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Silly airplane question

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Jeff Thomas	Silly airplane question	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1969 (03/23/08 11:05:58) Pathologically Intellectual Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Or perhaps a question about a silly airplane. Somewhere I saw a picture of a late 1930ish prototype for the US Army Air Force. It was a twin (pusher) engine fighter with manned cannons (37 or 587mm) in the front of the engine nacelles, and I believe, additional turrets. The plan was for this thing to fly into the middle of a bomber formation and start shooting. I can't for the life of me find the plane. I'm sure one of you guys knows the one I'm talking about. While we're on the subject what other outlandish ideas do you want to bring up? "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patri- otic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse." -John Stuart Mill
Guilherme Loureiro		#1	[-]
Posts: 556 (03/23/08 11:10:32) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	It's a Bell aircraft, Bell Airacuda, IIRC. The nacelle guns are 37mm ones. EDIT - Found something: http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/bell_airacuda.php Last Edited By: Guilherme Loureiro 03/23/08 11:14:40. Edited 1 times.
Jeff Thomas	thanks	#2	[-]
Posts: 1971 (03/23/08 11:59:44) Pathologically Intellectual Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I love this line from the Wikipedia entry: "an innovative design incorporating many features never before seen in a military aircraft, as well as several never seen again." The article points out the problems of the gun crewmen bailing out of the nacelles, and an external power source, that when in failure mode, meant that the pilot had no flaps, fuel pressure, controls or engines. "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patri- otic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse." -John Stuart Mill
borys68		#3	[-]
Posts: 115 (03/23/08 23:28:35) Old Friend Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Ahoj! LOL - thumbs up to the humour! "never seen again" - good one, that! Borys
Mike Kozlowski		#4	[-]
Posts: 4432 (03/24/08 05:32:08) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	...The Airacuda was probably one of the sexiest birds the USAAC ever flew but the poor thing was rather badly engineered. One of its worst features was its abysmal engine cooling system - so bad that when it landed, the engines had to be shut down immediately to avoid catastrophic overheating and it would have to be towed to the flightline. Mike "F is for fire that burns down the town - "U is for uranium - Bomb! - "N is for no surviv-ORS! - "Down in the deep blue sea!! - Mr. Plankton

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