The Soviets are invading!

[Naki]

About time I re-enter the fray.

The Vickers Valiant - one of the three "V" bombers that served the RAF during the 50 to 70's. The lesser known of the three and the most conventional. We have now covered all the RAF V Bombers. I have one more "V" Bomber but this one is American....

[Naki]

Finally hauled the North Amerrican A-5 Vigilante out of the hanger. Powered by two J-79s (same as the Phantom) pushing it to a top speed of Mach 2.1 with a range of 2995mls and a operational ceiling of 64,000ft. This was the largest combat aircraft to serve from a carrier and was orgianally designed for the Nuclear strike role but spent most of its service life during the 60s and 70s in a long range reconnaisance role as the RA-5C (as shown here).

The Aussies once considered this aircaft as a Canberra replacement (along with B-58, TSR-2 & Mirage 1V) but eventually ended up with the F-111 (rather later than planned) via the F-4E













Whoops a carrier type landing!

[Ian Warren]

Valiant ,Vigilante .. Dang .. they are great , the Valiant as docile as it was compared to an A5 , Great Piccy's

[Charl]

Amazing that Britain thought it necessary to spread their nuclear eggs among no less than three baskets (the Valiant was N-capable right?)

Vigilante...remind me, it shot its load, erm, backwards, didn't it? from between the exhaust nozzles?
Liked your cropped burner shot, too - roast fishes for dinner anyone??

[chopper_nut]

Great pics alright. Looks like you were going for the carriers style landing alright, the burners are lit!!

[Naki]

Couldn't turn the burner off - it was still spewing out flame at idle!

[Naki]

Charl - yes I seem to recall the Vigilante shooting its load backwards but couldn't find anything - maybe it could fire an air to air missle backwards out the back?

Check this web site out - we have plenty of aircraft to go (although some of the a/c look a little dubious in their inclusion in the Cold War).

[Naki]

Found something about the Vigilante's rear end

"The technical issue was that the Vigilante wasn't looking very promising in the nuclear strike role anyway. The linear bomb bay scheme sounded nice on paper, but it was a nightmare in practice. The bomb bay tube ran up the fuselage between the engines, and since it was much longer the nuclear store, expendable fuel tanks were tacked on in the rear of the store.

During a strike, the entire assembly was popped out the tail with an explosive cartridge driving it down launch rails. Not only did the scheme prove unreliable, the store also tended to "draft" behind the aircraft, preventing the pilot from laying it down accurately. The linear bomb bay would never actually be used in practice.

The Vigilante, in short, had become an expensive aircraft without a clear mission. However, rather than simply getting dropping it, the US Navy decided that the Vigilante should be used in a different mission, the fast reconnaissance role."

[chopper_nut]

One of the lesser known aircraft of the cold war and the fastest aircraft in 1956. The Fairy Delta.



Quite a lot of power for a single engined aircraft.

Check out the climb rate.


With the gear down, she is quite a handfull. Requires A LOT of power to keep it above stall but at the same time, it doesnt take long to exceed the gear speed. The speedbrakes have an intermediate setting which is for use in flight. Deploying them fully will make the thing fall out of the sky! Keeps you on your toes.

[chopper_nut]

Now something from the other side of the Atlantic. The Lockeed T33.




For an early, single engined jet, she performs very well on take off.


Diving back for the earth.




An interesting aircraft to fly. For some reason, I managed to get into quite a bad oscillation with the gear and flaps down that resulted in quite a heavy landing. Not sure why this happened as it should be a very simple aircraft. Quite good fun to fly though.

[Charl]

The Fairy belongs in the Daft Experimental Boony Bin, think only a couple were made to see how fast a Lightning would go with the RR Avon.
Nice pics of the Shooting Star, that Tim Conrad's model? it looks as good as payware.

[chopper_nut]

I quite like the Delta myself. I think there were three or four built. One of them was used to develop the Concord so I think its place in history should be noted. The T33 is Tim Conrads model. Its pretty good. There are textures missing from the cockpit and the panel is pretty average, its good for freeware though.

[Timmo]

The Russians at this time were also making some pretty interesting and innovative rotary wing aircraft.....this wasnt one of them neccesarily but did form the back bone of the Russian and other Eastern Block countries tactical ideas.

The Mil Mi-8
To me it is like a Holden Commodore: Fairly crudely built and engineered but designed to take the knocks, decent power and fairly cheap.

[Charl]

Russian helicopters do give the impression of being built to take it, don't they?
Your shots make a nice counterpoint to CN's earlier Westland Whirlwind.
(You just knew that one was going to need some emergency spares pretty soon...)

[Charl]

Back to the Brits, then, and the glory boys of fast interception.

A Buccaneer you say?

Noo...first flew in 1951, some years before the Buc, but you have to admit there is more than a coincidental resemblance
in bits of the Gloster Javelin


The T-tail was subject to deep stall, and an early prototype was fatally lost at high AOA - it just stopped, and fell out of the sky.
You can see how that huge wing would wash over the tailplane and stall it:

See that enormous length of fin, relative to the fuselage

It was the first missile-equipped British fighter, but sadly the swansong of Gloster

[Naki]

Nice shots Charl, CN & Timmo - the front of the Javelin does have a bit of a Buccanear look about it. Charl did you see my bit above about the rearward firing weapons bay in the Vigilante? Thought it might interest you.

[Charl]

QUOTE (Naki @ Oct 19 2007, 02:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nice shots Charl, CN & Timmo - the front of the Javelin does have a bit of a Buccanear look about it. Charl did you see my bit above about the rearward firing weapons bay in the Vigilante? Thought it might interest you.

OOPS Paul you have started such a redhot thread, it's hard to keep up!
Thanks I found your comment some pages back.
Reconnaissance? Get real. A balloon could've done the job.
Trust the Navy boys to stand by their air_plane no matter what.

[Naki]

QUOTE (chopper_nut @ Oct 18 2007, 05:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I quite like the Delta myself. I think there were three or four built. One of them was used to develop the Concord so I think its place in history should be noted. The T33 is Tim Conrads model. Its pretty good. There are textures missing from the cockpit and the panel is pretty average, its good for freeware though.

The Fairey also held the world speed record for a while too so it has quite a large historical siginificance.

Charl, we have quite few more aircraft to go so this thread can keep going for a while!

[hasegawa]

Yes, I also so think so. But must it be only military? I have the Tu 134A, the Tu 154B-2 and Tu 154M, the Yak 40 and the Yak 42 in my inventory... Aircraft of significance in my personal history to...

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (hasegawa @ Oct 24 2007, 07:58 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, I also so think so. But must it be only military? I have the Tu 134A, the Tu 154B-2 and Tu 154M, the Yak 40 and the Yak 42 in my inventory... Aircraft of significance in my personal history to...

Hasegawa .. 134's very diffinitely COLD WAR , TU154s hells , Mikhal Gorbachov would give thumbs UP , so your inventory is most WELLCOME