[BITList] Warthog Story

[FA]

Think we have seen this before
frank

Warthog A-10 flying arsenal
Description: Description: 006f01cc5a2a$54160fc0$2C4AC207 at OwnerHP
It was developed by General Electric, the "We bring good things to life" 
people.
It's one of the modern-day Gatling guns.
It shoots very big bullets...
It shoots them very quickly...
Someone said, "Let's put it in an airplane."
Someone else said, "Better still, let's build an airplane around it."
Description: Description: 007001cc5a2a$54160fc0$2C4AC207 at OwnerHP

So they did. And "they" were the Fairchild Republic airplane people.
And they had done such a good job with an airplane they developed back 
in WWII ....called the P-47 Thunderbolt!
They decided to call it the A10 Thunderbolt.
They made it so it was very good at flying low and slow and shooting 
things with that fabulous gun.
But since it did fly low and slow, they made it bulletproof, or almost so.
A lot of bad guys have found you can shoot an A10 with anything from a 
pistol to a 23mm Soviet cannon and it just keeps on flying and shooting.
When they got through, it looked like this.
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It's not sleek and sexy like an F18 or the stealthy Raptors and such, 
but I think it's such a great airplane because it does what it does 
better than any other plane in the world.
It kills tanks.
Not only tanks, as Sadam Hussein's boys found out to their horror, but 
armored personnel carriers, radar stations, locomotives, bunkers, fuel 
depots... just about anything the bad guys thought was bulletproof 
turned out to be easy pickings for this beast.

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See those engines. One of them alone will fly this plane.
The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy "bathtub."
That's typical of the design.
They were smart enough to make every part the same whether mounted on 
the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear, for instance.
Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground debris) and 
the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate from a 
damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.
Everything is redundant.
They have two of almost everything.
Sometimes they have three of something.
Like flight controls, there's triple redundancy of those,
and even if there is a total failure of the double hydraulic system, 
there is a set of manual flying controls.

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    Capt. Kim Campbell sustained this damage over Bagdad and flew for
    another hour before returning to base.

But, back to that gun.
It's so hard to grasp just how powerful it is.

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This is the closest I could find to showing you just what this cartridge 
is all about.
What the guy is holding is NOT the 30mm round, but a"little" 50 Browning 
machine gun roundand the 20mm cannon round which has been around for a 
long time.
The 30mm is MUCH bigger.

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Down at the bottom are the .50 BMG and 20x102 Vulcan the fellow was holding.
At the bottom right is the bad boy we're discussing.
Let's get some perspective here: The ..223 Rem (M16 rifle round) is fast.
It shoots a 55 or so grain bullet at about 3300 feet/sec, give or take.
It's the fastest of all those rounds shown (except one).
When you move up to the ..30 caliber rounds, the bullets jump up in 
weight to 160-200 grains. Speeds run from about 2600 to 3000 fps or so.
The .338 Lapua is the king of the sniper rifles these days and shoots a 
350 grain bullet at 2800 fps or so.
They kill bad guys at over a mile with that one.
The 50 BMG is really big. I have one on my desk.
Everyone who picks it up thinks it's some sort of fake, unless they know 
big ammo.
It's really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and goes as fast 
the Lapua.
I don't have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your hat.
The bullet for the 30x173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket around a spent 
uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times as heavy as the 
M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which is faster than 
the M16 as well).
The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute, Yes, four thousand.
Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which set loose 
70 to 150 rounds.
The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000 feet.
OK, the best for last.
You've got a pretty good idea of how big that cartridge is, but I'll bet 
you're like me and you don't fully appreciate how big the GA GAU-8 
Avenger really is.
Take a look.

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Each of those seven barrels is 112" long.
That's almost ten feet.
The entire gun is 19-1/2 feet long.
Think how impressive it would look set up in your living room.
Oh, by the way, it doesn't eject the empty shells but runs them back 
into the storage drum. There's just so dang many flying out, they felt 
it might damage the aircraft.
Oh yeah, I forgot, they can hang those bomb and rocket things on 'em 
too, just in case.
After all, it is an "airplane"!
Like I said, this is a beautiful design.
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I'm glad it's ours.

	






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