Original F-117 Sketch

[robert arndt]

the "Hopeless Diamond" version:

http://www.f-117a.com/images/XST/hdiamond1.gif

Looks much different from the designs the Germans came up with for
their MBB Lampyridae (Firefly)... independently, of course. The German
design was much better at radar defraction and was from the onset
designed as an armed interceptor.
But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian CF-105
Arrow.

Rob

p.s. However, it is not quite confirmed that the Germans actually
stopped with their stealth program. Reports of Firefly II stealth
aircraft being tested in South Africa have persisted for years just as
the now-confirmed German-assisted firing of an Israeli cruise missile
off South Africa's coast on one of the Dolphin subs.

[t_mark]

> But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian CF-105
> Arrow.

Yes, everywhere there have been these "superior" programs the US has somehow
managed to pressure them all to be cancelled.

I hear we also bring down the sun every once in a while and strong-arm or
bribe scientists to claim it's just something called an "eclipse".

Here's your hat.

[B2431]

>From: (robert arndt)

>
>the "Hopeless Diamond" version:
>
>http://www.f-117a.com/images/XST/hdiamond1.gif
>
>Looks much different from the designs the Germans came up with for
>their MBB Lampyridae (Firefly)... independently, of course.

And it looks "much different from" the Mona Lisa. Congratulations on your
powers of observation.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

[robert arndt]

"t_mark" > wrote in message news:<AtOXb.44204$L_4.37562@okepread01>...
> > But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian CF-105
> > Arrow.
>
> Yes, everywhere there have been these "superior" programs the US has somehow
> managed to pressure them all to be cancelled.
>
> I hear we also bring down the sun every once in a while and strong-arm or
> bribe scientists to claim it's just something called an "eclipse".
>
> Here's your hat.

And here's the facts:

http://www.invisible-defenders.org/programs/various/lampyridae/lampyridae.htm

Rob

[B2431]

>From: (robert arndt)

At least you didn't try to claim the F-117 was drived from "lampyridae."

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

[robert arndt]

"t_mark" > wrote in message news:<AtOXb.44204$L_4.37562@okepread01>...
> > But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian CF-105
> > Arrow.
>
> Yes, everywhere there have been these "superior" programs the US has somehow
> managed to pressure them all to be cancelled.
>
> I hear we also bring down the sun every once in a while and strong-arm or
> bribe scientists to claim it's just something called an "eclipse".
>
> Here's your hat.

http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/Arrow59/Arrow59.html

FYI, the Arrow was the greatest interceptor of the time and one of the
greatest aircraft of all time. It could do Mach 2.5 fourteen years
before the F-15 could and was developing a weapon system the
equivalent of the AMRAAM in the 1950s! Furthermore, it could reach the
same height as the CIA's U-2 making the Arrow an instant threat to the
CIA, who promptyly notified the President. That's when we started
pressuring Canada with the BOMARCs and threatening to place them south
of the Canadian border if the Arrow Program wasn't cancelled. It
was... on "Black Friday" with the loss of 15,000 employees, all the
aircraft, tooling, and all documentation. The entire project was wiped
out and along with it the pride of Canada and Avro which could have
been a world-class aircraft producer.
Same story goes for the Avro disc aircraft derived from the German
discs. They had the lead and were making progress- we got involved,
shut their efforts down, took all the technology, and brought it home-
giving it to Lockheed and Northrop. No conspiracies here buddy, just
cold hard facts. The US is ruthless when others have better stuff. And
don't start with the Avrocar nonsense- that piece of cooperative junk
was never meant to fly but to mislead the Reds into thinking that was
the best we could do with disc technology. No sir, Lockheed took over
and built the craft that led to the black projects flying today.

Rob

[Thomas Schoene]

robert arndt wrote:
> the "Hopeless Diamond" version:
>
> http://www.f-117a.com/images/XST/hdiamond1.gif
>
> Looks much different from the designs the Germans came up with for
> their MBB Lampyridae (Firefly)... independently, of course.

Lampyridae reportedly began development in 1981. Have Blue flew in the
1970s. Who was copying whom?

The German
> design was much better at radar defraction and was from the onset
> designed as an armed interceptor.

It might have occurred to them that a LO aircraft with conventional active
radar (State fo the art for the 1980s) was a fairly pointless undertaking.
Ther'es a good reaosn the F-117 does not have radar.

> But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian
> CF-105 Arrow.

Ah, the eternal lament of would-be super-plane builders everywhere. Easier
to blame the US than their own governments, I guess.

>
> p.s. However, it is not quite confirmed that the Germans actually
> stopped with their stealth program. Reports of Firefly II stealth
> aircraft being tested in South Africa have persisted for years just as
> the now-confirmed German-assisted firing of an Israeli cruise missile
> off South Africa's coast on one of the Dolphin subs.

Confirmed? Sez who? I've seen viogorous denials of these alleged cruise
missile tests, but no evidence that they actually happened.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)

[Ford Prefect]

B2431 wrote:
>>From: (robert arndt)
>
>
> At least you didn't try to claim the F-117 was drived from "lampyridae."
>
> Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
>
>

But it was derived from Soviet research done years before.... and
German designs from WWII...

[t_mark]

> > p.s. However, it is not quite confirmed that the Germans actually
> > stopped with their stealth program. Reports of Firefly II stealth
> > aircraft being tested in South Africa have persisted for years just as
> > the now-confirmed German-assisted firing of an Israeli cruise missile
> > off South Africa's coast on one of the Dolphin subs.
>
> Confirmed? Sez who? I've seen viogorous denials of these alleged cruise
> missile tests, but no evidence that they actually happened.

