The mind of the Left, from a former insider
How leftist Western intellectuals are undercutting a Muslim dissident
There seems to be a lot of this sort of thing going on
Drinking on a date has very different effects for men and for women
How a US kid turned into a free-range German child
Related to the above: how free play creates emotionally stable children in an unstable world
An American fighter pilot meets the North Vietnamese ace who shot down his friend
Neptunus Lex described the proper frame of mind for winning in air combat as “personal, like you’re in a knife fight in a phone booth, and someone has to die before anyone gets to leave.”
Re the ‘German Free-Range Kids”…jet-engine pioneer Gerhard Neumann, who grew up in Germany, described in him memoirs (my review here a childhood which was in many ways free-range. Although his parents (Jewish-Prussian, with an emphasis on the “Prussian” part) were very strict at home, he was allowed at the age of 13 to take a week-long kayaking trip with a friend of the same age. It seems that at least some of that attitude has survived the intervening decades and catastrophes.
I wonder what accounts for this particular (and very non-stereotypical) cultural difference between the countries?
“jet-engine pioneer Gerhard Neumann, ”
His book, “Herman the German” is excellent.
At age 13? We were allowed to go camping on our own before we reached secondary school, so at age 10 or so. We’d have an agreed rendezvous where the parents would deliver more sausages, beans and potatoes.
Thanks for the Faraday link. Reading such accounts helps in coming to terms with the past, trying to shake off the bitterness, dysfunction and emptiness of that ideology.
“Our training included a lot of discussion about fighting the F-4,” he remembered, “which was considered the gravest threat due to its advanced features.”
“The American fighters flew faster than ours,” said Bay. “We had to force them to turn. When they turned, the speed did not matter. We could change the center of the [circle] and cut the diameter to chase the enemy. We just made use of an appropriate angle to cut their [circle] and our guns became effective.”
This was confirmed by Boyd’s E-M theory
He studied the MiG-21 vs the F4, but the results sound the same:
In figures 14 through 17, we note that the F-4C retains most of its low-altitude subsonic/transonic sustained maneuvering advantage as g is increased from 1 to 5. In addition, these figures reveal that the MiG-21 not only has a supersonic advantage, but also is gaining regions of advantage subsonically since it can pull g in regions where the F-4C cannot operate. Essentially, such a condition indicates the MiG-21 can turn more quickly than, or inside, the F-4C. This same conclusion was reached by studying the G-V diagram. Logically, this means the left-hand boundaries of the 1-g, 5-g, and 5-g Energy Rate diagrams provide a measure of instantaneous maneuverability, while entire diagrams provide a measure of sustained maneuverability as a function of energy rate and g.
here’s the E-M diagram
y axis is degrees per second, x axis is air speed, with additional lines for G-forces and altitude
The F-4 could turn faster at higher altitudes (the right side of the diagram), so maybe that’s why he climbed when he saw MiG’s- to reach that part of the envelope. The problem was getting there and getting past the left side of the diagram because the MiG turned faster at lower speeds and below about 350 ft.
Assuming black out usually occurs around 4g – 6g for normal people, he probably blacked out at about the corner speed or just above it. If above it, that meant they were losing speed and altitude when they were hit and very vulnerable anyway. If they were just at the limit around 5g, it looks like the MiG-21 could sustain the same turning radius as the F4 flying around 50 mph faster. The MiG-17 wasn’t as fast, but it must have had some similar advantages.
Will…”the bitterness, dysfunction, and emptiness of that ideology”….if you feel so inclined, could you comment further on the psychological effects of long-term affinity with the “progressive” belief system?
Grurray…I found an analysis of how to fight the MIG-21 and MIG-17 here:
http://area51specialprojects.com/migs_area51.html
A friend of mine was the first Marine Top Gun pilot. He flew 500 missions in Vietnam, almost all in ground support roles.
He flew another 60 in Gulf War I, which got him passed over for his star. He retired a colonel, like most warriors.
He had a nice revenge as he recently sold the company he founded in retirement for $23 million.
“MiG-17 lethal position can be defeated above 450 KIAS rapid unloaded reversals and 30-60 deg check turns maintaining high calibrated airspeed.”
That makes sense. 450 kt looks to be where the F4 gains the advantage in the E-M diagram
“Accelerating at 30-60 deg nose low during escape can force the MiG-17 pilot “into a realm of flight wherein his capability to pull out becomes his dominate consideration.”
So it looks like instead of climbing and turning, Major Robertson should have been diving faster than you can say Jack Armstrong. It’s too bad we learned these things after they were shot down.
Faraday’s post resonated as we are about the same age. He from New Zealand, I’m from New England. All the same breed of cat some would say, as he mentions the the English speaking world. He talked of his mother, I don’t believe that my mother was ever fully on board with the program, although she most certainly had to have been exposed to union activities in the textile mills she worked at.
Horowitz has written that he knew fairly early on that his parents were communists, I never realized it. It was never stated as such. We were always told emphatically that “nobody starves in Russia or Cuba” and he always displayed admiration for characters like Marshal Zhukov or whoever may have been engaging Johnson, Nixon etc. at the time. I could go on.
But it was the family dynamic, the coldness, the upbraiding, the withering comparisons with other children, teens and as adults, that we constantly received. The constant money troubles, the rich, the Republicans. The hatred of organized religion. At some point we began attending church, when we did, it was basically a socialist front. Palestine, the war, the war, making preparations to get me to Canada should the need arise.
I followed along for years afterward. Far too long, an embarrassingly long time. Chasing my tail and parroting the same dreck even while knowing it was horseshit. Social work, activism, atheism. Anything-goesism, failed this, failed that, bitter, empty, lost. It’s a blueprint for disaster.
Although his parents (Jewish-Prussian, with an emphasis on the “Prussian” part) were very strict at home, he was allowed at the age of 13 to take a week-long kayaking trip with a friend of the same age. It seems that at least some of that attitude has survived the intervening decades and catastrophes.
When I was 13 I took a five day canoe trip with a friend. Had some adventures. We didn’t want to portage a canoe a mile, so tried shooting some rapids. The canoe capsized about 10′ short of a 3′ drop. Talk about damned fools, damned lucky fools.