Comments on: Airmindedness: a reading list

By: Airminded · E. H. Carr on the failure of British airmindedness

Airminded · E. H. Carr on the failure of British airmindedness — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:49:45 +0000

[...] So they refused to adapt to the new reality, or in other words, did not become sufficiently airminded, and paid the price for this failure. His whole talk was not actually about airpower or even [...]

By: Airminded · Your name here

Airminded · Your name here — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:20:37 +0000

[...] post by Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well: China on airmindedness in China in the 1930s. If I had to compare it to another country, it would probably be Russia, where aviation was also part of a modernization [...]

By: Airminded · The changing meaning of air shows

Airminded · The changing meaning of air shows — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:24:46 +0000

[...] when they perform aerobatics for the crowd. But this line of argument does remind me of a previous discussion about how airmindedness is today often in essence nostalgic. So perhaps it’s not too silly. [...]

By: Scott W. Palmer

Scott W. Palmer — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:11:12 +0000

As regards the earlier comments on the similarities between the ANT-20 and the XB-15, I’d chalked them up more to common engineering troubles. Design-wise the “Maxim” was an enlarged version of earlier ANTs.

However, the inspiration for constructing it came from the Germans…

Meanwhile, the tradition of big Russian planes is alive and well.

ScP

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:51:17 +0000

LOL, well I was thinking more of the Tu-22M and Tu-160 but that will do too. The Tu-160 is apparently the heaviest combat aircraft ever, which puts it in the (as Scott shows) long tradition of Russian aeronautical gigantism. But with a speed of Mach 2, a range of 12000 km, and a bombload of 40,000kg (!), it definitely has the potential to ruin somebody’s day.

By: CK

CK — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 06:25:08 +0000

Yes, quite right Brett, I wasn’t referring to post WWII. They eventually came up with a strategic bomber: The fearsome (mainly for the crews I suspect) Tu95.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:22:15 +0000

Shouldn't you have posted these comments at The Avia-Corner, CK? The wings do look very similar, with a large chord and low aspect ratio. I suppose there were common engineering problems the respective engineers had to face which led them to choose the same wing shape. Of course, there were two US and Soviet bomber designs whose similarities were rather more than coincidental ...

Russia, as far as I know, never went on to produce any bombers worth the name.

No heavy bombers, in the WWII era (with the Tu-4 being a dishonourable exception). But earlier, there was the pioneering Ilya Muromets, and of course in the Cold War they had some fearsome heavy bombers. In terms of tactical bombers, in WWII they eventually developed some very capable aircraft like the Il-2 and the Pe-2.

By: CK

CK — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:17:23 +0000

Except perhaps that the MG looked to be powered by washing machines…

By: CK

CK — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:13:12 +0000

Thanks for the link to the Maxim Gorky. Bigger may have looked good, but it obviously wasn’t always better (especially, I suppose, when you have other people crashing into you).

Off topic I know, but it’s interesting to compare the MG to the Boeing XB-15 produced at around the same time. Both prototypes crashed, but the XB-15 was used as the basis for the B-17, and wing design used on Pan-Am’s China Clippers.

Russia, as far as I know, never went on to produce any bombers worth the name. But in some respects they look remarkably similar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:XB-15_Bomber.jpg

Just sayin’.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:43:56 +0000

I agree, de Syon’s book is excellent — I guess I was trying to limit the list to one book per nation. (Which unfortunately isn’t too difficult in most cases!)

Italy is an excellent example of a nation just waiting for its air-minded scholar to emerge.

Yes, it’s actually almost staggering that nobody has tackled this yet, when you think of names like D’Annunzio, Douhet, Nobile and Balbo. Mussolini himself was a pilot, or at least claimed to be, which is probably unique for world leaders at this time (though Churchill did take flying lessons before WWI). As I understand it, aviation was widely used in Fascist propaganda; and Italy had a substantial, and early, civil defence programme — and it was itself the first country to use aeroplanes in war. I’d love to read a book on “Italy and the aeroplane”, if only somebody would write it!