Photos from the new Air and Space wing at Dulles:
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Trepdation
Veteran X
The SR71 is fucking outstanding. When I saw one in real life I almost creamed in my pants. Sexiest plane ever.
It's actually the MXY7 Ouka (cherry blossom.) The US Navy called it "baka" (idiot.)Got Haggis? said:
It was a suicide rocket plane designed to be carried by G4Ms to just beyond the engagement range of American fleets... They'd be released en masse and would target important ships. Since they were rocket planes, they were ridiculously hard to track for the gunners on the ships and were impossible for the fighter cover to catch.
They were basically manned cruise missiles.
The Germans also had a manned version of the V-1, but it was never actually used to my knowledge.
Cheesesteak
Veteran XX
I thought the x-15 was the fastest plane ever made
There were a bunch of different types, but only one saw service (Type 11, I think. ~800 built.)Bridude said:
There were other versions with different engines (including some with turbojets instead of rockets for greater range,) but they never saw service.
Contrary to popular belief, a lot of the pilots actually had to be sealed in the cockpits. Once they were in, it couldn't be opened from the inside.
The guys that were OK with suicide attacks were generally the seasoned veterans... They saw it as a duty. The kids that they yanked into service, gave not even a week of flight training to (it's not like they had to land or anything,) and then strapped into suicide planes tended to be less calm about it, but once they were in, they had no choice. They were going to die anyway. They just had to decide if they were going to die honorably and take some of the enemy with them, or die by sitting there, doing nothing, and plunging into the ocean.
Yeah.Bridude said:
They made a documentary about suicide pilots in Japan a few years back. It mostly consisted of recorded radio traffic that had never been publically released.
I don't think it has been released outside of Japan, but it definitely shook the long standing belief that most suicide pilots were calm, composed, and resigned to their fate until they died.
The veterans are a different story, but most of them got their wings in the '30s when Japan had the most rigid and exhaustive pilot training in the world (less than 5% of the people that made it to naval flight school graduated.) Those guys had insane levels of discipline, so guiding their aircraft into a ship wasn't a terribly big deal for them.
The veteran pilots that survived their suicide runs (like Saburo Sakai... a storm rolled in and hid his target) generally were glad that they didn't die, but were fully prepared to do it without question.
Thats what I thought, but the Do-335 was MASSIVELY large. It was much larger then any other fighter in the building. The P-38 was pretty big too, atleast larger then any of the Korean or Vietnam era fighters.VonTed said:
Do 355 Pfiel
http://www.datawhore.org/homeslice/Do335.jpg
Mig15
http://www.datawhore.org/homeslice/Mig15.jpg
Arado 234
http://www.datawhore.org/homeslice/Ar234.jpg
Among other things there that really shocked me were a HE 219 Uhu and they had one of the original Horten brother's HO1 gliders.
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