Spruance used to command from an open platform on CVs.  Great commanders
will put themselves in harm's way to inspire the troops, in spite of the
risk (Nelson, Rommel, etc.).

In article <33B9539E.1...@pyramid.net>,
  Kathy Hannah <khan...@pyramid.net> wrote:

'Field Marshall Haig is about to make another gargantuan attempt to move
his drinks cabinet another six inches towards Berlin'--CPT Edmund
Blackadder

Dave

On Mon, 30 Jun 1997 18:19:00 +0100, Matt Clonfero
<M...@aetherem.demon.co.uk> fumbled with the keyboard & wrote:

In article <33b85d70.52236...@news.idt.net>, atoz...@idt.net (Steve

bill

If Turboprops are so good, then why do the majority of Civil aircraft, Cessnas, etc.
carry piston engines?

The answer is: Cost. While a turbine may be easier to maintain than a piston engine,
it's very expensive compared to the piston engine, and requires a steady intake of clean
air. Turbines have to withstand internal temps in the thousands of degrees, so they have
to use titanitium, and composites, etc. in their construction, which makes them hard &
expensive to make.

However, piston engines are nothing more than machined blocks of high-quality steel or
aluminum. In Detroit, the piston engine has reached a high state of refinement with
Electronic Fuel Injection, which ensures steady output at all altitudes, and increases
in reliablity (100,000 miles between tune-ups) along with improvements in fuel
efficiency.

So, in peacetime, my proposed prop plane would have a turboprop, but for war-time mass
production, it would get a radial. (This is what kept the Me-262 from being effective.
They had a lot of airframes completed, but not enough engines.)

Now. I sit in shock, as the Boeing/McDonnell Douglass merger has been given the thumbs
up by the US Government, which is the same government which blocked the Staples/Office
Depot merger. You Euros, as much as I hate you, the ball is in your court now. Save us
Americans from the stupidity of our establishment, which thinks that mega-corporations
are best for us, and makes more efficient use of the lab-space left over from the Cold
War. Idiots. Just fire some scientists, tear down the labs, but don't do mergers.

I do not want Boeing to become the American equivalent of Airbus or British Aerospace.

In article <33B930EE.5...@erols.com>, ryanw...@erols.com says...

Where time-to-height, acceleration, and manoeuverability (ie power output)
are not such an issue as initial cost and maintenance, piston engines may
well be a good solution.

Strangely enough, general aviation (Cessna owners, etc) come up with that
solution, and use piston engines. Military users tend to look for more power,
and are willing to offset that power against the increased costs - so they
end up with jet engines.

Seen any of Detroit's efforts at Le Mans recently ?

You're also forgetting the pilot problem. You may well be able to build
thousands of cheap aircraft, but producing thousands of qualified aircraft
is slightly more of a problem (as it was for the Me-262).

Similarly, you've focussed upon the engines. Given that more and more of an
aircraft's cost is in its electronics and armaments, skimping on the engine
seems like spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar [ Naval reference ;-) ]

After all, how much do you think six AIM-120Cs and a decent radar cost ?
(Answer : somewhere well into seven figures) Or a decent set of targetting
equipment and a batch of Mavericks / Hellfires etc. (About seven figures).

Now figure out how heavy it all is. (30mm cannon and 1000 DU rds, anyone ?)

A twin-engine Cessna may be nippy, but hang a metric tonne or two of metal
from it, and it'll have major problems even getting off the ground. Not to
mention all the problems caused by recoil, shifts in the centre of gravity,
and so forth.

Dim and distant past :
   Aircraft cheap. Cost of design and tooling cheap. Result ? Lots of people
  can afford to make aircraft; you don't need to be a big company.
   Aircraft cheap. People can afford to buy lots of aircraft, so there's lots
  of orders for the getting. Orders come quite frequently.

Recent History :
   Aircraft quite expensive. Cost of design and tooling expensive. Not so
  many people make aircraft anymore, because it's too expensive to design
  and build one, but not get an order for it. Number of aircraft ordered
  goes down.

Currently :
   Aircraft bloody expensive. You need a _lot_ of cash to sink into production
  investment, design (after all, these things are several orders of magnitude
  more complicated) etc. Only one or two contracts a decade. Not too many
  orders, so if you miss a contract you have to keep your design teams and
  workforce sitting around for five-to-ten years, waiting for the next project.

It's hardly surprising the US is down to a handful of major companies,
because it's down to a handful of major aerospace projects. The same (almost)
applies in Europe, except national interest raises its head to complicate
things.

Martin

First of Foot, Right of the Line

In article <33B75455....@dlcwest.com>, Guy Derdall <g...@dlcwest.com>
writes

It is _not_ easy to do, believe me, when you're talking revision on this
scale. Check out some of the post-WW2 cruiser conversions, where gun
cruisers were modified to carry Terrier or Talos SAMs.

Number of places one Iowa can be at any given time = one.

Number of places six Burkes can be at any given time = up to six.

Mission an Iowa can fulfill: being large and impressive off an enemy's
coast (an Arsenal Ship without the low cost, basically). With a full
Aegis conversion it can perform the AAW duties of a Tico or Burke, at
many times the price.

The up-front money isn't insignificant, but when you're planning for the
next two decades every surplus crew member, every avoidable maintenance
expense, every non-standard component, is a _big_ cost.

This is, for instance, why the Tomcat-21 lost to the Super Hornet:
because for any given cost over the life of the airframe, there would be
more Super Hornets (cheaper airframes) and more flying hours to train
the crews (cheaper running costs). That was enough to outweigh the extra
capability of the Tomcat-21.

This is what led, in a notable extreme, to the Arsenal Ship: an attempt
to see how far running costs could be pared (mostly by cutting the crew)
without sacrificing firepower (measured in terms of VLS cells).

In article <33B0FDE4.136EC...@sci.fi>, jarmo.lindb...@sci.fi says...

Used to be they'd pillage / plunder / settle the coasts of Ireland,
Scotland, England, France (Normandy, after all), in fact quite a
bit of Europe.

Now all the Vikings, sorry Norwegians, seem to come to Edinburgh and
study at Heriot-Watt Uni........:-)

Martin