A-10 tank hunter

Personally.... I would be scared if I was a tank:

A-10's were widely used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War Where they demonstrated their ability as the greatest tank-killing aircraft in history. A total of 144 A-10's were deployed to the Gulf and they flew 8624 missions with only five aircraft being lost. They destroyed a total of 967 tanks, 1026 pieces of artillery, 1306 trucks, 281 military structures, 53 Scud missiles, 10 aircraft on the ground and two aircraft in the air. Pilots often flew up to three missions per day and in all A-10's accounted for destroying 1/4 of Iraq's entire arsenal. Several aircraft survived direct hits from heat-seeking missiles and managed to return to base.

From here

It reminds me a bit of one of the greatest aircraft ever built... the De Havilland Mosquito




Used as a night fighter, fighter bomber, bomber and Photo-reconnaissance, with a crew of two, Maximum speed was 425 mph, at 30,300 feet, 380mph at 17,000ft. and a ceiling of 36,000feet, maximum range 3,500 miles. the Mosquito was armed with four 20mm Hospano cannon in belly and four .303 inch browning machine guns in nose. Coastal strike aircraft had eight 3-inch Rockets under the wings, and one 57mm gun in their belly that fired a six pound shell every second!

[edit on 31-5-2005 by Lucretius]

As much as I love the F-15, I haven't heard of many of them that have taken FOD through the engine, and had the engine keep running. There was an A-10 in Desert Storm that took SAM fragments through the engine, had the back of the wing blown off, and many many holes put in it, flew back and landed with no problem. There isn't another aircraft out there that I know of that can do that. Add to that the fact that one at an airshow in Korea made a 360 degree turn in the space occupied by parallel runways, a canon the size of a VW Bug, and the new C model upgrade you've got a potent killing machine. That 30mm canon goes through tank armor like a hot knife through butter. One of the desert tests they did, they found the DU penetrators buried in the ground under the tank, after having passed completely through it. I have a shell from that gun after having been fired, and it's huge. That's without the penetrator attached.

The Mosquito comparison is an excellent one. One must remember why the A-10 was created. It was created in the seventies for use in the European Theatre. It was meant as a low level cheap anti-tank platform. It was designed primarily against the t-72/t-80 series. This was an era where a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 Warsaw Pact to NATO tank deficit was expected. The A-10 was expected to be cheap, survivable, and able to disable as many tanks as possible per sortie. All in all, it could do exactly what is was meant to do. On the modern battlefield, however, one is more likely to come across a Technical as a Tank, so I'm not sure of it's place now. I actually think it's better value per dollar than an f-16/f-35 in the modern conflicts, especially in the clean-up role(After the first week of battle).

The A-10 has undoutably the best machine gun that's mounted in a fighter... the picture with the machine gun and a car was exellent...

Wasn't the mosquito mostly made out of plywood and glued together to allow it to be light, have a fast speed and long range. I don't think they could take to much damage.


[edit on 16-6-2005 by WestPoint23]

See the websie for A-10's turned into fire tankers.

www.firehogs.com...