CSAF Considers A-10 COIN Squadron

[Guest Jimmy]

Call me dumb, but I had a brain fart a couple years back that with the kind of warfighting we're doing in the middle east, that WWII-style fighters would be making a comeback.

It ought to be the P-47 rather than the puny Mustang though.

[MD]

Googled it and did some light reading... niice. 10 hardpoints, cheap to operate, same basic engine as the CH-47 Chinook helo.

BUT, the Mustang had plenty of problems with torque roll. The PA-48 has roughly double the HP, but the vertical stab/rudder looks unchanged from the Mustang - bet that sucker would be a handful on a go-around.

Same problem the A-1 had........massive torque from that giant R-3350 radial (worst with rapid power application). Bit both some of the inexperienced USAF pilots as well as the smaller-stature VNAF (South Viet) pilots flying the thing. It's a manageable thing though......all in the pilots finese (or lack thereof), IMHO.

Real neat aircraft though. Same pointy-nose mafia as now, was in existance back then too.......didn't want a plane with a tailwheel and a prop; regardless of what kind of performance or utility it might have had.

Would've been fun as hell to taxi into last chance to get armed up in one of these baby's.........if just for the sheer nostalgia of it. Would've made a great Sandy platform too, in certain environments......esp for the RESCORT. Least in the Hog, I got to do the closest thing to this plane.

Edited July 26, 2007 by MD

[Guest monkeypoo]

It ought to be the P-47 rather than the puny Mustang though.

The Mustang was put to good use in Korea for the same mission. Ace Frederick "boots" Blesse flew the 51 in combat before he ever got to the Sabre.

[Guest Jimmy]

The Mustang was put to good use in Korea for the same mission. Ace Frederick "boots" Blesse flew the 51 in combat before he ever got to the Sabre.

Nothing against the Pony; it's a neat little airplane, but I have Jug fixation sts. It's ruined relationships before.

[brickhistory]

The Mustang was put to good use in Korea for the same mission. Ace Frederick "boots" Blesse flew the 51 in combat before he ever got to the Sabre.

The Korean War F-51 was put to use because the equivalent of the 'pointy nose mafia' of the day did not want the P/F-47 in their arsenal. Air to ground was not something they wanted to devote their share of the defense budget. Jets doing air to air was where the glory and Congressional funding was.

Most P-, later F-, 47s had been junked by the time of Korea unlike the F-51 in mostly Guard squadrons that USAF took back.

That was a case of the pilots making up for the deficencies of their equipment and senior leadership (nah, it'll never happen again......). Aussies and RoKAF also used them effectively.

The P-47's R-2800(?) took a lot more punishment than did the liquid-cooled Mustang's Packard-built Merlin. Also, F-47s 8 x .50s vs 6 x .50s for the Mustang.

Still believe any new COIN aircraft will be for the current/last war (as well as too late to test/field in time) and not a toe to toe weapon for the next war.

[HerkDerka]

Nothing compared to the heavy mass of the Allison or Merlin.

TurboProps fly more like Jet

Oh really? Please elaborate.

HD

[Hacker]

Hate to say it, but he's correct. The Piper Enforcer had very little engine torque on takeoff thanks to a yaw-SAS system. Here's a quote from one of only two USAF pilots to ever fly the Enforcer...an ex Raven FAC who also had significant flight time in F-100s, A-1s, and O-1s. He flew the Enforcer in the USAF's "Pave COIN" competition in 1971:

"I'd all ready been told about the Mustang on takeoff, if you just throw the power to it you're going off the runway [due to the engine torque], so I was prepared for all that. I put in four units of rudder trim, and on takeoff roll I slowly worked the power up. The only thing that I felt was just a surge of power and I didn't get any big torque out of it. I thought it was going to be a handful and it wasn't - it was very controllable. As soon as I got off the ground when I expected to really feel some of that torque, it just went straight ahead and accelerated like a slingshot"

There are actually a lot more issues with the PA-48 Enforcer design's adaptability to the current COIN role than you guys are thinking. It's a rugged, well built airplane, and the design has a LOT of potential. However, the primary problem the airplane had...and has...is that the nose was so long that it was not possible to see the target you were bombing at the time you had to release the bomb.

The sight depression put the pipper squarely in the middle of the cowling, so it significantly complicated the bombing problem. It basically eliminated all of the progress that has been made in the last 40 years for computed bombing and took the art/science back to the Korean war!

There were also literally pages of major stuff that did not meet USAF spec, even back in the 1980s. After the tests in the early 1980s -- and after the USAF said they didn't want to have anything to do with it -- Piper and the aircraft's original designer made some significant changes to the airplane for a production specification which would have corrected a lot of the problems. To bring the PA-48 back to life would take an incredible amount of time, money, and effort because it would be more than just blowing the dust off the design...it would mean completing the re-design and tooling up for a completely new aircraft.

This is why taking an off-the-shelf aircraft like the T-6 and converting it into a killer is a better idea financially and practically.

I've been writing a book on the Piper Enforcer for about the last 5 years, hence the interview quote. Really neat airplane...wish the AF would have bought it when it was ORIGINALLY built in the 1970s because it would have really kicked butt...but very much past it's prime today.

[Guest DDerrick51]

I have been arguing for something like this in the Army arena. An AH-64D cost $38 million and 5K an hour in operation cost to go out and kill a guy with a $500 RPG.

[Hacker]

I have been arguing for something like this in the Army arena. An AH-64D cost $38 million and 5K an hour in operation cost to go out and kill a guy with a $500 RPG.

That's nothing compared to B-1s, A-10s, and F-15Es out there trolling around doing "Air Effects" or XCAS in Afghanistan for hours and hours on end, only to be called in to drop a $20,000 bomb on that same guy with an AK or an RPG.

[pbar]

That's nothing compared to B-1s, A-10s, and F-15Es out there trolling around doing "Air Effects" or XCAS in Afghanistan for hours and hours on end, only to be called in to drop a $20,000 bomb on that same guy with an AK or an RPG.

For the cost of a B-1 or B-52 flight into Afghanistan, I wonder if we'd get better results by going village to village with that cash and buying them off. Also, since Western (Afghan) and Eastern (Iraq) Watch will go on for a long time into the future, maybe we should buy some of the Navy's P-8, strip out the ASW gear, and then fly them around with JDAMs. Probably a helluva of a lot cheaper than a B-1 or a B-52.

PBAR

[Guest DDerrick51]

For the cost of a B-1 or B-52 flight into Afghanistan, I wonder if we'd get better results by going village to village with that cash and buying them off. Also, since Western (Afghan) and Eastern (Iraq) Watch will go on for a long time into the future, maybe we should buy some of the Navy's P-8, strip out the ASW gear, and then fly them around with JDAMs. Probably a helluva of a lot cheaper than a B-1 or a B-52.

PBAR

I agree. If this was a business to make money we would be going bankrupt in no time flat.