Wee Bee

wrote

And here we are today, SIXTY-FIVE years later and they're still
treating it like a big f**king SECRET.

I'm afraid I got totally lost, on this one.

What are you saying; that there is a little GA airplane out there that is
hands down better than everything else, and it is a big secret?

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
--
Jim in NC

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
once.

The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
better than that... and they did. But it's roll-out came after D-Day
and there was a lot of pressure to kill the program, but three
examples with different aft sections survived the war... and were then
crushed & smelted.

It was just a simple little one-seater that could be shipped
disassembled. Bubble canopy. Fixed trike gear. I could ran on mogas
and could deliver 300 pounds anywhere within 200 miles (calm air
assumed). 'Rudder' pedals were tied to the nose-wheel !! It came in
three ddifferent models. One had a V-tail the others were
conventional but the differences had to do with something else --
range, load or armament. No gauges to speak of. The 'pathfinder' was
meant to be a series of Piper Cubs and the thing was meant to land
virtually anywhere with 'one flip or less' Meaning a nose-over was
acceptable (and the only thing the pilots were trained for).

The official story is that it was never flown except by pilots but the
'real' story is that at least three "Army sergeants" meaning they
weren't recruits, with no prior aviation experience managed to fly
them using only the instruction manual for their 'flight training.'
And every time I mention it I get a ration of **** so to hell with
them. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Leeon Davis knew what I was
talking about :-)

And if that sounds kooky, it doesn't even BEGIN to come close to some
of the wacky ideas that were proposed AND tested, such as using
pigeons as 'emergency navigators,' affixing a one-ounce THERMITE
charge to a BAT and a bunch of other equally strange stuff. My dad
happened to know quite a bit about this program because he helped
fabricate an A-40 engine mount for one of the three after it suffered
a prop-strike.

-Bob

wrote in message
...

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
once.

The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
better than that... and they did.

Interesting. I don't doubt the existence of something like that, for an
instant. If all you had to do was steer it down the runway, and then sorta
land it, with a flip being considered acceptable, that would make it easy
for a non aviator to steer around in the air.

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
--
Jim in NC

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. *I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
-----------------------------------------------------

I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
in parachute.

The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
ended up at the wrong place anyway.

If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

-Bob

In rec.aviation.piloting wrote:

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. Â*I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
-----------------------------------------------------

I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
in parachute.

The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
ended up at the wrong place anyway.

If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

-Bob

Almost all the mass airborn assaults by everyone that has tried it
were pretty much a disater.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote

V: The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes?

Jim: Usually, you think of paratroopers as an advance wing of the attack,
or to put men over the top of resistance, or unless there was no way to get
troops in, otherwise.

V: If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

Jim: Interesting concept, at the very least. I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
--
Jim in NC

On Dec 28, 6:23*pm, "Morgans" wrote:

Jim: *Interesting concept, at the very least. *I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

What was the 'stick' for a DC-3? I read somewhere that the push for
the C-46 -- even the name 'Commando' -- was driven by the fact you
needed a whole damn air force of DC-3's to put a credible number of
troops on the ground AND in the correct positions. C-46, the stick
was about twice that of a C-47... but at about 4x the cost, thanks to
tooling amortization of the latter by pre-war civilian demand. So
when they DID get the required amount of lift... it was stolen! The
C-46 went to air-supply the China theater because the DC-3 couldn't
make it over the Hump with a credible cargo on-board.

The DC-3 was just what the air lines wanted; cheap to build,
economical to operate, and with a load capacity that was a close match
for the markets & routes of that era. But turn it into a weapon of
war and you find you needed so damn many of them that ANY idea of a
'stealthy' insertion was little more than a bad joke. Indeed, good
pre-event intel virtually pin-pointed the drop zone... as it did for D-
Day... if the German CinC hadn't been a total Fruit Loop, consulting
his astrologer fer crysakkes!

-Bob