
Captured Warplanes - smacktoward
https://hushkit.net/2020/05/25/the-top-15-captured-warplanes/
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joshdance
I wanted to like this article but it was all over the place. More attention
was paid to the color schemas than how the airplanes were actually captured.

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symmitchry
Bizarre writing, too. I can't stand when writers enjoy their owner "clever"
writing more than the storyline.

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frozenlettuce
I remember that during the Falklands war one British fighter ran out of fuel
and landed in Brazil. The Brazilians returned the plane, but without one of
its missiles - it turns out that it was equipped with an American missile
(officially, the US was not involved - Brazil itself gave some help to
Argentina too). Edit: found a source, it was a Shrike missile
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#Black_Buc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#Black_Buck_Six)

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greedo
Technically not a fighter, but a bomber. And I'm surprised that it was a
concern being armed with an American weapon. We provided AIM-9 Sidewinders to
the British during the conflict.

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m463
I believe the concern was that they retained the missile (and probably
disassembled it or shared it)

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greedo
That seems correct [0]. But the replacement for the Shrike was already in
development (AGM-88 HARM), and deployed the following year. Unless the HARM
and Shrike shared a lot of tech, it wouldn't seem like it'd be much of a risk.

[0][https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/621106/Margaret-
Thatcher-F...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/621106/Margaret-Thatcher-
Falklands-war-Brazil)

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sio8ohPi
I'll add Ju 88 R-1 W/NR.360043, which is remarkable because the defection
required coordination among two of the crew (who held the third at gunpoint).

[https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/collections/78-AF-953...](https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/collections/78-AF-953-Junkers-
Ju88-R1.pdf)

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sudoaza
My all time fav that time Iran spoofed GPS and made an american drone land
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident)

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CalChris
There’s also the P3 Orion SIGINT plane which emergency landed in China and was
shipped home in crates.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)

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GekkePrutser
Also funny that the "Soviet Enemy MiG-28"s from Top Gun were in fact F-5's
with red stars painted on them, making that a bit less far-fetched :D I never
knew they actually captured one of those.

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jabl
Yes, as all the kids obsessed with military hardware noticed right away. I'm
sure real captured Soviet planes were too valuable to risk for a movie, not to
mention their existence was probably kept secret.

(Another common error that warplane buffs immediately recognise is the
replacement of Bf 109 by Ha-1112.)

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chha
Have a look at the Wikipedia article about the 4477th Test and Evaluation
Squadron and Constant Peg :) [1]

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range_Airport#447...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range_Airport#4477th_Test_and_Evaluation_Squadron)

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LiamPa
Never heard this story before

“In June 1942, after shooting down a Spitfire, a Luftwaffe pilot named Armin
Faber landed his Fw 190A-3 at RAF Pembrey in Wales (believing it to be
France). Because of an unfortunate inability to distinguish the Bristol
Channel from the English Channel said Armin let his plane get into the grubby
hands of the RAF, with barely a scratch. Given its total superiority to any
Allied fighter then in service, this unexpected gift was insanely valuable to
the technical experts of the RAF. In fact, so desperate were the British to
get their hands on one that a Commando raid had been planned to steal an Fw
190 from a French airfield.”

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noir_lord
There is a better one than that, one night __two __Me109’s got lost and landed
at the same British airfield, they captured one of them in an armoured car
when the pilot landed, realised his mistake they blocked the runway the other
crashed.

Bet the sentries got a shock when an enemy fighter landed and then taxied to
the hanger waiting for ground crew.

TP814 iirc, they called the branch that flew it (and other German planes) the
Rafwaffe.

Another good one is when two British agents stole an entire Ju88 with the
latest radar of the time by holding the third crew member at gunpoint and
flying it to Scotland.

When it came to the spying the British had a ridiculous run of good results
like that, we turned every single German agent in the UK and then had them do
things like systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles,
then faking craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane
over it looked legit, the Germans then altered the targeting such that the V1s
landed short of their target.

For all that people vaunt the Nazi’s for their advanced technology it’s
actually a much more mixed picture, the cavity magnetron was discovered and
perfected in the UK then taken to the US because we didn’t have the resources
to build them at scale, German radar output 40W with a klystron, the cavity
magnetron could output 25KW.

It completely changed the picture for night interceptions.

Also lots of people don’t know that Britain built and put intro production a
proper radar based ground scanning system for targeting during WWII, it was
called H2S and allowed accurate navigation and targeting.

> Combined with intelligence gathered from the surviving crew, they learned it
> was a mapping system and were able to determine its method of operation.
> When they pieced one together from parts and saw the display of Berlin, near
> panic broke out in the Luftwaffe.

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thombat
> systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles, then faking
> craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane over it
> looked legit,

Interesting that after D-Day the Luftwaffe could still manage any
reconnaissance flights over England. Where can I read more about this?

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hindsightbias
Soviet B-29:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4)

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hackbinary
A super interesting piece of history is how the British ended up selling their
Rolls Royce jet engines to the Soviets.

[https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/ussr-won-jet-
engine-b...](https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/ussr-won-jet-engine-
bet?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2)

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nyc_pizzadev
The RQ-170 is another big one, and very recent too.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_inc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident)

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WalterBright
The US captured a Japanese Zero intact and it was heavily evaluated and helped
inform the design of the Hellcat.

The USSR famously captured a B-29 and Stalin ordered replicas made. This
bootstrapped the entire Soviet airframe industry.

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jbay808
It helped them build new long-range bombers, but the Soviets were already
making a lot of planes before that.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4)

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WalterBright
Making a lot of planes and using advanced technology in them are orthogonal.
The B-29 was a huge leap forward in advanced technology.

