Flying Bathtubs

[Squaretail]

Always been enthralled by these little craft. Probably since I watched the Six Million Dollar Man as a kid.

[Slick Goodlin]

That M2-F1 would be a hell of a sled ride to go on

[Big Pistons Forever]

What a great story ! It is sad to compare those days to the present reality as exemplified by the sucking chest wound that is the F35 program. 16 years after its first flight and it is still not fully mission capable.

[Colonel]

For years I’ve been telling Canadians: transition from the Hornet to the Super Hornet. Gosh that worked well for the USN but I guess it’s important to not learn from others.

Super Hornet is an amazing airplane. Our generation’s F-4.

During the Vietnam War era, the Super Hornet's roles were performed by a combination of the A-1/A-4/A-7 (light attack), A-6 (medium attack), F-8/F-4 (fighter), RA-5C (recon), KA-3/KA-6 (tanker), and EA-6 (electronic warfare).

Thank you, John Boyd.

[Scudrunner]

I don’t know why we can’t produce our own fight jets.

If Sweden can……

I would have gone with a split order between the Super Hornet and the Grippen.

[Colonel]

I remember being told that without export customers we couldn’t afford to finance our own fighter jet development and with the competition from US/UK/France that was never going to happen.

Look on the bright side. All the bright engineers that Avro trained up went down to NASA and worked with Werner Von Braun and his fellow paper-clip Nazis to make the Apollo missions a success.

Canadians should take pride that they worked with the ex-Nazis to put America on the moon.

I am not making this up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

They tried their best to suppress that but it eventually leaked. I remember around 1990 or so, some desperate, sleazy bureaucrat tried to block a FOIA request by insisting on a charge of $1 per page for 800,000 pages.

[Slick Goodlin]

It is sad to compare those days to the present reality as exemplified by the sucking chest wound that is the F35 program.

Kind of an unfair comparison, no? On one hand a pure research machine and on the other a frontline fighter that was (probably foolishly) meant to be all things to all services. Maybe a better in-period comparison would be the TFX competition.

[Slick Goodlin]

…and a modern M2-F1 equivalent being, I dunno, the Boeing Bird of Prey?

[David MacRay]

I don’t know why we can’t produce our own fighter jets.

If Sweden can……

I would have gone with a split order between the Super Hornet and the Grippen.

Agreed however I personally think Canada would be better off at this point spending the cost of a couple or those F-35s developing new light singles for pilot training.

Maybe something like those Bearhawks, or a slightly bigger RV-8 with spars capable of 20Gs. Or better yet a 1980 era C182 clone. Simple six pack of analog gauges, pre wired for customers who want to upgrade to those adorable little TVs.

Build them with the third wheel at the back for domestic training and the front for export. Place some really nice grass circles maybe a mile in diameter, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, equipped with atco style camps. Return to making Canadian trained pilots slightly better than most again.

Next stage after breaking even on that venture, build some Harvards. Then some Hurricanes. Then some CF-100s. Then some upgraded CF-118s in case we want to go participate in something with NATO.

By that point maybe consider building something more modern. Can’t do much worse than F-35s could we?

I remember being told that without export customers we couldn’t afford to finance our own fighter jet development and with the competition from US/UK/France that was never going to happen.

Look on the bright side. All the bright engineers that Avro trained up went down to NASA

Really? I thought some went to Lockheed.

Anyway maybe it’s true, Canada can only develop exceptional airplanes. Building and selling them has to happen elsewhere. For example aren’t those terrific new Embraer 175s the design Bombardier sold them?

[Nark]

For example aren’t those terrific new Embraer 175s the design Bombardier sold them?

I don’t know if I buy that… the E170’s is philosophically different from the CRJ, as well as the fuselage (double-bubble), flight control’s priorities, electrical, hydraulic’s etc…

There is a ton of carry over from the E145’s, but a huge improvement on the “quiet and dark” concept from Airbus.

If you said Airbus, I would have believed you a bit more.
I’ve been wrong once before, maybe this is the second time?