Aircraft in Action n025 - Lockheed P38 Lightning (Part 1)

In 1926, the fledgling Lockheed Aircraft Company, under the direction of Malcolm and Allen Lockheed and John Northrop, introduced the first high performance business plane - the Vega. Other ships such as the Sirius, Altair and Orion soon followed. Until the crash of the stock market in 1929 things looked bright for the young company, but from that point on. the outlook was much less clear. By 1932, it appeared the company would follow many others into bankruptcy; but such was not to be. Robert Gross, Carl Squier and Lloyd Stearman believed the company had a future and went to the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles where they purchased Lockheed for the princely sum of $40,000. The first new design to come from the reorganized company was the twin-engined Electra. In March 1933, a model of this new ship was sent to the University of Michigan for wind tunnel tests. One of the men responsible for the tests was a young engineer by the name of Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson. The Lockheed management was so impressed with Johnson that he was hired. This proved an extremely wise move, for four years later, the design of the P-38 would spring from his fertile mind.
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Aircraft in Action n024 - McDonnel Douglas F-15 Eagle

As any fighter pilot will tell you, air superiority is the key of tactical airpower. The success of all other tactical air missions depends upon first attaining and then maintaining air superiority — that is, eliminating effective interference by the opposing air force. Control of the air will bear significantly on the outcome of the battle. Combat experience has taught that encounters between fighters capable of high altitude and supersonic flights normally take place below 20,000 feet and at speeds slower than Mach 1. As the fight progresses, visibility limitations and basic physics keep the aircraft in the transonic flight regime —that area around Mach 1. As a result, the fighter pilot has been continually asking for more maneuverability, close-in weapons, and a better understanding of the inherent performance capabilities of his aircraft during a dogfight. Thus, agility — and not speed alone — in the air at medium and low altitudes is the prime requisite for success in air-to-air engagements.
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Aircraft in Action n023 - Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

After 17 years of SAC service, the B-52 finally laid to rest any doubts which might have lingered about it's ability to perform the strategic bombardment mission. During 11 days in December of 1972 the B-52's penetrated the strongest air defense network ever encountered in the history of aerial warfare to put their loads precisely on target. The targets were military and industrial complexes in the Hanoi/Haiphong area of North Vietnam. They were struck as a result of a continuing intransigence and faithless bargaining position of the enemy, and to demonstrate to the enemy that the United States had the means and the will to do whatever had to be done to negotiate the return of POW's. and an end to hostilities in Southeast Asia. That the enemy was in the end dishonest in his signing of a so-called "peace agreement" demonstrates beyond any doubt that if he had had the means to effectively resist the aerial onslaught of Linebacker II, he would have done so. For 11 days out of 11 years, the United States was anything but a paper tiger, as bombs rained virtually around the clock on the enemy homeland.
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Aircraft in Action n022 - Vought A7 Corsair II (Part 1)

Weapons delivery techniques of the day demanded sub-sonic speeds over the target, so that extra cost of supersonic capability could be eliminated. Hence, no afterburner, and a shorter fuselage. The wing Itself had to be stronger to carry more ordnance. This, plus available high-lift devices allowed the elimination of the variable position wing of the Crusader. Maintenance on the many "black boxes" would have to be made easy to shorten turn-around times, so they put them all in one spot in the fuselage. The Navy was staring down the barrel of a forced buy of the F-111B. The F-111B used the fatter TF-30 fanjet engine. The Secretary of Defense was fond of commonality, hence the A-7 would use the TF-30. The A-7 was going to require alot more cockpit instrumentation to perform it's mission than the F-8 needed for it's role. All these factors contributed to a wider fuselage. The basic F-8 landing gear was retained, except for the addition of the nose-gear catapult launch bar. And, oh yes, the rear of the fuselage was squashed to allow more ground clearance on rotation.
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Aircraft in Action n021 - B-24 Liberator

The Liberator was conceived in January 1939, when General "Hap" Arnold invited Consolidated to come up with a design superior to Boeing's Flying Fortress. The company's preliminary data was impressive enough to warrant a contract for a prototype, and the design team under Isaac Laddon went to work in earnest. Their first consideration was range, and they selected the wing designed by David Davis for its great efficiency; the wings were shoulder mounted, allowing a capacious fuselage, and a twin rudder and fin assembly was chosen. The aircraft had a tricycle undercarriage and the bomb bay was divided into front and rear compartments, with unique roller-type doors which retracted up the sides from the central keel beam. In the first Liberator, Consolidated Model 32, there was provision for a few hand-held .30-caliber machine guns, and the gleaming prototype, dubbed XB-24 by the Air Corps, flew for the first time on December 29, 1939. By then the Air Corps had already placed an order for seven YB-24s, and thirty-six B-24As for evaluation. The French and British ordered 284 aircraft between them.
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Aircraft in Action n020 - A-6 Intruder

It has often been said that necessity is the mother of invention. It has also been said that what the mind of man can conceive, the mind of man can accomplish. The Korean War very graphically demonstrated the necessity of an all-weather attack airplane, but conception of the A-6 concept did not occur (formally) until 1956, at which time the U.S. Navy formulated requirements for a day/night all-weather attack aircraft, capable of delivering conventional or nuclear weapons. The Admirals hadn't been sitting on their hands all through the early fifties . . . they just realized that existing state-of-the-art technology wouldn't allow the development of what they really needed. But by 1956 technological horizons were expanding rapidly, and the word went out to the aircraft manufacturers. Seven manufacturers submitted eleven different proposals and on New Year's Eve, 1957, Grumman design 128 emerged victorious. It was immediately christened the A2F-1 by the Navy.
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Aircraft in Action n019 - Focke Wulf FW-190

The noted aviation writer, William Green, has pointed out that "it is axiomatic that when a new combat aircraft is added to the inventory, its potential successor should have begun its passage across the drawing boards". Unfortunately for Germany's enemies the potential successor to the Messerschmitt Bf 109, which was reaching first line units, was on the drawing boards of Dipl.-lng Kurt Tank of the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau. Many obstacles, however, would have to be overcome before Kurt Tank's design would be found in the war darkened skies of Europe. Many so-called experts at the Reichluftministerium (RLM-German Air Ministry) felt that the Messerschmitt design was so far advanced that no successor could approach it in performance, and "besides", they were prone to point out, "there was no foreseeable war which would last long enough for another aircraft to find enough employment to justify the expense and time for its development." German military thinking was centered around the concept of a short tactical war.
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Aircraft in Action n018 - The Republic P-47 Thinderbolt in the Pacific Theater

The Seversky Aircraft Corporation was in trouble during the late 1930s. Despite a series of innovative and advanced designs during the middle part of the decade, by 1933 the company's fortunes were waning. US Government difficulties with Alexander de Seversky — the company founder — a degree of mismanagement, and competition from other aircraft manufacturers all Combined to force the company into a downward spiral. In April of 1938 the Seversky Aircraft Corporation's board of directors forced Seversky out of the day-to-day operation of the company and elected W. Wallace Kellet company president while Alexander Kartvelli was elected vice president. The company's fortunes almost immediately began to turn around and, by September of 1939, the company was renamed Republic Aircraft Corporation. The seeds that would grow into the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt had already been planted.
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