15,000 used J-6s plus 29,000 An-2s for ground attack! Averything in one package for one third of a price of your F-7Gs.

You forgot the restriction where we are allowed only one model. So it’s either 15,000 J-6s or 29,000 An-2s.

Maybe they should call in some Japanese torpedo bombers or dive bombers. Maybe they can manage.

Seriously. And that was a freighter. I wonder if anyone can sink the Repulse and Prince of Wales today. Probably a lost skill.

The 80’s were great for going down to Waldenbook to pick up the latest Salamander book. I’ve still got some of them stashed out in the shed. About then I started reading Monche Publishing’s Military Technology and Naval Technology and had been reading AvWeek since about ’80 or so so it started to lose it’s luster but still some of those books were just so damn cool 🙂

Goddamn, Waldenbooks. What a blast from the past. Nothing but Borders and Barnes & Nobles these days.

I also subscribed to Naval Proceedings for many years. Great reading. Always looked forward to the yearly international review.

Man, when I lived in Europe, I picked up dozens of the Salamander titles. Some of the big ones were pretty interesting, but I tended to prefer the smaller ones myself.

Oh yeah, the little reference ones are great to keep by the bedside and I used to read them right before sleep. Hell, I still have a set next to the alarm clock. I think the newer versions are printed by Prentice Hall.

I lucked out in that I grew up in a major city and the public library that I visited after school had all the Jane’s hardcover annuals as well as many of the Jane’s weeklies and monthlies. I would peruse JDW while waiting for my friends or girlfriend. The Super 7 and the Peace Pearl projects were the big Chinese items in Jane’s in the late eighties and early 90s.

Salamander books were another set of favorites.

Only sports and chicks commanded the same kind of attention and research 😀

I love these planes. even more than the J-10s

Same here. I was following the JH-7 as a kid in the early 1990s when it was like the J-10. No official acknowledgement and no pictures except for an artistic impression which was pictured in Jane’s for years. When the FBC-1 first flew in 1998, it was like finally seeing the Loch Ness monster.

PLA watching is much easier today with the internet. The FC-1 we get to see from design to first flight and we are even watching assembly pictures of prototypes like 01 and 04.