Favorite episodes: The Taffy 3 episode. That was pretty much a dogfight between destroyers and cruisers and battleships, and it's a great story. If you've not read Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, I highly recommend the book. Skim the first 50 or so pages til the action starts though.
I absolutely LOVED the P-47 episode. The Jug is a total wallflower at the dance nowadays, as hardly anybody knows what it is and what it did. I dated a girl in 1984 whose father flew P-47s in Europe in WWII and he had some great stories about getting back with a cannon round that had passed through three cylinders in his engine, and how he kept expecting to have to bail out because the engine was one fire, oil everywhere, but he made it back hundreds of miles to the airfield. He said he never wanted or would have accepted a transfer to a P-51 after that.
It was interesting that I was in Myrtle Beach in the USAF at the time working on A-10s, which are of course, Thunderbolt IIs. Sure, no one actually calls A10s Thunderbolts much, but they really are in the same spirit as the old P-47. The original A-10s has no computers on board. We used to joke the most advanced computer you'd find was the TI calculator in the pilot's pocket. They fly about as fast as WWII fighters, but carry more bomb load than any WWII bomber.
I'd like to see an episode on the A-10 even though it's not really a dogfighter. They do have a few kills on helos from their work in Iraq. But hey, we've had kamikazis attacking destroyers so it's not like we'd be losing all our focus.
I want to see some episodes on soviet aces, and soviet tank killing aces. There are some great stories hidden behind the propaganda that need to be told.
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freyw
15 years ago
I was reading about the North Korean air force recently, and it turns out that North Korea is one of the few countries that still flies MiG-17s, mostly in the ground support role. It occurred to me that had there been, or might there be, a second Korean War, and the NKs were able make a decent fight for air superiority, you might get a situation where A-10s run up against MiG-17s over the front lines. Now that would have been an interesting fight!
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splat99
15 years ago
Interesting concept...though the current front-line US fighters would make mincemeat of MiG-17's. The lessons of Vietnam were learned, and the tactics that gave the MiG-17's a fighting chance against F-4's would not help them against an F-16 or F/A 18, not to mention an F-22.
I don't know ofhand how an A-10 would perform air-to-air, but i suspect that a MiG-17 could give it a fight. But I think the A-10's would operate in an environment of US air superiority.
The Troika of Irrelevancy: bringing off-topic enlightenment to the masses since 2006
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politic_swatch
15 years ago
How about tank vs. tank battles in the European and Pacific theaters of WWII, Arab-Israeli wars, India vs. Pakistan and even Third World Africa?
Just replace aerial dogfights with tank dogfights.
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freyw
15 years ago
" don't know ofhand how an A-10 would perform air-to-air, but i suspect that a MiG-17 could give it a fight"
That's why it would be so interesting. The A-10s are better armed and armoured, and probably have better trained pilots, but the MiGs are faster and more maneuverable. My money would be on the A-10s because of the difference in training, but that could be just a conceit on my part.
But your first paragraph is correct, of course. In a real-world situation, the MiGs would either be destroyed on the ground or downed by dedicated interceptors before they even got close to the battlefield.
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