The Culture Blog For Connoisseurs Of Everything

Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt – the finest whisky available to humanity – to a commenter…

One of the founding principles of Dabblerism is the idea that an article about absolutely anything – from moths to trodden paths through wastegrounds – can be interesting if the writing is good. Dabblers are not specialists or obsessives, but connoisseurs of everything.

Nonetheless, as the quote at the foot of the page from Kipling suggests, a joy of being ‘an inexpert dabbler’ is knowing when you are in the presence of a Master. Our winner for May is Hey Skipper. When Scott Locklin posted his hymn to the F105 jet fighter, he can scarcely have imagined that within the Dabbler commentariat lurked a genuine US fighter pilot, who revealed the startling fact that the planes didn’t actually have any bombs compatible with their speed… 

In a previous life I flew F-111s, so I have a little bit of expertise on this subject.

First off, for a non-specialist — heck, even for a specialist — this is very well written.

The only factual correction, and it is scarcely worth mentioning, is that George Bush flew the F-102, not the F-106; a casual observer would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

One of the more famous sayings about the F-105, although it was applied to its manufacturer, is that if someone built a runway that went all the way around the world, Republic would build an airplane that needed it all.

I started flying in the late 70s, and only saw a Thud takeoff once. It had a “hard-light” afterburner: it was either all or nothing (newer fighters have ABs that come on in stages). I felt the concussion from a half mile away when the pilot selected reheat for takeoff.

You are very perceptive in seeing how Gen Le May’s fixation on nuclear war nearly crippled Air Force design and tactics. At the start of the Vietnam war, the only way the Thud could deliver conventional bombs was via dive bombing, which put the airplane right in the heart of both the SAM and AAA envelopes.

Also, and this is a problem that affected the F-111 even more, was that there were no bombs compatible with the plane’s speed. Ideally, you would come in very low and fast. However, in order to avoid getting caught in the frag, you have to get some separation (which the Mig you talked about didn’t know). At the time, there were two ways of doing this. One of them involved climbing to about 1000 feet, which is what you don’t want to do. The other option was to put a high drag fin assembly on the weapon. Unfortunately, the fins weren’t guaranteed to stay on above about 550 mph, which meant the Thud, and especially the F-111, had to slow down to deliver the things. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s when the F-111 had a weapon compatible with its speed.

The Defense Department does do dumb stuff, but it learns reasonably quickly. The Vark, the follow-on to the Thud, flew 4000 missions over North Vietnam with only six combat losses.

You are right, the Thud is weirdly beautiful. To my eye, the F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat are the two other top finishers in that category. The F-15, F-16 and F-18 are far more, oh, beautiful, but in the process they lose the appearance of primeval menace. In contrast, the F-117 looked like it got smacked hard with an ugly stick, and the F-22, despite its truly astonishing performance, is kind of blah.

Apologies for rattling on, but I couldn’t avoid the temptation.

Congratulations to Hey Skipper – we’ll be in touch about the booze.

Please note our criteria will not be the same every month – we really could choose a winner for any reason at all, so keep commenting all, and do join in if you’ve never commented before!