tale of two pigs

[brucev]

this aticle will probably irritate any P-38 fans here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/a-tale-of-two-pigs_b_402103.html

the latest P-38 Association newletter references the above letter along with a rebuttal

[muddyboots]

good rebuttal

[RyanShort1]

I'm not even a major P-38 fan and find that article irritating, as are some of the P-38 hater comments below there!

Ryan

[EDowning]

I'm not surprised that the Huffington Post doesn't support the U.S. hardware. They are probably more partial to some of their homeland products such as the MIG and Sukhoi types.

[Holedigger]

The term, "Revisionist History" comes to mind. Ask Admiral Yamamoto how good an Aircraft the 38 was!
Someone with an agenda writing an article, hmmmmmmmm, imagine that!

[b29flteng]

So why are you even reading the Huff post?

[jet1]

...and I stopped reading at ""Lightning II", named after Lockheed's glitzy but rather unsuccessful WWII fighter, the P-38." How do some people get published?

[brucev]

So why are you even reading the Huff post?

i don't, i really don't know anything about that publication, but the article was referenced in the latest P-38 Association newsletter (which I proudly read)

[Django]

Very convenient to completely disregard the PTO...

[lmritger]

That's very impressive.

I wasn't aware you could pack that much utter FAIL into one single web article... boy, was I wrong! Guess all those P-38s in the MTO and PTO didn't do jack-spit, huh? The writer clearly believes the old maxim of "If facts do not conform to the theory, the facts must be disposed of."

What a complete and utter waste of pixels.

Lynn

[Old SAR pilot]

....Or to paraphrase an old saying, "Our minds are made up - please don't try to confuse us with the facts..."

[TimAPNY]

What a worthless read. I feel like someone robbed me of the 10 or so minutes it took to read it.

Tim

[RMAllnutt]

Other than being very mis-guided on the P-38, I hate to say it, but a lot of what this guy is saying.... while hyperbolized in the extreme... is pretty dead on. JSF was pretty much a bad idea from the get go. There's no way to pack that much mission into one platform and not have problems out the wazzoo... cost overruns, in-service date overuns, and there are bound to be performance problems that will need resolving. The F-111 was not a pig, but it was far from the aircraft initially envisioned, and the Air Force had to learn to adapt what they had to the missions they needed it for. I'm not saying the JSF won't eventually be successful, but it will come in far more expensively and a lot later than ever it was predicted to. Can we afford to wait that long?... that's a good question.

However, that being said, there are very few major weapons programs (or civilian airliners for that matter) which haven't gone through this sort of hand-wringing in the last few decades. I do believe there will be major JSF cancellations and force reductions though. The UK is definitely making a substantial cut, but they are having to pay for their wars out of the defense budget, rather than supplementaries like we do here... so you can see what will happen there. They're even chopping the Nimrod MR.2 early... the last flight will be in March if you can believe it.... just so they can keep some of their other programs going.

Having worked for Lockheed, I can tell you that they nickle and dime everything, so you can bet we will be paying, and paying and paying for this baby. All I care about though is whether she does right by our boys and girls, and gets them there and back safely, while doing their jobs. I hope she does, and soon too, as everything else we have is wearing out!

Richard

Last edited by RMAllnutt on Tue Jan 26, 2010 6:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[michaelharadon]

I think that what the article has to say about the F-35 is of greater importance than its thoughts on the P-38.

[Nathan]

P-38 was not the best fighter in WWII. But it did not deserve such a inaccurate statement.
I read the article. Was there a point to be made in there? All I read was; BLAA....BLAA....BLAA!!!