A-10 Thunderbolt

thanks nebraskasux... i surely miss those days being a youing man with 3 months of fishing one of the best lakes in america...parts of the space shuttle columbia when it broke up also were found very near there in the lake..true...also the a-10 has one air to air kill..an iraqi army helo mi-8 i believe it was..yeah there was a couple of guys bass fishing when they heard a loud noise and a huge splash..debris from the shuttle was found in the lake by divers..

dude that's pretty cool

Imagine that! This aircraft is designed to be able to fly without 1 wing, without 1 engine and without 1 tail. It can take alot of battle damage! It's like flying with half an aircraft. That is one mighty fine airplane.

i used to stay with my grandparents every summer on lake toledo bend on the tx/la border..and those a-10's would buzz the house all day long!!! we used to find their drop tanks floating in the lake running trotlines ...

I'm no expert on the A-10, but the placement of the engines being shielded by the tail is both to reduce heat signature and to protect from small arms fire or shrapnel. Two engines are for redundancy too.

It's intended as a close air support aircraft so it's meant to go in and support troops/armor on the ground. You don't bring in ground attack aircraft until the AA threats have been eliminated. I'm sure there are fighter craft sorta nearby but A-10's work with other strike aircraft.

1.5 tonnes for that beastly gun and accurate from 3 miles!??!?!

Killers ain't born preety.

That thing may look ugly, but its one reliable and durable plane that you want in air support and its an infantry's best friend behind the Apache helicopter. If your the enemy and you see that plane coming right at you, surrender because it will take you out.

or an F1 on cocaine and LSD and speed at idle rev.

Y is for aircraft that uses mix of experimental and standard technology.

I saw that program on TV. Without the music, you can hear the machine gun... I'll describe it:
A big harley-davidson motorbike without a muffler driving past
Several bombs dropping through the air
A ripping and pounding noise (similar to pulling a zip while someone next to you pummels a desk with metal fists)as the rounds hit the ground

Like the A/C-130 is Attack/Cargo...
Plus, X=Experimental... Y (ie Y/F23 Blackwidow)is used for Experimental but I'm not sure what it actually stands for,

lol more like BOOOM... period

Also, older planes (WW2 era) used P (for pursuit) instead of F, for fighter planes.

jesus christ. imagine mounting 2 of those guns on a land vehicle...