It is not easy to be an aircraft designer in Finland. Instead of applause and cheers you get put down in a jiffy !

Carry on Finny…perhaps finnish economy will rise in this manner ( ….and now back to the factory…see my blog ).

Here is a smaller ground attack aircraft.

I repeat what I said: To design an aircraft is more than making three-view (or in some cases, just profile) drawings of imaginary airplanes.

I would say you have listed an impossible to design or build aircraft. Average single turboprop aircraft can cost that much. Stealth is not yet cheap, fly by wire controls are not cheap, and would almost certainly needed for a highly manuverable stealth aircraft. Your speed requirements call for high thrust (large engine) which would be very difficult in such a tiny airframe. The cost of the engine alone would be over your price range. Even if you crammed a powerfull engine in such a small airframe it would likely be extreemly short ranged as you would have no room for much fuel.

A stripped aircraft with bare minimum avionics, no radar etc. would be quite limited in todays threat environment. It would likely be limited to daytime, good weather flight, and thus be out in the daylight, so would still be visible to the eye, and thus vulnerable to other aircraft or defences. We have yet to see an aircraft that is totally invisible to detection. It sounds like you desire the perfect small, cheap, fast, steath fighter optimized for the knife fight (close in dogfight), but I am afraid you can’t have all of those things at once.

I am sure that an internationally famous and accomplished designer, such as topspeed, will have no problems in designing an aeroplane capable of everything he said, plus a bit more, just overnight. And looking at his post above, I can see that he has done exactly that!! The only small thing is that someone should try to make topspeed understand that “to design” is not the same as “to draw three-view profiles of imaginary aircraft”. But, from my experience from a few, mainly Finnish, aviation forums, the best way to deal with this reality-challenged “designer” is not to comment his posts. Just let him discuss with himself for a while. A rule which I managed to break again…:(

In case someone is following this thread, please just read what Mr topspeed wrote above. I rest my case.

What is it like posting to yourself on a public forum?.

Mr topspeed has indeed been banned from just about every Finnish aviation forum because of his trends of discussing with himself, on matters that no one else is actually interested in. Or if someone is, it is clear that Mr t has not understood that “designing” airplanes is different from just drawing profiles of them.

Fact is that your relatives, your live meeting with some aces or infantrymen, even if they are real, do not qualify you as an expert on aviation history. Neither do my about 20000 flying hours, but then again I don’t pretend to be one. I am just very interested in the subject, and have studied it a little bit over the years. I do not have an agenda, don’t want to belittle achievements of the heroic airmen of Finnish or other air forces during the war(s). I am just saying that there probably is as much exaggeration in the victory claims in Finland as there is elsewhere, and there were things that people saw, and “saw”. Also there are stories that have gotten better over the years, and some that have never been true at all.

I am not going to continue this fruitless discussion with “topspeed”. Reading the above you will understand why he is banned from every Finnish aviation discussion forum, except the one gliding site, obvioously. And, to make it clear, he may have done his mandatory military service in the Air Force, but he is not a pilot, and never has been one. I am, for whatever it is worth. And I was not referring to the Il-2 case before, just in general terms…

Russian archives…great. We know for sure that they did not report them correctly…nor did they report the gulag deaths. Archives there are…that much is true…kept by NKVD.

Certainly there could be mistakes. I’ve been told Illu Juutilainen shot down a german FW-189 as he tought it was twintail P-38…that never even operated on that front. It is sad.

I am 100% sure that ( highest scoring reservist ace ) Kyösti Karhila shot 5 out of six ( 6 ) IL-2s on one day ( in a matter of few seconds than minutes ), because he tells it on his book before he died and there is a witness to it on the ground ( or was ). This is just a good example how the one man tactic didn’t give him the Mannerheim cross because he worked alone without a wingman.

There are certain elements in Finland now that try to put all the hard work of the pilots down by sciencing the events with “bullet proof” soviet documents. All the Spits, Mustangs and Lightnings they shot down were either Yak-9s or FW-189s. We must have had few blind airmen then….keep going and do what you have to do as russian in Finland. I know what I know…and no one can change that view or standpoint.

I hope no one was offended.

I once heard a terrifying story what a squadron of IL-2s actually do to a colonnade of marching weary soldiers…and it ain’t pretty. This story teller was a master sergeant ( also long dead by now ).

I can also confess that I asked from Illu Juutilainen’s wingman while he was still around ( master sergeant Mauno Fräntilä) , that is it possible that some of your kills were signed by your “boss”….and he grinned like Chuck Yaeger and said ; ” It is possible yes ! “. It does not mean that it happened. His wife ( who is also dead by now ) told me Manu ( Mauno Fräntilä ) was just a bad shooter…with 5 kills. He once told me a move how he scored a Yak fighter, which makes me think he was a bit better pilot than has been so far let to believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_189

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There is no reason to believe the Russian archives, official ones, should be especially falsified. For example C-F Geust has had access to them, and indeed has made a great job documenting facts about the war on the Finnish front. And there is a completely different reason to why Karhila was not awarded the Mannerheim Cross. Having known the man personally, I have a great respect to him, but again, if someone (not necessarily just Karhila) tells something before his death, and even writes in his autobiography, does not turn that into a verified fact.