We never had a nickname for the 240.
Nazis were really terrible with logistics. Their entire war machine, starting with stuff like Wehrmacht uniforms and the classic Stahlhelms, was overengineered, needlessly hard to produce, and frequently sacrificed practicality and reliability to the coolness factor.
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I dunno if one can go quite that far about German materiel. The 88, the Bf109, Fw190, the MG42, stuff like that was pretty great stuff that was mass-produced and did a lot of damage.
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Well, the F-104G was called Widowmaker. By the guys who flew it.
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Just want to say thank you to any and all service members who may be reading or following this thread. Your sacrifice, no matter where or how you served, is absolutely appreciated by many people, like me.
Thank you for your service!
I thought they just used the acronym for it’s role - SAW.
IIRC, didn’t they make basic errors like out running their supply lines?
As I understand it, on one hand they had amazing new gear and tactics, but on the other hand their hubris, overconfidence, and underestimating their opponents lead to a lot dead Germans.
IIRC those are still in use in some European forces, or at least descendants. Then again so are the M2 Browning Machine guns. Some designs are so good they are hard to improve upon.
A-10, officially the Thunderbolt II but lovingly called the Warthog by its users
F-16, officially the “Fighting Falcon” but referred to as the “Viper” by everyone who uses it. I guess Viper is cooler.
F/A-18, officially the Hornet but less-lovingly called the lawn-dart, although not by all.
I dont know if the B-52 ever had an official name but BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) suits it well.
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Stratofortress, no?
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Yeah, that’s the one! From time to time I forget that Google is a thing.
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Says on Wikipedia an F-35 would typically carry maybe 10 AIM missiles and a four barrel GAU cannon with fewer than 200 shells, which would mean the pilot could pull the trigger maybe five or six times? And there’s a lot of irrelevant air to ground ordnance as well.
So: if some third-world country sends in 200 cheap but easy to fly planes each carrying maybe 4 AIMs or equivalent - the equal cost F-35 could shoot down 10 el cheapos with its missiles, make 1 fast pass with its GAU blazing, and then face the 760 AIMs of the 190 survivors.
You like those odds? Really?
Nobody said the hypothetical third-world opponent has to build exact replicas of WW2 planes; they could be slow, but they could carry really fast missiles…
Oh, and the USAF seems to be ditching its A10s at speed – something to do with the long running dispute with the Army about jurisdiction over Air-to-ground support, I think.
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“What can we spend an additional 300 billion dollars on so I can be the tough guy in the next election?”
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The hard work of the AIM-9X is done by the aircraft avionics, so a cheap aircraft wouldn’t have the means to use an AIM-9X. You aren"t going to strap one to a Sopwith Camel and achieve the same results (or any results). So that part of this fantasy scenario is, well, fantasy.
The A-10 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. They just completed a service-life extension program. Soldiers love the A-10 and its reputation and results count a lot, and that’s enough to fend off any hopes of a 4-star angling for a Lockheed VP job by boosting the F35.
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And the Soviet T-34 which also proved to be a terror to German tanks. So much so that the Germans designed later types specifically to deal with them.
They had tanks with more armor and sometimes firepower, but:
- They were designed badly from a maintenance standpoint
- Tended to be too heavy for terrain other than dry open country
- Too complicated to produce in large enough numbers
- After 1942 were impossible to adequately fuel all the time
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What it always comes down to in wartime production:
- Cost
- Ability to transport across oceans (Shermans did well in the Pacific where they could be fielded)
- Allocation of materials (There is only so much steel to go around for use in making tanks)
- Consideration of maintenance (Shermans were much easier to fix up and put back into service than their rivals)
- Ability to keep supplied
It is the same reasons why in the Civil War, both sides fought largely with muzzle loading muskets even though more effective (and expensive) breach loaders like the Sharps and Henry rifles were out there.
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Ooh, good swerve! From a relatively sophisticated 1940s plane to a Sopwith Camel! That’s the way to avoid contemplating defence spending priorities. Do you have skin in this game?
Actually, I vaguely recall a 1960s or 70s project to retrofit old P51 Mustangs with turboprop engines. Wouldn’t that make a fine el cheapo weapons system, with eight underwing hard points for whatever speedy little missiles or bomb loads you fancy. Upgrade the avionics with Chinese ICs and radars and it’s still a bargain, starting at $1million (used).
I’m sure US soldiers have high regard and great affection for A10 Warthogs. And they know where they can find them.
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I figured since this scenario was altogether silly, I went for maximum silly.
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The Super Tucano seems like a modern remake.
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TLDW with added subtext: because we’re spending most of our time these days bombing and strafing peasants with no air defences, and you don’t need supersonic jets when you have total air supremacy.
Turboprop air support provides for much greater dead-peasants-per-dollar “efficiency”.
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Your hypothetical is a bit absurd—it presumes that some nation would put up 200(!) pilots as cannon fodder to overwhelm 1(!) fifth generation fighter, and that for some reason we wouldn’t be able to see those slow & fat targets coming a looong ways before they’d see us.
There are a lot of reasons modern nations don’t use lumbering prop-driven planes as air superiority fighters, and none of them are because they aren’t as imaginative as this comment board.
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But if a nation or organisation were to deploy 200 UAVs then air superiority counts for little – Saudi Arabia oil attacks for example. Relatively cheap with sufficient range and capable of carrying quite large weapons.
