AHC: US planes for 1950s Fleet Air Arm


I do believe I read it with interest. Have you read "The Decline of British Seapower," by Desmond Wettern? I bought mine just outside of London in a Charity book shop, dreadfully good detailing of the missteps that befell the RN. I highly recommend it to anyone plumbing the depths of what went wrong and how it might have been.
 
I haven't read that, but I've been interested in the topic for a long time. It was David Hobbs' throwaway line in British Carrier Strike Fleet after 1945 that while anyone can field a Brigade or Division virtually nobody can field a fleet carrier that got me thinking about how the RN lost out to BAOR and RAFG.

As usual shit rolls downhill, the politicians and 'senior sirs' made the wrong decisions. When you get down a bit lower, into the technical side of particular aircraft or ships, the British seem to know what they're doing when they get the chance.
 
F2H5Bandoo.png

An aircraft that was drawn and proposed but never saw any metal.
 
Trials of the Super Crusader showed that the pilot quickly became overwhelmed with the dual tasks of flying the plane and guiding the sparrows. A more realistic version would be the 2 seat spey powered Crusader, but that is obviously worse than the Phantom.

Plus the Super Crusader violated the "looks right/flies right" rule by being even fuglier than the Phantom. Those ventral fins. . .
 
I don't care about the ventral fins, what was really ugly was the inverted intake.
F-16-DSI-Demonstrator-1S.jpg


It was the first embodiment of the DSI, now found in various forms on various aircraft with or without due attention to aesthetics. The F-35 is one example. The F-16 was just for try.
 
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