And don't forget the other weapon the South Africans tested for the Germans
(or the Israelis, or the French, or the Chinese, or insert_name_here) that
actually shot down a UFO about a decade ago: a Mirage-mounted particle
beam.

(That daggum UFO wandered into the wrong test range that day.)

[Thomas Schoene]

Ford Prefect wrote:
> B2431 wrote:
>>> From: (robert arndt)
>>
>>
>> At least you didn't try to claim the F-117 was drived from
>> "lampyridae."
>>
>> Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
>>
>>
>
> But it was derived from Soviet research done years before....

Only some Russian mathematics that they didn't have the computing power to
actually calculate.

and
> German designs from WWII...

???

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)

[Jim Battista]

(robert arndt) wrote in
om:

> FYI, the Arrow was the greatest interceptor of the time and one of
> the greatest aircraft of all time.

It was certainly a pretty airplane. But every time I look up
potential specifications on it, it seems to be a bit faster and a
bit higher-flying than the F-4 that was going into first-flight
around the same time. And, I'd hazard a guess, without the extension
to multirole capability that the F-4 had.

A couple of years later, the Brits introduced the Lightning, which
seems to do everything the Arrow would have done, but maybe better.
And a few years after that, out came the MiG-25.

It seems a nice enough airplane, but not untypical of interceptors
making their first flights around then, if a year or two ahead of the
curve.

But I am but an egg.

--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.

[robert arndt]

"Thomas Schoene" > wrote in message et>...
> robert arndt wrote:
> > the "Hopeless Diamond" version:
> >
> > http://www.f-117a.com/images/XST/hdiamond1.gif
> >
> > Looks much different from the designs the Germans came up with for
> > their MBB Lampyridae (Firefly)... independently, of course.
>
> Lampyridae reportedly began development in 1981. Have Blue flew in the
> 1970s. Who was copying whom?
> No, the US team that discovered the Lampyridae did so in 1981 after the scale model was being tested. The design studies and construction of the model began years before and was in no way connected to the XST.

> The German
> > design was much better at radar defraction and was from the onset
> > designed as an armed interceptor.
>
> It might have occurred to them that a LO aircraft with conventional active
> radar (State fo the art for the 1980s) was a fairly pointless undertaking.
> Ther'es a good reaosn the F-117 does not have radar.
>
> > But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian
> > CF-105 Arrow.
>
> Ah, the eternal lament of would-be super-plane builders everywhere. Easier
> to blame the US than their own governments, I guess.

The Arrow wasn't a would be at all- it WAS the greatest interceptor in
the world at the time-far beyond what the US had and equal to the
CIA's U-2 ceiling.
>
> >
> > p.s. However, it is not quite confirmed that the Germans actually
> > stopped with their stealth program. Reports of Firefly II stealth
> > aircraft being tested in South Africa have persisted for years just as
> > the now-confirmed German-assisted firing of an Israeli cruise missile
> > off South Africa's coast on one of the Dolphin subs.
>
> Confirmed? Sez who? I've seen viogorous denials of these alleged cruise
> missile tests, but no evidence that they actually happened.

Israeli reports of those tests have been available for the last 2
years. Sightings of the German Firefly II have occured numerous times
over the Overberg Test Range.


Rob

[Thomas J. Paladino Jr.]

"Ford Prefect" > wrote in message
...
>
>
> B2431 wrote:
> >>From: (robert arndt)
> >
> >
> > At least you didn't try to claim the F-117 was drived from "lampyridae."
> >
> > Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
> >
> >
>
> But it was derived from Soviet research done years before....

That happens to be true. The inspiration for the initial F-117 design
(faceting) was indeed derived from a Soviet text on electrostatic
engineering. However the Soviets had no idea what to do with this book, and
never even bothered to make it a classified material. It was obtained pretty
much by chance by one of our engineers, passed around in the right circles,
and a few years later we had the F117.

Mind you, this book was not a blueprint for a steath aircraft, it just had
some interesting theories and mathmatical formulas, and was never more that
a piece of a very large puzzle. It took an enormous amount of innovation,
imagination, money and engineering genius to create the F117. Fortunately,
these are qualities that the Soviets sorely lacked, and Americans have in
spades.

[Thomas Schoene]

robert arndt wrote:
> "Thomas Schoene" > wrote in message
> et>...

>> Easier
>> to blame the US than their own governments, I guess.
>
> The Arrow wasn't a would be at all- it WAS the greatest interceptor in
> the world at the time-far beyond what the US had and equal to the
> CIA's U-2 ceiling.

In the limited testing it completed, the CF-105 made just under Mach 2 and
50,000 feet. Could it have done better? Probably. But I don't see what
the U-2 has to do with it.

There were plenty of reasons the plane was cancelled and laying all the
blame on the US is grossly oversimplifying things. I think this site does a
good job laying out the issues:

http://www.vectorsite.net/avarrow.html

US policy was contradictory; some liked Arrow, others didn't. But what
ultimately did it in was not US policy but it's exceptional cost and the
rise of ICBMs, which made intercepting manned bombers rather pointless.

>> Confirmed? Sez who? I've seen viogorous denials of these alleged
>> cruise
>> missile tests, but no evidence that they actually happened.
>
> Israeli reports of those tests have been available for the last 2
> years.

But no actual evidence to confirm the reports. The same assertion repeated
many times does not make a fact.

Sightings of the German Firefly II have occured numerous times
> over the Overberg Test Range.

I asked specifically about the curiuse missile tests.
--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)