"Vince" wrote in message
. ..
Jack Linthicum wrote:
On May 3, 11:35 am, Vince wrote:
Jack Linthicum wrote:
On May 3, 10:55 am, "TMOliver" wrote:
"Daryl Hunt" wrote ...
Speaking of Doofus's and you show up. One person already showed two
links
that they were around as camera ships in the Actives up until 1959.
But
don't let the facts get in the way of becoming a contributing member
of
the
404thk00ks. You live it down well.
No, they haven't. There were, unless you can find a competent cite,
one
with any hint of factual nature, no P-38 derived photo birds in
service in
1959 or in the years immediastely preceding. You don't seem to
comprehend
that P-38s were quick to leave the service because there were in
inventory,
both for conventional and photo missions literally thousands of more
capable
a/c gathering dust until Korea, and even Korea's needs were not great
enough
to summon elderly photo birds with less speed and range than the P-51
derivatives used for low altitude work. As late as 1957, there may
have
been a couple of TB-25s around for station "hack" service in the
Training
Command, and B-26s (NA, Not Martin), were still in ANG service (and
used by
the CIA/Cuban force strikes connected with the Bay of Pigs), but
you're
going to have to "show" us P-38s somewhere other than in your
agaonized
dreams before anybody will believe you...
To say that you are full of **** remains grotesque understaement.
You're
simply clueless, fallen well over the edge into "wackodom". You ought
to be
ashamed of yourself (in fact, probably would be, were you not too
simple
minded to comprehend that you've been emabarrassed so often as to have
all
potential credibility.
TMO
http://www.p-38online.com/recon.html
A quick and logical explanation for the death of the P-38, P-4 and P-5
was the birth of the U-2. Hardly likely that two such systems,
especially with the U-2's superior altitude performance, would co-
exist.
not really
The U2 was not suited for battlefield reconnaissance. USAF tried the
Canberra but it was a failure and then the RB-66 derived from the
skywarrior which was a success
Vince
They were used for that purpose in Cuba, one got shot down.
By October 19 the U-2 flights (then almost continuous) showed four
sites were operational.
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
Cuba was not a "battlefield"
I wouldn't want to tell that to the VFP-62 pilots flying low level photo
recon in RF8 Crusaders who (while certainly guilty of violating Cuban
airspace were being regularly fired upon with both 57mm and 23mm AA as the
transited missile sites flying "nap of the ground". The Soviets erecting
the sites seemed somewhat hostile toward being photographed.
After October 23, I was "only 90 miles away", and the average visitor would
have surely thought life was "combatish", VF-101 's F4 Phantoms crouched at
the end of the runway, air crew in their seats, for backup CAP, and the
airborne birds "on station" in the air off Havana. The RoE was pretty
flexible and no one doubted that it was a "missiles free" air defense
environment.
As for the RB-66's use in combat photo recon, the bird performed didn't last
long in that role (just as it had not done well as a bomber), replaced
quickly by far more survivable RF4s. The RB-66 was unsuited for low level
battlefield recon, too slow (and to the air crew who flew them sharing with
the A3 and EA3s the dicey escape method, down, instead of the more
conventional upward ejection). The RB-57s were developed to do what the
RB-66 did, while the Navy's last version of a similar a/c, the EA3, flew on
for many years, longer than the attempt to salvage the Navy's A-5 program
with the RA5C.
TMO