 20. However, the Isinglass program was shelved on grounds of cost before any of the Isinglass/Rheinberry proposals could be built.
As for the following statement:
A final note: AURORA is a name that has nothing to do with black aircraft. At least anymore. It was a code word used for a Lockheed ATB study, Northrop eventually winning the contract and making the B-2. People still use the word to reference a secret black aircraft, but if the “SR-72” is officially acknowledged, don’t expect it to be called “Aurora”.
When the codename Aurora appeared in a February 1985 Pentagon budget request, the press speculated at first that Aurora might have to do with the B-2 (still officially called ATB when the budget request was released) or the yet-to-be-declassified F-117. By the late 1980s, there were growing suggestions that Aurora might refer to an SR-71 replacement because the codename was mentioned next to a budget line-item for the U-2. The losing Lockheed ATB design was actually codenamed Senior Peg, and not only was the 1985 budget request mentioning Aurora released a few years after Northrop’s Senior Ice/Senior Cejay won the ATB competition in 1981, Ben Rich confirmed initial press speculation regarding the Aurora codename by mentioning in a 1994 memoir about his time as head of the Lockheed Skunk Works that Colonel Adelbert “Buz” Carpenter told him Aurora was related to the B-2, being applied to requested funds for B-2 program support/logistical, including test support infrastructure. Similarly, the codename Stingray was applied by Pentagon budget document drafters to funds for a USAF campaign to prepare Edwards Air Force Base for flight testing of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber in the future. Lockheed Martin unveiled the SR-72 hypersonic P-ISR aircraft concept for in 2013, but this proposal was not going to have a chance of receiving USAF funding given the need for bench tests of the air-breathing technology for the SR-72, itself an evolutionary derivative of the company’s Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle and Blackswift designs.
Links:
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/usaf-unit-moves-reveal-clues-rq-…
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/secret-new-uas-shows-stealth-eff…
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA526045
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1985/02/09/23-billion-sought-for-aurora-pr…
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-02-09-fi-4198-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/us/defense-department-seeks-more-mon…
https://news.usni.org/2013/11/05/lockheed-martin-sr-72-plane-paper
Vahe.DIran in August 2018 began test flights of another jet fighter made by reverse-engineering F-5s delivered to Iran prior to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s abdication in January 1979, the HESA Kowsar. Despite having been touted by Iranian state media as 100 percent indigenously made, the only novel features of the Kowsar include digital data networks, a glass cockpit, a heads-up display (HUD), ballistic computers and smart mobile mapping systems, and like the Azarakhsh and Saeqeh (also derived from the F-5), the Kowsar uses a reverse-engineered J85 turbojet (powerplant for F-5) dubbed the Owj.
HESA has also built a jet trainer, the Yasin, which resembles the CASA C-101 in many respects and also is powered by the Owj turbojet.
Therefore, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force in some respects still uses American- and European-supplied jet aircraft built before the Islamic Revolution but in other respects operates either Russian-supplied aircraft or locally made aircraft based on reverse-engineered F-5s. It has recently transpired that the Bell 212 helicopter used by the IRIAF which crashed this month in northern Iran and took Ebrahim Raisi’s life was built in the 1990s and delivered to Iran in the early 2000s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Kowsar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Yasin
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/iran-starts-mass-producing-local…
https://iranpress.com/iran-s-army-unveils-yasin-jet-trainer
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-we-know-about-crashed-he…
Vahe.DThe B-52 marked the 70th anniversary of its first flight two years, and in April 2023 the US Air Force allocated the designation B-52J to the scheme to have the B-52H fleet re-engined with the F130 turbofan (which means the engine nacelles will be fitted with eight F130s, two per nacelle) and fitted with new modern radar, improved avionics, the AGM-181 cruise missile, communication upgrades, new digital displays replacing old analog dials, new wheels and brakes, and other improvements. How many B-52Hs will be converted to B-52J configuration is unclear, because the B-52H fleet is over 60 years old and there are less than 75 of them in service.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/re-engined-b-52-b-52j/
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/02/12/the-new-b-52-how-the-air-for…
Vahe.DTo the disbelief and sadness of many on this forum, the sole completed Antonov An-225 was destroyed in the early days of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine when the Antonov facility in Gostomel (aka Hostomel) was attacked by Russian forces. In March 2023, the New York Times reported that the wings salvaged from the wreckage of the first An-225 had been salvaged for use in construction of the unfinished second An-225, originally intended as a static test airframe.
Irrespective of the An-225 being a casualty of Russia’s war with the Ukraine, the Scaled Composites Model 351 Stratolaunch is now the second airplane to be built with a wingspan surpassing the 290 foot wingspan of the An-225.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/world/europe/ukraine-airplane-russia…
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/world/europe/ukraine-giant-plane-mri…
Vahe.DThe RAH-66 Comanche had a stellar flight test program, but it’s somewhat too bad that the US Army chose to cancel the Comanche program in February 2004 for budgetary reasons just as the first service test RAH-66s were undergoing various stages of construction (the Comanche program had entered the $3.1 billion engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase in June 2000) because if the Comanche had entered service, it might have helped US Army aviators scout the terrain in Afghanistan for signs of a Taliban comeback and attack Taliban fighters, but also eventually provide air support for Iraqi troops fighting ISIS in the 2010s so that areas of western Iraq controlled by ISIS would be cleansed of ISIS terrorists.
Vahe.DJames Stevenson published a book in 2001 about the A-12 Avenger II, titled The $5 Billion Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy’s A-12 Stealth Bomber Program, which discusses how developmental problems precipitated the A-12’s cancellation before any A-12 service test vehicles could be built.
As a side note, on January 23, 2014, the companies* involved in development of the A-12 reached a settlement with the Supreme Court regarding legal issues with the manner in which the A-12 program was canceled whereby General Dynamics and Boeing agreed to pay $200 million each to the US Navy.
*The McDonnell Douglas company which partnered with General Dynamics to develop the A-12 was acquired by Boeing in 1997, six years after the A-12 was canceled.
https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Misunderstanding-Collapse-12-Stealth/dp/…
https://www.reuters.com/article/boeing-generaldynamics-settlement-idUSL…
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