The useless info never stops....

[jetmex]

Here's some more stuff to ponder:

1. Name the oldest weapon still in production that is still being fitted to combat aircraft.

2. What is the largest gun ever used on a combat aircraft?

3. Name the first aircraft to successfully employ drop tanks.

4. Drop tanks were modified into what for what popular sport in the late 40's and 50's?

5. Drop tanks were modified into weapons by doing what to them?

6. What weapon system was employed as a sort of poor man's target seeker, and on what aircraft?

7. Name the largest air to air missile in production today.

8. What is a Standard ARM?

9. Name the first viable air to air missile used in combat.

10. Name the largest air dropped bomb ever used in combat.

11. What is a daisy cutter?

12. What is a CBU?

Bonus: While pondering all the above death and destruction, ponder this: How many of those Fokkers were really Messerschmitts? ;D

The Galvin clock is ticking........

[NEW222]

11. BLU-82B/C-130 weapons system nickname used in Afghanistan.

12. CBU is a combined effects munitions for attacking soft targets with detonating bomblets.

[NEW222]

3. ME-109, or ME-110.

5. Cluster weapons, by breaking open in mid air to disperse smaller munitions or submunititons?

[Wayne]

#4 bodies for hot rods

#5 filling them with napalm

#10 Grand slam at 22,000 lbs bigger than the daisy cutter (15,000 lb) and the Moab (21,000 lb)


...my brain hurts...

[JimCasey]

1. Wheels. You get a wheel dropped on your head and it really messes up your day.

2. Some B-25s were outfitted with 75mm artillery pieces. Centerline mount (nearly) like the gatling gun on an A-10. Not fast repeating, but you did not want to be on a Japanese ship that got into the gunsights.

6. Pigeons were trained to guide bombs during WWII.

10. Weight of the bomb, or explosive yield? If weight, the tall boy is my nominee, too. If Explosive yield, FatMan, dropped on Nagasaki, was higher yield than the Hiroshima bomb.

[RonMiller]

2. Might be the 105 mm howitzer mounted on the c 130

[Grnbrt]

#2 105 howitzer used on C-130's in 'Nam, Puff the magic dragon and even nastier then the CBU's
#6 race car bodies for speed record attempts at the Bonneville salt flats.
#12 Cluster bomb utility. Nasty little suckers!

[jetmex]

And away we goooooooo....

1. Sorry, not wheels!

2. Ron got this one, it is the 105mm howitzer mounted in the AC-130H/U gunships.

3. New, you may have gotten this one, but there may be some earlier aircraft. Let's see who else chimes in..

4. Wayne got this one--surplus drop tanks were purchased by hot-rodders and turned into race cars on the assumption that they were aerodynamically shaped, therefore faster!

5. Wayne got this one also.

6. Nice try, Jim, but not quite!

7, 8, and 9 still up for grabs....

10. I did mean weight, and Wayne got this one. So for an added score, name the aircraft that used this weapon in combat.

11. Yes and no. The daisy cutter I'm thinking of is not a bomb, but it is part of one......

12. New got this one--CBU stands for Cluster Bomb Unit, an antipersonnel weapon.

Any tries on the bonus?? ;D

Hey Art, I just saw you log in--correct on all your answers!

[Grnbrt]

#11 THE DAISY CUTTER BOMB. Largest Conventional Bomb in Existence. It is big and destructive. To be exact, the Daisy Cutter bomb weighs in at 15,000 pounds and destroys anything in a 600-yard radius.

[Galvin]

Lots of these were answered adequately but rather than research which ones, I'll just comment on all of them that I think I know.

1. Name the oldest weapon still in production that is still being fitted to combat aircraft.

How about the Colt/Browning .50 Caliber M-2 Machine gun? It is coming up on its 100th year anniversary in a few years.

2. What is the largest gun ever used on a combat aircraft?

The AC-130H "Spectre" has, in addition to several miniguns and a 40MM Bofors, a 105MM howitzer firing out the side. The Piaggio P-108 four engined Italian bomber had a version mounting a 102MM gun in the nose for anti-shipping strikes and probably qualifies as the one with the largest gun pointed out the front.

3. Name the first aircraft to successfully employ drop tanks.

Well, the Curtiss F-11C-2/BF-2C "Goshawk" and export Hawk II, III, and IV series of biplane fighters used external centerline drop tanks way back in the early thirties, as did the little F-9C-2 "Sparrowhawk" dirigible-borne fighters carried by the "Akron' and "Macon". I seem to recall that the Russians may have actually been using drops even earlier on the I-16.

4. Drop tanks were modified into what for what popular sport in the late 40's and 50's?

"Lakesters" and "Belly Tankers" used at the Bonneville Salt Flats, the only place in the U.S. flat and smooth enough to allow going as fast as a car or belly tanker would go. The most popular style was the large Lockheed P-38 type tank. These wre almost identical to the first P-80/F-80 tip tanks. A rudimentary frame to hold the running gear was made to fit inside the tank and everything from small Ford V-8-60s, to big Cadillacs, Buicks, Chryslers, Chevy 283s, 327s, 409s, and 427s were stuffed inside these "Lakesters" and towed all the way up to western Utah to the flats to see just how fast they would go.

