
The world’s worst air force - protomyth
https://hushkit.net/2016/12/03/the-worlds-worst-air-force/
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hudibras
At the Battle of Midway, forty-one TBD Devastators were launched between 7 and
9 a.m. By 11 o'clock, 35 had been shot down. After the battle, all other
Devastators were withdrawn from non-training units and they never again flew
in combat.

The Devastator was so bad that the Navy destroyed all remaining planes by the
end of 1944. So there are now no museum exhibits anywhere of what was at one
time the U.S. Navy's frontline torpedo bomber.

~~~
Jeema101
They were terrible outdated planes that should have never been flown into
battle, but they did at least serve one important role at Midway by diverting
the Japanese fighters at just the right moment so that the US Navy's dive
bombers could approach almost undetected.

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protomyth
Looking at the conversation under the "Messerschmitt 163" entry, I wonder how
many HN folks have had the software version of that conversation?

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Rebelgecko
It reminded me the feature creep scene in HBO's Pentagon Wars, which is eerily
similar to what can happen in the software world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)

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vacuumator
Without reading the actual article, I was going to say something like:

    
    
      "Even the worst air force 
       might be better than no air 
       force at all, unless of 
       course, you consider how much 
       money gets wasted, and how 
       many lives a fleet of death 
       traps needlessly costs a 
       country." 
    

But that was maybe in the sense that an odd third world country might have
been nurturing some money pit of a vehicle pool.

Having read the article about a hypothetical air force, I kind of like the
look of all those ineffective airplanes. It reminds me of that web page with
the simulator video game, where the polygonal race cars evolve to endure a
randomized terrain, according to a genetic algorithm.

~~~
rodgerd
Well, the South or Central American country with the longest-lived and most
stable democracy is the one that abolished its professional millitary, so at
least sometimes "no air force" is the right answer.

(Similarly the Spanish republic might have lasted a big longer if they hadn't
had an air force...)

~~~
gaius
Yes and no
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Vigilance_Service](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Vigilance_Service)

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flyinglizard
There's a common theme for just about all of those aircraft: they're ugly.
There's truth in the saying that good aircraft are always beautiful aircraft.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Google "A10 warthog". This is probably the exception which proves the rule.
The air force hates it because it's ugly, but they can't eliminate it because
it's amazing at doing what it does.

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Blackthorn
They don't hate it because it's ugly. I think the simplified version here is
they hate it because they don't want to fulfill the role it does.

~~~
chrisdz
It's not that the Air Force doesn't want to fulfill the CAS role, they wan't
the F-35 to do so instead which won't be truly CAS capable in a high threat
contested environment for at least another 4-6 years. So, they want the F-15
and F-16 community to take over the role in the meantime -- a job the A-10 was
built for and better equipped to handle (which is why it's the most requested
asset for CAS). The Army would have been a much better place for these rugged
jets, but they have no budget capacity for it and the Air Force is not going
to allow them to have a fixed-wing CAS aircraft.

~~~
gaius
The RAF is the same; they would much rather the nation not even have a
capability at all, than allow the Army or Navy to operate it.

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lvs
This article reminded me of the RAF banter sketch from Monty Python.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myIB1TrPpTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myIB1TrPpTE)

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CapitalistCartr
I've often imagined WWII's "best" air force. The worst, somehow, I didn't
consider.

~~~
mikeash
I assume that would be a hypothetical best created by combining aircraft from
many different countries? What do you imagine that would look like?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Yes, exactly. P51 D-H Mustangs, Spitfires, Messerschmitt 109s for fighters.
Serious shame they didn't have midair refueling. I consider jets, ie
Messerschmitt 262s to be outside the idea.

For bombers Lancasters, B17s, and B29s, of course.

But picking an air force of the worst is much funnier.

~~~
JshWright
Your bomber choice is pretty inflexible... The heavies are great at flattening
cities, but have little tactical use. For instance, it was the medium bombers
(the B-25 and B-26, for example) that paved the way for the invasion of the
continent (taking out the defensive emplacements and railways/bridges the Axis
needed to resupply.

~~~
cafard
They also did serious damage in the Pacific, e.g. the Bismarck Sea.

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sandworm101
I'd be more interested in seeing the exercise applied to modern or cold-war
era equipment. There are some great lemons out there, but nobody dares mention
them for fear of angering any living pilots. Sticking to the 40s makes that
very unlikely.

F-104.

~~~
greydius
The modern list will start with the F-35.

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ecnal
Eh, the F-35 is more an example of how truly infinite time and money can
eventually overcome even the worst development processes—at this point the
LRIP 10 35As are coming in around the mid-$90m range flyaway with engine,
which puts them solidly under the Rafale/Eurofighter price point and on par
with the still-in-development Gripen NG. The Danish type selection report is
worth a read.

Here's some actual contenders for a modern/Cold War list, though it should be
noted that most of these aren't fatally flawed in some fundamental fashion,
just designs that didn't turn out as hoped:

\- the F-111: much too expensive and only good at long-range strikes \- the
original Hornet, but not the Super Hornet: not enough fuel and too immature a
design for its intended role \- the Eurofighter: mind-blowingly expensive, its
AESA radar development program is older than the F-35 project and still isn't
available, unfortunately timed (becoming a mature platform as VLO aircraft
begin to enter service in many air forces) \- the F-16/LWF as it was
originally conceived: range-only radar, no real payload, more or less a target
drone \- the MiG-29, a point defense fighter that never really could be molded
into a true multirole

~~~
lostlogin
How do you price something while ignoring the development cost? You can't
really call it a less expensive plane and ignore the sunk cost can you? I'm
far from an accounting expert as you likely realise.

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suhith
"Its main tank could hold 300 gallons of fuel but it wouldn’t take off with
more than 80 gallons on board"

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jon-wood
Sounds completely useless but I guess at a pinch you could take of and then do
a midair refuel. Maybe.

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jabl
Isn't mid-air refueling a much later invention? Never heard of it being used
during WWII..

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boznz
Even the worst plane on here could take out the the NZ air force :-(

luckily nothing has the range to get here :-)

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ptaipale
The headline makes me think what Stalin would have said about the air force of
Vatican.

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simonebrunozzi
I immediately thought about Argentina's air force. Main reason for it being so
bad wasn't technical, but political (corruption, etc...).

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arethuza
That seems a bit harsh - UK accounts of the Falklands War tend to be rather
respectful of the performance of the Argentinian air force.

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dingaling
They were respectful of the pilots ( "good stick-and-rudder men" is a quote I
remember ) but not of the tactics or overall strategy.

For example on 1 May 1982 a 'maximum effort' was launched again the British
ships. But the Mirage & Dagger fighters were used to escort the attack
aircraft, rather than first achieving local air superiority. In the resulting
chaos none of the attack aircraft found their targets and three of the escorts
attacked the ships instead.

With the disparity of air assets available to them versus those of the two
small British carriers, in theory the Argentinians should have eliminated the
surface fleet without much problem. Yet three weeks later the amphibious
landings commenced...

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arethuza
Yes, good point - I did think that I should have changed it before seeing your
comment but the edit link had timed out.