I knew a guy named J.B. Kanborian who inherited a bunch of money from his family's food fortune and bulit a series of cars and belly tankers all called the "Hot Beef Injection Specials." He never won anything that I know of and his crew was famous for spending the entire time at the flats drunk and blowing up the most engines. He later died penniless.

5. Drop tanks were modified into weapons by doing what to them?

Basically adding soap flakes to the avgas to make a jelly-like mass that would stick to things while it burned and a detonator to the tank to set the whole mess off. Later napalm tanks were finned and a bit more accurate.

6. What weapon system was employed as a sort of poor man's target seeker, and on what aircraft?

You'll have to be a bit more specific. The seeker heads on AIM-9 Sidewinders carried by F-4s have been used to acquire trucks by homing in on the heat from their exhausts and allowing the choice of firng the missile at them or taking them out with guns since the missile was worth a lot more than the truck. Bats were to be used in WWII to carry incendiary bombs into enemy warehouses and burn them down but were kind of unreliable as to whose warehouses they would burn down, having no particular loyalties to one side or other.

7. Name the largest air to air missile in production today.

I was going to suggest it was the Phoenix but that ceased production in 2004 so I'll guess maybe it's the Russian R-33/R-37 (Also called AAM-9 but NOT a Sidewinder).

8. What is a Standard ARM?

The Standard Anti Radiation Missile is the primary weapon of the "Wild Weasle" flak and radar suppression units. It acquires the emissions from a SAM or several other types of radar and rides that beam down to the antenna. If the radar is turned off after it is acquired the ARM remembers the radar's location and blows hell out of it anyway. When it goes off its warhead flings metal cubes about an inch square in all directions, shredding the antenna, the radar van, and anything else within range.

9. Name the first viable air to air missile used in combat.

Since you didn't specify "guided" air to air missiles, the Le Prieur rockets fired from the struts of Nieuport fighters in WWI against German Drachen observation ballons and Zeppelins probably qualify as the first viable air to air missiles as they did see some success. In WWII the WG-21 rocket mortars carried under the wings of some Bf-109s and FW-190s were unguided but used extensively and initially with some success to try to break up heavy bomber formations. The R4M 82MM rockets carried on wooden rails under the wings of some Me-262s were also unguided and also used against bomber formations.

There was a Henschel rocket that never went onto production that was possibly the first workable guided air/air weapon. The Ruhrstal or Kramer X-4 of WWII was also a guided weapon that never went into prduction, but since some were fired against B-17s in service tests, it may qualify.

10. Name the largest air dropped bomb ever used in combat.

The Grand Slams were the largest bombs dropped in WWII by Lancasters but their U.S. derivatives were the radio guided Tarzon and Razon bombs dropped by B-29s in Korea on critical targets.

11. What is a daisy cutter?

"Daisy Cutters" are bombs of various types but all are fragmentation types and all are designed to go off above ground in order to kill personnel or destroy soft skinned equipment like airplanes and light vehicles. The Parafrags were used in the south pacific with great success and the wrecks of many Japanese aircraft exist there to this day as testimony to that fact. Non-parachute retarded bombs used for this task generally have a long protruding fuse to insure that the detonation takes place above ground and a standard bomb can often be converted to a Daisy Cutter just by the addition of such a fuse.

The German version was called a "Dinortspargel" ("Dinort's Asparagus"), after its inventor and usually had a round, flat plate at the tip of the fuse to insure that little ground penetration would take place prior to detonation.

The current 15,000 Lb. "Daisy Cutter," developed in the Vietnam era to clear large sections of jungle for LZs, is a very late claimant to the name.

12. What is a CBU?

Cluster Bomb Unit. Very nasty customer. A CBU may carry up to hundreds of bomblets depending on the size of the bomb and is designed to clear the area of soft-skinned vehicles and personnel by covering a very large area with flying shrapnel. Some are even capable of taking out armored vehicles as well. One of their nastier features is the fact that many CBUs have a certain percentage of their bomblets set to go off at time intervals of from a few minutes up to a period of hours rather than on impact .

[jetmex]

And Dave jumps in once again!

As for the details on #6--the airplane I'm thinking of is later than the Phantom and was not designed with any specific advanced target acquisition devicess. Missiles are not its primary weapons system.....

[Wayne]

I'm thinking A-10, but I can't remember why....


Curious to know what combat aircraft still use .50's ....I was thinking along those lines, but all I came up with was 20mm .....

[RonMiller]

Wayne.. I couldn;'t think of the plane.. but seems like they used the infrared targeting system or radar system of the missle for kind of an onboard night vision or something like that.

[jetmex]

#6--Wayne got the airplane and Ron got the reason...in Desert Storm, some enterprising crew chief discovered that the tv seeker head on the Hellfire missile could be used to locate targets. A monitor was rigged into the cockpit and Voila! Instant "All In The Family" reruns!

Wayne, the M2 .50 cal is still used for door guns in a lot of US helicopters (the CH-53 comes to mind), though many of them are being replaced by miniguns.

[Wayne]

What teamwork, eh ??!!!!!!!

[Britbrat]

Sheesh -- I go away for a few days & miss all of the fun!